Pe­ter Ray Blood

As a child, East­er was syn­ony­mous with many fun things–church, sea, kite-fly­ing, fish, bobolees and hot cross buns. I re­mem­ber my moth­er wak­ing ear­ly on Good Fri­day morn­ing and mak­ing hot cross buns for us, and my favourite was eat­ing them hot with melt­ed cheese in­side.

Of course, at­tend­ing the three-hour Sta­tion of the Cross ser­vice was manda­to­ry in our home. The old­er I grew it was the more I fell asleep dur­ing this rit­u­al, usu­al­ly rude­ly awak­ened by my moth­er nudg­ing me in my ribs. Al­so manda­to­ry was watch­ing the re­volv­ing slew of Bib­li­cal films that TTT, the on­ly TV chan­nel back then, screened every East­er week­end.

Notwith­stand­ing not eat­ing meat dur­ing Lent, we'd ea­ger­ly look for­ward to our fi­nal gourmet fish meal of this pe­ri­od of ab­sti­nence on Good Fri­day, usu­al­ly king fish with gub gub or li­ma beans, al­ways served with white rice, pota­to sal­ad and pick­led cu­cum­bers. Lunch was al­ways ac­com­pa­nied by wine or sher­ry.

For many, the East­er week­end com­menced on Holy Thurs­day, with fam­i­lies head­ing out of town to cam­pat beach­es na­tion­wide. De­spite the pop­u­lar be­lief that you would be turned in­to a fish if you bathed in the sea on Good Fri­day, many of my friends ig­nored this myth, and none of them were trans­formed in­to some form of ma­rine life.

For most Chris­tians, Good Fri­day is tra­di­tion­al­ly a day of prayer and re­flec­tion on the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus Christ. For oth­ers it is one of the year's most in­ac­tive days. This year is no dif­fer­ent, ex­cept with Fun­world 2013, com­plete with trea­sure hunt, wa­ter park ac­tiv­i­ties, mod­el car show, crab race, tod­dlers play­world and oth­er at­trac­tion sched­uled for to­day at Gulf City Mall, in Low­lands, To­ba­go. This evening, DC Shell Fam­i­ly The­atre is stag­ing Ra­pun­zel, at Queen's Hall, St Ann's.

Good Fri­day was al­so the day for beat­ing the bobolee, an ef­fi­gy made in mem­o­ry of Ju­das Is­car­i­ot, the vil­lain in the be­tray­al of Christ. Over the years, bobolees have evolved, from be­ing rein­car­na­tions of Ju­das to ef­fi­gies of pub­lic fig­ures the pub­lic is ag­griev­ed with to celebri­ties who are wed, com­plete with cer­e­mo­ny and pro­ces­sion.

In time­ly fash­ion, in wake of com­mem­o­rat­ing the cru­ci­fix­ion of Christ, Bap­tists na­tion­wide will cel­e­brate Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day to­mor­row. It is a pub­lic hol­i­day for many, but a work­ing day for some, falling on a Sat­ur­day. Thou­sands of this faith will as­sem­ble in church­es and cathe­drals to give thanks for the evo­lu­tion and lib­er­a­tion of their faith.

Kite-fly­ing is a main in­gre­di­ent on the East­er week­end with the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain be­ing a ma­jor venue for this fam­i­ly out­ing. From ear­ly to­mor­row morn­ing one can ex­pect the sky to be dot­ted with a wide as­sort­ment of kites, from sim­ple, lit­tle chee-kee-chongs to huge, ex­ot­ic mad bulls. As a boy, I fond­ly re­mem­ber join­ing my young home­ys in Laven­tille, like the Lequays, Bat­ters­bys, Vic­tors and Brownes, hud­dled over kite-cut­ting para­pher­nala, like ra­zor blades and ground bot­tles to make 'zwill' and 'mange', 'weapons' in any de­cent ar­se­nal to cut kites out of the air.

Back in the day, mak­ing a kite was a skil­full art, from find­ing the right co­coyea to make the bow, to the right fab­ric to make a tail. I re­mem­ber my fa­ther bring­ing home rolls of type­writer rib­bon to make kite tails. Hav­ing ground­ed (crushed) the bot­tle and mak­ing a paste, it was te­dious work to ap­ply the mange to your bobeen of thread. Every bona fide kite-fly­er de­vel­oped a pas­sion­ate affin­i­ty to his cre­ation and a boy was tru­ly heart bro­ken any­time some­one cut his kite to make it "aiyo." My el­der col­league Ever­ald Gor­don en­light­ened me this week, that the term "aiyo" was in­spired from our French and Span­ish her­itage; the words adieu and adios mean­ing "good­bye." You lit­er­al­ly said farewell to your cut when aiyo be­fell it.

To­mor­row, kite-fly­ing will be pop­u­lar in every com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing Point Fortin where my friend Sha­keela has or­gan­ised an East­er Fam­i­ly Day and Kite Fly­ing Com­pe­ti­tion, at Back-Ah-Yard, Boodoo Street, on War­den Road.

Two big shows to­mor­row evening are Reign the Con­cert, be­ing staged by Southex at the Ma­yaro Recre­ation Ground, fea­tur­ing pop­u­lar chut­ney so­ca acts like Sal­ly Sagram, Xtreme An­daz, So­ca Elvis, Resh­ma Ram­lal, and Melobugz; and, Trin­i­ty Jam Foun­da­tions' Peace, Love & Mu­sic, at Club Pros­per­i­ty, Up­per Bournes Road, St James, and head­lined by Cul­ture Brown, KU-J, Jamelody, Isas­ha, and Queen Omega.

With Lent fin­ished, it's open li­cence to fete again and Yorke Inc has just what the doc­tor or­dered. Wide­ly re­gard­ed as the era that pro­duced the best mu­sic, Yorke's Clas­sics of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, sched­uled for Pier 1, Ch­aguara­mas, will mes­merise its pa­trons to­mor­row night with the hits of the 70s, 80s and 90s. Some of the ma­jor disc jock­eys of the era have been charged to de­liv­er this mu­sic on the night, in­clud­ing King Int'l, Kabu­ki, Sen­sa­tion­al Sam­my, Mr Q and the Hit­man Howie T.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, this hol­i­day week­end seems bereft of live pan mu­sic. For­tu­nate­ly, lovers of good pan mu­sic are promised their fill if they at­tend the 24th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion of Smokey & Bun­ty as Liz Mc Ken­zie said her head­line act on Sun­day night will be WIT­CO Des­per­a­does. The fun be­gin at 9 pm at Smokey & Bun­ty, lo­cat­ed on West­ern Main Road, St James.

East­er Mon­day is an­oth­er day of ex­cur­sions and fam­i­lies head­ing to the beach­es. What seems to be a good out­ing to at­tend is Space la Nou­ba's East­er Mon­day Road Trip, from Space la Nou­ba, South Trunk Road, La Ro­maine to Ibiza Beach Re­sport, Ma­yaro. The con­voy is sched­uled to de­part at 9 am.

Billed as the week­end's biggest ca­lyp­so con­cert, Ca­lyp­so Lovers In­ter­na­tion­al stages So­ca and Ca­lyp­so Mon­archs Cel­e­brate on Mon­day, at 6.30 pm, at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya. Among the stars billed to per­form are 2013 In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er So­ca Monarch and Road March cham­pi­on Su­perBlue; 2013 Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch Pink Pan­ther; the pride of An­tigua Swal­low; Black Stal­in; Denyse Plum­mer; Scrunter; Ex­plain­er; Skatie; John­ny King; and, 2013 cham­pi­on Na­tion­al Panora­ma arranger Len "Boogsie" Sharpe.

So, for this, the first big hol­i­day week­end of the year, en­joy your­selves, but be safe out there as I want you all to be healthy and well, read­ing next Fri­day's edi­tion of Pulse.