Sometimes when I feel too frustrated to deal with the economy, especially when I believe that no one is listening or reading, I have fun just writing. Language has always fascinated me. I wish that I were born in a border province of Europe or in Africa, where I would be exposed to four or five different languages.
Such a fun occasion arose in 2003 when I toyed with the idea of writing a novel. But what kind of novel should I write? I am familiar with the works of English novelists, but was in a quandary as to what author I should try to emulate. Finally, I decided to look at Spanish writers – Cervantes.
More than that I decided to look at the foibles of men and women in Barbados and draw on my experience watching others over the years. I found that I had hit a rich vein and could be quite creative.
Barbadians must be studied carefully, because Barbados is an island full of contradictions. The nightclubs, bars and streets are filled and noise until three or four o’clock on Sunday mornings; many patrons still find themselves taking communion or breaking bread by nine o’clock on the Sunday.
Men and women horn each other either in jest or in earnest. The oldest profession is illegal, but tolerated. Gambling is a daily pastime.
I would not say that there is hypocrisy in the air.
It is so endemic that Barbadians have got used to it and it is just a way of life. Let us call it contradictions. Just as you may see a wooden dilapidated shack next to a fashionable wall bungalow. Just as you may see blacks and whites supporting the pudding and souse delicacies. Just as you may . . . .
Well, the main character in my book, Sammy, captures some of the goings-on as a young, poor, black boy growing up in a village and although some things may have changed a little, growing up in a village accounts for habits both good and bad, mainly bad, that we see today, only that it is a little more violent, only that it is a little more tolerated, only that there is a little less supervision.
Back in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s most of these bad habits found expression in sexual behaviour. Although today it seems even more so; sexual behaviour drives the culture of our society. Look around and it is there in song, in dance, in the church, in schools. Sammy’s expression of it found its outlet in the pursuit of women.
The book is in no way autobiographical, but it depicts the way of life then. It exemplifies the complexities of the culture and its search for purchase. Juxtapose the experiences of Sammy in the church with the howls of protests from some churches about Crop Over dance (I mean wukking up or bumper rides or walk holy).
Sammy from an early age is exposed to good and bad.
He chooses some good things, but bad things catch up with him mostly due to his early experiences. He goes chasing after windmills in the elusive search for satisfactory fulfilment. Just as today men and women roam the landscape in search of that elusive joy.
But does it give him any pleasure as he looks back?
Readers must decide whether Sammy’s behaviour in the book typifies today’s men and if you are a man reading it, decide honestly whether you see yourself in some aspects of the book. The writer is not a woman, but does he get some of the stuff about women right, judging from the experiences that he draws about Sammy? The book and events portrayed are fiction, with the instances drawn mainly from the imagination. The book is titled Diary of a Randy Old Coot.
Oscar Wilde said: “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That’s all.”
He also said: “Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we dislike.”
