BEING A SCIENTIST in my day carried weighty responsibilities. Our pronouncements had to be based on hard data. Or carefully crafted experiments which, no matter how often or by whom repeated, would give the same results.
?This stricture has hampered me from pushing popular, but unproven, beliefs. My mother held, for instance, that “going sleep with your head wet will give you meningitis”, “blowing two nose-holes at the same time causes catarrh”, and my favourite, “small ear people does tief”.
Just as most Bajans think “AIDS come from (homosexualling)”.
Modern scientists have, of course, dispensed with those strictures as evidenced in high profile trials. The prosecution will produce a witness, the defence another, both “experts in their field” who will give diametrically opposite views. If you want to claim that cell phone radiation or genetically-modified foods are good for you, no doubt a scientist will produce a “study” showing just that.
You can’t blame these fellows. They get rich quick. Besides, when a renowned medical doctor testifies that in his considered opinion male on male sex is a risky business healthwise, and he gets fired from his university for so saying, what do you expect?
I kinda like this new carefree, fact-free approach.
Glyne Murray, for instance, tells of a decline in the popularity of pudding and souse and fish cakes because they “had come to be popularly regarded as belonging to the poorest of Barbadians stretching back to the days of slavery” and therefore infra dig and unsuitable for today’s more affluent.
This was news to me. From earliest youth we’ve had an uninterrupted supply of black-pudding people – Delsina in Jackson, Commander Marshall at the Biscuit Factory, Mrs Grant behind YMPC, Miss Lucas in Chelsea Road, Mrs Connell in Dayrells Road – among others.
While a “bread and two (fish-cakes)” was standard fare from Lilian Niles or Edgar Alleyne in Shop Hill or Forde the snowball man with the donkey. Why did no one tell us these were poor people’s food?
If fishcakes did ever decline in popularity, I thought it was because Al Gilkes used to hog all and had to be wooed away by the promise of a duck.
Glyne attributes the rejuvenation of fishcakes and bakes in some measure to a calypso by that name and pudding and souse to a popular SATURDAY SUN column. All reasonable and acceptable conclusions in today’s scheme of things.
This new-found liberty has prompted me today to reveal some of my most private speculations. I have no doubt, for instance, that the many storms and hurricanes which seemingly “can’t” miss Barbados but then inexplicably turn away at the last minute, do so because we keep Lord Nelson’s statue in Trafalgar Square and say no to casino gambling.
I am convinced that the prolonged drought in Jamaica and the recent plummeting fortunes of the Tallawahs are a direct consequence of the Myrie affair. God don’t like ugly.
This cause and effect thing places a heavy burden on me sometimes. If ever the West Indies are winning, for instance, I must continue what I am doing or they might lose.
Once while living in Green Hill, we needed quick runs. I was driving north at the time and knew that if I stopped they would be in trouble. So I continued way past home heading for St Lucy. Luckily they got the runs before I reached St Lucia.
Cause and effect, however, allows me to indulge a favourite pastime – detective extraordinaire like Holmes, Poirot and Monk.
Coming home a few Saturdays ago. Queen size box bed in cane field near Cherry Tree Hill. Investigate. Good condition – better than any of ours. Metal and wood framework intact. Why was it left there? Bring it home. Wife hopping mad. Children hopping on it.
Close inspection. Two clues. A clothes pin stuck into the framework. A medium santapee crawling around.
Conclusions: guy’s sexy girlfriend made a lot of noise. Neighbours teased him. So he started clamping her mouth with the clothespin. She hid the clothespin. So he loaded up her and the bed and did it in the remote cane field.
Enter the santapee. Bit her on buttocks while in action. The loving thereafter was so tempestuous, guy rushed off to marry her, forgetting the bed.
I hereby challenge Veoma to come up with a better explanation.
?*Richard Hoad is a farmer and social commentator.
Email [email protected].
