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Monday, July 21, 2025

Sink or swim

by

20160121

We're not in a re­ces­sion, we're in de­nial–which might be the best mode for han­dling dai­ly life in sweet T&T. So while some par­ty poop­ers are adamant that the bot­tom has dropped out of the oil bar­rel, true pa­tri­ots (that word al­ways re­minds me of Samuel John­son's de­f­i­n­i­tion of pa­tri­o­tism: "The last re­sort of a scoundrel" and Os­car Wildes's equal­ly ap­po­site "The virtue of the vi­cious") and sup­port­ers of we cul­ture will point out that we do­ing so good that we can af­ford to leave sky­scrap­ers and hous­ing units emp­ty and the all-in­clu­sive fete busi­ness boom­ing, so doh dig no hor­rors.

What I do know is that over the course of these first weeks in Jan­u­ary, my gro­cery bill has risen by ten per cent, but that's small change in Trinichachacha where mil­lions of dol­lars of pub­lic funds are en­tire­ly un­ac­count­ed for. Doh wor­ry wi­dat; de Orig­i­nal Doc he­s­elf say "Mon­ey no prob­lem" and who is de cur­rent Doc tuh con­tradick de Fad­der of de Nashun? Hmm wha ki­na dis­re­speck iz dat? An toobe­sides kanaval comin oui, an even jack­ass does know how we does mek mil­lions from all dem Hawa­ians and Hong Kon­golese fly­in een, not tuh men­shun de Syr­i­an an Chi­nee wi­nee who takin a lil ease up from star­va­tion or bar­rel bomb or playin refugee or stand dong time from Isis be­head­ing du­ty an ting, or messin wit too much of noo­dle.

An who­ev­er say de kanaval is a drain on we sauces damn well lie an iz nut­ten more dan a neemakaram neo­colo­nial­ist an should stick wit de Os­cars, or be sen­tenced tuh two nigh­ta hard wine in gun­shot fete, fol­lowed by com­pul­so­ry at­ten­dance at Can­boulay an hard labour an lash in de TTPS J'Ou­vert band–All o we Teef Missin. Ah done talk. Me eh no il­le­gal alien, iz jes some of me pa­per­wuk slip troo hands dat doh hole on­to nut­ten un­less dem grease up wit a few gy­ro, Shang­hai noo­dle, or rang­ing rover.

Mih had­da be a troo troo pa­tri­ot, which might mek mih a scoundrel, buh Ah tellin al­lyuh, dis boat eh sinkin. An eef pushin come tuh ram­jam doh wor­ry wit dat pard­na, some smart­man go buy some of dem self­same life jack­et de Turk an dem sell­in dem chupid fugees tuh drown een�an some­one go mek a truck­load of sol­id liq­uid cash. An dat had was tuh be good for de econ­o­my, not so?

Casin dem lookin tuh de­port me, iz bess Ah hush mih mout oui. As the para­noid said to the schiz­o­phrenic–You can't be too care­ful who look­ing. If I wasn't a to­tal scoundrel, I might de­clare this meet­ing 'the Dark Hour'–like in that po­em by that dead Guyanese po­et Mar­tin Carter. But then I'm a pa­tri­ot, so things look­ing up, like when you're ly­ing in the gut­ter look­ing at the stars.

Al­though much giv­en to the ab­surd (which is def­i­nite­ly a cri­te­ria for be­ing a Tri­ni), oc­ca­sion­al­ly I do ap­pre­ci­ate a stiff dose of lev­el-head­ed­ness, which hits you far hard­er than a dou­ble shot of pun­cheon.

Im­pos­si­ble to pro­ceed here with­out men­tion­ing my long time horsey Shad­ow's bril­liant song about the ef­fects of pun­cheon. I re­cent­ly re­ceived 95,000 words full of lev­el head­ed­ness from my es­teemed col­league and fel­low ol'talk­er Dr Roy­don Sal­ick, who un­like oth­er scoundrels has the ed­i­fi­ca­tion of the na­tion close to his bo­som.

His mag­num po­pus, Get­ting It Right, a com­pen­dious guide to cur­rent us­age of Eng­lish-and all who sink, stink or drown in her- is both eru­dite and en­ter­tain­ing and should be com­pul­so­ry read­ing in all in­sti­tu­tions, me­dia hous­es, PR de­part­ments, ad­ver­tis­ing agen­cies and let's not for­get Par­lia­ment, where they prob­a­bly need to do a dai­ly two-hour ses­sion, care­ful­ly study­ing the part on how to talk hu­man rather than hog–a sec­tion I haven't stum­bled across yet, but I'm sure is in­clud­ed in this vo­lu­mi­nous vol­ume.

Quite apart from putting you and me right on how to write the date–cor­rect­ly, pro­nounce Thames–cor­rect­ly and ex­act­ly when and where to place the colon and even the dread­ed se­mi-colon, what en­dears me to this gar­gan­tu­an ef­fort, is the old Roys­ter Doys­ter's lan­guid to stale Tri­ni hu­mour, which I have sat and ad­mired dur­ing many deeply philo­log­i­cal dis­qui­si­tions and even dis­putes, at one of the most charm­ing and au­then­tic wa­ter­ing holes to grace our first cap­i­tal, San Jose de Oruna.

It's dif­fi­cult to com­bine weighty knowl­edge with a light­ness of wit, mak­ing the learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence en­ter­tain­ment rather than drudgery. Who said we have no work eth­ic in T&T? I pro­pose Dr Sal­ick as an ex­em­plar par ex­cel­lence.

A man who can knock up thou­sands of words like Chris Gayle does balls (let's leave the blush­ing babes out of this please, along with the un­in­tend­ed ho­mo­pho­bic as­so­ci­a­tions) gives every man jack and jack spaniard hope, or as the dust­man sang in Eliza Dolit­tle or even less: "The Lord above made man to scrape and shov­el, but with a lit­tle bit of luck some­one else will do the blinkin lot."


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