EGBERT MC D “RABBIT” LASHLEY phoned last week on a point of elucidation. Rabbit was at Harrison College with me. He could with facility translate rank Chaucer directly into rank Bajan. We Harrisonians weren’t no salt breads in those days.
Apart from six years in England and a few in other islands, Rabbit tells me he’s been around. Yet since I left school in 1961, I have never set eyes on him. Nor indeed on most of my school colleagues except Tony Green who brought some most welcome mangoes on Tuesday.
I also got an email last week from John Leacock, the son of Harvey. Any time someone calls me “Baby” Hoad, it is no doubt in connection with my youthful days riding donkeys in Shop Hill and the surrounding districts.
I’m not even sure who John Leacock is. Nicknames like Nukka Moona, Air Line, Straight-Foot Lilee, Cocoa, Tarzan, Joe Goat, Pramp, Junk, Dummy, Shine and German prevailed and we seldom knew anyone by anything else.
My point here is, however, that both these gentlemen have been in Barbados over the years yet we have never met. Barbados is a big place. And I’m seriously considering, if elected in the coming months, to have it reclassified as a continent.
It should come as no surprise therefore that, in the circles where editor Sanka Price moves and has his beans, “most people are asking one question: what date is the election?”
Such has not been my experience. Neither Rabbit nor John Leacock mentioned it. Electrician Reuben was rather pondering how come pork-eating evangelists get people healed miraculously while swine-avoiding Seventh Dayers seem to have no such luck.
Young Barry Blades from Cattlewash was concerned about the unusually high seas. Michael Gill has reached his tether with the sad state of agriculture, to wit the dairy industry. Margaret Knight, mother of David Thompson, commented on the beautiful scenery between St John and Morgan Lewis.
“Beef” queried how come Taan Abed got 86 votes to Verla DePeiza’s five, yet she won the nomination. André Williams, driving by with Rosemary Parkinson, told me how she had taught the Jamaican men how to get bigger and better somethings (the word might have been “elections” but I’m not sure).
While Sister Barbara, to whom I gave a lift, related how a male co-worker did some painting for a lady and she summoned him upstairs for his money. Whereupon he discovered her in a state of advanced nudity. Apparently “Floor Play” is the preferred method of payment for many ladies in these harsh economic times. However, on seeing that the VAT involved was considerable and out of all proportion to his slender resources, he fled.
Note, no calls for elections in my neck of the woods. Nary a one.
These calling-for-elections political “scientists”, most of whom have never run a bus shelter far less a government, remind me of Jesse James robbing the train. With Jesse shouting repeatedly: “Ah’m agonna shoot all the women and rape all the men!”, some of the fellows tell him “You got it wrong, Jesse, you mean . . .”
Whereupon a little homo guy in the back simpers: “Whuh’s this I hearing though? Wunna trying to tell Mr James how to rob a train?”
Mr Stuart, do your do, sir. I call your brand of politics the LBP system, as in Little Bo Peep: “Leave them alone and they will come home, bringing their tails behind them”.
Anytime you make a move, it ends up wrong. Changing school names, bad. Alexandra relocations, bad. Pandering to water-tiefing squatters and illegal extensionists, bad.
Leave them alone, Stuarty. In time Garcia will go back on hunger strike; Al Barrack can get his food. Jeff Broomes will retire or go the way of all flesh. CLICO policyholders will learn the hard way not to trust foreign companies. Government underselling will force Hoad to sell out his goats and embark on the career he always wanted – Chippendale male stripper.
And, Stuarty, if the law allows you ninety days before calling an election, take as many as you need.
Elections are at best a necessary evil. They involve turning one section of our nation against the other, Bajan against Bajan. They cost a lot of money. Noise pollution from political meetings. Loss of sleep and productivity. None of which Barbados needs at this juncture.
• Richard Hoad is a farmer and social commentator. Email [email protected].
