Good from Far but Far from Good

To kill the monotony of the daily back and forth drive from Country to Ghetto, Annie and I play a little game of you take the men on the left, I'll take the men on the right. To my surprise, I located a ghetto thug who had a certain je ne sais quoi. It has been fun giving the Valley Girl Finger Wave whenever I pass the Pine block. Of course, I just knew not to talk to him. Once he opens his mouth, I told Annie, he'll be an unemployed ghetto moron who can't form a sentence. For now, he's whatever I want. Of course, we women must always test Blue Beard's key. Driving by solo on Tuesday, windows down for a change, I pass mystery man walking on the side walk 2 feet from the car. He motions to stop. Dumb Dumb I do Dumb Dumb. He opens his mouth with a "what's your name?" and lo and behold his two front teeth and only his two front teeth are yellow brick road yellow. You gotta to love God's humour. Back to the drawing board combing the area for something nice to look at pretending I'll be able to resist making the fantasy tragically and disappointingly real.

All Roads Lead to the Hill

This weekend is a four day w/e for us in BIM. Friday is National Heroes day and for the last three weeks every 20 minutes or so the radio cuts into Government programming accompanied by brass marching band (reminiscent of communist czechoslovakia) and a biography of one of our nation's heroes. Once again, it's another day for us not to work spending our little 2 days short earnings on rum. I have been somewhat more extravagant this weekend, spending my last dollars on tickets to a ginormous outdoor Bajan reggae susplash concert to see Morgan Heritage, Third World, Lucianno, Anthony B and yes, Buju Banton. IZZY and I plan to soak it up 96 degrees in the shade get cold feet and party 'til the shiloh's come home Tickets are still on sale for anyone wanting to swim to the rock and get high, drunk or 'conscious'.

Safety Shmafety

We islanders and our 'laid back' attitude is not always translated into shirking work under the coconut trees like my road works crew, who incidentally are now filling buckets of water from the yard pipe to wash their cars in the driveway. No, our guys can work hard when they're ready and in this hot as all ass sun they put the pastey white boys from the North to shame. But laid back is laid back-it's part of 'WE' culture and it has to eventually creep out somewhere. When it comes to manual labour, the laidbackity almost always seems to be limin' in the safety department. Take Michelle's house. They've gotten to the roof stage, all easter weekend pushing work tirelessly, hanging from rafters, tightwalking the beams, pulling up posts to be hammered and sawed, with no shoes, no helmets, no ropes, no lunch break, a gallon of rum punch and a chief carpenter with a drinking problem. One need not be a literary scholar to follow the plot of this story. After hours of hot sun on an uncovered head and a hungry stomach fed nothing but fermented sugar cane we all know what happened. In fact we foresaw the climax of this story the minute the rum left the fridge before the drinking began. The drunkin carpenter's eyes finally closed and he plumeted off the scaffolding missing to iron rods by inches and landed on the concrete floor. Thankfully, what they say about drunks is true. He got up, said he was just tired and went home to sleep. By the next morning he was back on the scaffolding, complaining that sprite won't cut the thirst and sneaking swigs of the left back punch he'd managed to stash behind some boards after the fall. All is well.

Proper Pork

For those of you on pins and needles awaiting the answer to last blog's questionnaire the answer is "a) stooling in the banana patch" but with a slight variation. Stooling yes- but not in the bush- in the pig pens behind the house. Those pig pens have not been used for pigs since IZZY was born so my guess is 5 year old shit would have dried up by now and while Ocean still loves to feel the outdoors on his ass as Ricky so gently put it "dat too big to come outta Ocean." Besides, Ocean does it on the driveway and the dogs quickly remove the evidence.

The whole human-pig dynamics in Barbados is a little puzzling from the supermarket commercial with the little piggies wukkin' up to the calypso "propa-propa- propapropa pork..propa propa give me propa pork" http://www.properpork.com/index.php?pg=ToThePig
to the lift I got with the Planter man who passed the foul as ass piggery and sniffed the stench in like it were a cup of Java and exclaimed "Propa Pork!"
to the yard hand we had who spent his lunch hours stroking our sow
to the phallic consumption of barbequed pig tails complete with sucking and slirping.
to the kidnapped baby reportedly fed to the pig.....

Bajans' definitely have a love thang for the other white meat which surpasses my Canadian understanding. And if you tink I lie...check out the parts for sale in the meat aisle.

Road Works Get the Slavic Wrath

I was gracefully tricked into yard work when Ricky called me outside to "see how good dis whacker pulling." After trying out the weed whacker, piling up some branches and rolling whole coconut trees stumps off the road, I set about picking up the hundred or so brown mint wrappers, biscuit pacakges, plastic cups, ciggarette packs, beer bottles, guiness bottles, rum bottles, gin bottles, all within three feet from our two garbage cans. Why the mess you ask?
Because the road crew are tirelessly working at cards and cursing under the palm trees by the drive way.
Our road has been under construction for almost three years now. At the rate of one pebble a day I estimate our road will be finished in the year 3067. Meanwhile we are hosting a shlew of government workers who by keeping the bread line short, are also moving the economy by investing their tax payed wages on the country's national beverage.
When mums and I came out this morning to find them all already liming in the shade she'd had enough. I don't know what they understood through her thick eastern european meets bajan accent but "disrespectful lazy rassholes" was quickly assuaged by "I'm sorry"s.

Care to place your wages on tomorrows find. Will the road works be found:
a) stooling in the banana patch
b) stealing another of one our puppies
c) lying on a bed of old cardboard surrounded by another heap of garbage
or
d) in the bank cashing their hard earned pay checks?