Thursday, March 28, 2024

THE LOWDOWN: Why not lick it?

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FRONT SEAT, back seat, it didn’t matter. Larry loved it and could never get enough. And because of that I nearly killed her last week.

It’s been a strange time. Nearly lost my duck too. This is the walk-in duck which Veoma claims is her in feathered finery. She’s started laying eggs which we’ve been having for breakfast.

I figure she should have a mate. My wife counters she might have come to us to escape an abusive relationship so leave her be.

I don’t know. Can a female be happy without a little thing? Anyway, I’m going to compromise. Veoma gets ning-nings from Donville’s sax. So I’ll take mine out and blow the duck a soulful Dock of the Bay. Sax for sex is a poor substitute but it’ll have to do.

Ducky went missing for a few days. Luckily we found her trapped in an empty upright barrel where she’d gone to lay.

Larry, mentioned above, is a dog we got from Trevor Rudder’s daughter. She found three puppies and named them Curly, Larry and Moe. Obviously with scant respect for gender.

Larry loves to drive and I left her in the pickup one night to surprise the wife who was due to put it in the garage. She didn’t see Larry, I forgot about her and she wasn’t found until next afternoon, drooling like crazy. The seats were a mess. Please don’t tell my wife I was involved. The dog is fine.

Anyway, my phone has been out for about a week. No Internet, Wi-fi, nothing. Not a single phone call. Withdrawal symptoms everywhere. No mail to check, no back-up information, no King of Queens to watch. The grandchildren were de-Kindled, iPadically challenged.

Then an amazing thing happened. I buried myself in a P.G. Wodehouse that Gladstone Holder had given me and waxed ecstatic over it. The children were into playing cricket, kicking football, card games from Jackass to Fish to Tunk, chasing around, interacting.

Best of all, no phones rang. We have more than our fair share of callers who just plough ahead no matter how busy you are. I’ve seen my wife let food burn on the stove rather than offend an unstoppable phoner.

We were actually a bit sorry to be reconnected to the world wide web on Monday. Of course we will get sucked back in but it’s good to know there’s a peaceful world at our fingertips where birds sing but no phones ring. We can lick internet addiction any time we like.

There’s another addiction we can lick – food and obesity. Sir Hilary blames the sugar and salt diet from slave days and he may be right. I was raised at a St Thomas sugar factory eating handfuls of brown sugar, pan sugar on Sundays, drinking raw and cracked liquor, endless swank.

Salt fish and biscuits or red herring, drink a gallon of water and you were good to go. To match my boating brothers, I would even fill a Horlicks bottle with salt water, strip naked in a canefield, pour on my “St Thomas sea” and get a beautiful all-over tan.

Nowadays I rarely have a sweet drink, put no sugar in tea. I’ve cut back on salt until most snackette food now tastes highly oversalted.

We need a national campaign to lick obesity just like how we drastically reduced tobacco smoking. Your history need not be your destiny, as Bobby Morris will tell you.

Incidentally someone described Indonesia’s new president, Joko Widodo, as the “skinniest politician” he knew. He explained that they see a definite correlation between corpulence and corruption in politicians.

UWI should investigate this. If it is so, we could measure politicians’ girths at election and every year thereafter to see who needs locking up.

Success breeds success. Once we get going, we can lick other negative aspects of Bajan culture. But we must move together as a people.

The seat belt law was harsh and it worked. Parliament passed a gun law designed to send a strong message of zero tolerance to illegal guns. Instead of tweaking where necessary, the courts have watered it down to nothing.

“Now even murder-accused are laughing in our faces”.

 Way to go, legal experts. But please don’t come with your crocodile outrage when yet another judicial officer gets assassinated.

Richard Hoad is a farmer and social commentator.

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