Hold Off Those Fried Favourites, shouted a headline in the last SATURDAY SUN. Good advice, but needs to be put in context. So first let’s check the source.
This age of information is more than matched by the age of misinformation. Big corporations, political parties, even governments employ experts, pundits and some columnists to push their agendas.
Unfortunately, the SATURDAY?SUN article is credited only to “SP”. We can rule out Sanka Price. We associate Sanka’s columns with “eating” in a romantic setting. And Sanka would never list “pudding and souse” as a “fried favourite”.
My guess this SP is none other than Standard & Poor’s! And they err in singling out one aspect of life – food.
Life, or at least worthwhile life, is not about how many years you live. Your “life” is really the days lived, multiplied by the quality of those days. So do the maths:
For the days that something nice happened – you got a little doobie-doobie, ate a good meal, played sweet music: score one. For extra special niceness – a West Indies win, a Ridley Greene pig-tail rice – you may want to score a two.
For average days, score zero. And if you got a nail jook, a big rock from a girl or the belly cuttings in a bus, score minus one. Then work out if you’re living or merely existing.
As you get older, however, your niceness possibilities get fewer. First, the wife denies access to the mustard patch, no matter how desperately you want to cut it.
Then your hobbies let you down. My passion was, and is, music. But no one has time to play for fun any more.
And suddenly your whole day, your whole life, depends on the food you get. It’s your last remaining pleasure. Eat only tasteless “healthy” fare and you just aren’t living.
I’ve previously mentioned an old lady wasting away unhappily on “healthy” foods. Finally, the family let her have whatever she wanted. “Start with a baked pork,” she instructed them, and reached under the bed for her tambourine to live to many happy years thereafter.
I could also mention another lady so health conscious she had no fridge or stove. Ate only “healthy” fresh fruit and nuts. Didn’t make it past early middle age.
Today is Eat Bajan Day in honour of Graham Gooding. I was Gooding’s assistant for three years doing research on all kinds of food. Try a Blackbelly mutton soup loaded with local vegetables, or a breadfruit cou-cou with steamed fish. Eat Bajan today and always.
By the way, most traditional Bajan food is neither unhealthy nor lacking nutritionally, as implied in that article. Many of the foods listed are relatively recent imports from alien cultures.
Anyhow, in an effort to eat Bajan and find a new hobby, I went to Fisherman’s Corner and bought me a seven-foot fishing rod!
Fellows catch lots of fish at Morgan Lewis Beach. So thither I headed excitedly with grandson Raffie. Slipped on the muddy track and buggadung!
“Grannie,” the little snitch shouted as soon as we reached home, “Grandad’s rod broke even before he got to use it!”
“I’m not surprised,” she cooed sarcastically, “he’s had that problem all his life!”
Actually it wasn’t the rod, it was the reel. And God bless Mr Edward Fenty who fixed it and saved my life.
Second attempt was even worse. First you catch a crab, squash it with a board and attach various bits to a hook that is just dying to embed itself in your finger. Then you “cast”, flick the “bail”, wind the “handle thing” while keeping your eye on the “fish”. Go ahead, you try it.
Meanwhile, some joker arrives with his girlfriend and sits about 30 feet away, presumably hoping my erect rod would excite her. Which, however, meant that I couldn’t check the rod instructions which were in my top pocket. No fish, not a bite.
Next time will be better though. A fellow at Fisherman’s Corner taught me a foolproof two-step technique for catching fish:
One, go to the Fisheries Complex and pay for some fish. Two, get the seller to toss them to you gently one by one.
“Caught any fish?” your wife will ask sneeringly.“Quite a few, actually,” you can tell her truthfully.
• Richard Hoad is a farmer and social commentator.