In dependence

THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY

INDEPENDENCE weekend and y’boy footy well know that the onliest thing that will harass Trinidadian like they bounce a jep nest is that the public holiday falling on a Saturday. Trini don’t care if Good Friday fall on Ash Wednesday, as long as a public holiday don’t fall on a Saturday.

Long-time, before the PNM make as eef them care ’bout Dis’pline, Production and Tolerance, which are the national watchwords (and not looting the great house, the real business of government), if a public holiday did fall on a weekend, the gov’ment uses to give the holiday on the next working day following; if the Monday was already a holiday, everybody get the Tuesday off, too. But since George Chambers play he “Fete Over, Back to Work” mas in the late eighties, Trini doesn’t get they extra day of holiday again, and them does get bite up about it, still on to now.

And the irony does make y’boy laugh (not kiff-kyaff, but shake-he-head): Trinidadian getting vexed becaw them not getting a extra day off…for independence! It take firetrucking Trinidad to turn independence into dependency, yeah-oui.

And y’boy mind run on monkey suit and monkey pants. And y’boy done know that a small child asserts itself against its parents when the child dresses itself; and, in Trinidad, ten degrees north of the equator, where it hot like hell, we doesn’t consider weself properly dressed unless-ing we put on jacket-and-tie.

We not even dressing we-firetrucking-self!

And y’boy know that, in Trinidad, in “black tie” events, every man jack is be deck out in tuxedo with cumberband – don’t mind 99 per cent of them wearing clip-on bow tie.

And y’boy wonder what it is about these mimic men does allow them to mock VS Nightfall, when they whole area is darkness?

What it mean, to be independent?

Excepting to do thing for yourself?

And in your own way?

And y’boy mind run again on Lloyd Best and how hard he work, his whole life, and how hard the ’goutis running in the track he make still working, and y’boy know that, in the fulness of time, we will work things out.

But y’boy also know that, in the fulness of time, 100 monkeys typing will write the plays of Shakespeare.

And y’boy study the current messiah Trinidadians shoving one another outta the way to worship (right up until the moment they decide to crucify him). Y’boy get licks from some people for giving the old Double-Gee, which is the new police commissioner, the Trini to the Bone space on Monday gone.

One tess want to know how y’boy could get so beh-beh from the GG bull-ta-- as to “use your wonderful Trini to the Bone column [sic] for “constant blowing-his-own-trumpet.” The tess say y’boy just “add to the pile” of “conmen and bulls--- artists Trinis have embraced over the years.”

Y’boy know how the thing does go. On Monday, in Trini to the Bone, the CoP himself say that Trini want the place to come back lawful, but them must still be allow to break the law for, and at, they own convenience.

Trini grow up on Westerns and it don’t have a single Trini who don’t expect the cavalry to ride een in the last reel and save the wagon train from them Red Indian. Them watching Double-G like John Wayne.

But y’boy footy well know, too, that, if you want a gunslinger hero, them does come cheap in Rio Bravo and Claro, in Hollywood and Woodbrook, in Badlands and Sou-Sou Lands.

It had at least one before, ent?

Y’boy could hear the new version of the old CIC football chant against QRC.

Run yuh run, commissioner, run yuh run. You don’t hear what Trini say? With we piece of rope and we mango tree/ we go string up yuh goalie.

Every bare jack does hang in the end and every messiah does crucify.

In this pappyshow land, it better to be a pappyshow star than a suffer-rar.

The new sheriff have real gunplay.

But not so long ago, Ian Alleyne, he of the Crime Watch and the high heels and the white sunglasses and the too-small suits, did get 400K “likes” on Facebook.

In a truly independent place, the citizen, not the badjohn, does rule the town.

BC Pires is a maverick in every herd. Happy in dependence and shut the firetruck up about having to work Monday.

Read a longer version of this column on Saturday at www.BCPires.com