Watching the West Indies batsmen in India in the current cricket clash, one is reminded of the instances in everyday Caribbean life where we run down the wicket, swing vigorously, and miss. Some of these misses make headlines and major examples pop up virtually every day – check today’s newspapers; you will find several – but there are some lesser ones, or more personal ones that occur, too.
Tradewinds played in Trinidad in mid-October at a fund-raiser for the late George Ng Wai, who was a linchpin in the music industry of that country for many years (he had been a devoted friend to me, as well), and a write-up of the fete appeared in the Newsday newspaper there. A Trini friend of mine mailed me a clipping of the story on October 23, and kept bugging me as to whether the thing had arrived. It finally came on November 13, some 20 days later. The Trini was aghast. I said to him: “They probably sent it by schooner…hold that…on reflection if they sent it by schooner it would have come in 2 days. I guess what the Post Office did was just throw the envelope up in the air and hope for the breeze to catch it and blow it south.” Either way I’m assuming the postal service took a good swing in the process, but they clearly whiffed.
This week, too, scanning US television, I was pulled up short by the sight on one channel of a dog, posing nervously for the camera, wearing a jacket. Yes, a jacket. No pants, just a jacket. The owner had created this tiny neatly tailored jacket starting just under the dog’s chin and extending down his body to his back legs.
The poor dog stood there probably quaking with fright at this confinement. The animal looked positively embarrassed and probably couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. I am aware of how goofy people can be about their dogs, or cats, but what could possibly be the benefit to the dog to be subjected to this? Perhaps we should be grateful that there was no necktie involved, or a cummerbund, or even tiny dog shoes. I suppose the obvious explanation for this nonsense is that such exercises are for the owner, not the dog, but this swing was a definite miss.
The distributors of the popular Corona beer here have mounted an attractive four-colour sign on the back of their delivery truck, showing a bottle of the product, and urging customers, in the process of enjoying one, to “find a beach.” Find a beach? In Guyana? Unless you’re living close to Splashmins, or perhaps Baganara, that would constitute a long and arduous search. Corona would be better off exhorting customers to locate the nearest spreading tamarind tree to enjoy a cold one; if you aim for the beach, by the time you get there, the brew will likely be warm.
One has to believe, or hope anyway, that the folks who are battling with the garbage dilemma in Georgetown would at least ensure that certain areas, or at least our prestigious institutions, remain litter free. Imagine my shock then, having to visit the Parliament Buildings on business, to find that the Brickdam sidewalk immediately across from that imposing structure, on the northern side of the road, is a general repository of various forms of litter: discarded slippers; styrofoam containers; empty bottles and cans; dead grass; bits of cardboard; shreds of paper – they’re all there. Worse yet, in the course of a month, I visited the Parliament Buildings four times and on each occasion the litter was there, sometimes extending as far east as the junction. Indeed, it looked like the same litter, each time.
Understand that this is the spectacle not even 100 yards away from what I would presume is the most prestigious building in our city. Whoever the good folks are swinging mightily at the Georgetown garbage, they are missing badly right in front of our Parliament.
In keeping with the analogy, here’s a cricket one. West Indies having been embarrassed by a 2-to-1 defeat in their first match of the current Test series in India, we have Captain Sammy coming to the media with a powerful declaration that the team has been “a bit rusty,” and that before the second Test, they had embarked on a rigorous training programme to get the boys back up to speed. Darren is a charming man, in that breezy St Lucian way of his, and he exudes optimism, but he keeps coming up with these mighty swings that only connect with air. If it was known that the boys were “a bit rusty” why didn’t we have the rigorous training programme before the match instead of after the debacle?
Even more pertinently, is it the thinking in the West Indies organisation that a 3-day camp session can convert a rusty team into a well-oiled machine capable of conquering India in Tests?
Perhaps if we decide to venture forth on some mission with a mighty voop, we should take a page from a well-known cricketer’s book.
Study the game carefully, and before you swing wildly and only connect with air, do what Shiv does: shuffle across the wicket, head still, and just block.
