Engine Room reboot

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY

BC PIRES

Wednesday’s massive power outage caused BC Pires’s column to vanish into cyberspace. BC is scrambling to retrieve it but, in its place, we rerun a TGIF written in the approach to Carnival 1993 – nearly 30 years ago.

HOW IS anyone, let alone me, supposed to concentrate until Lent? The cricket alone could destabilise the best intentions of the most industrious person in the country. Someone looking to be diverted doesn't have to look very far. I'm firetrucked from the first ball. West Indies cricket is a completely distracting phenomenon when we're winning; when we're losing, it becomes addictive and, the worse it gets, the more you have to watch, like bad reality TV.

I feel like I'm trying to thread a needle on the back of a pick-up truck speeding down Cipriani Boulevard. It'd be easier to write a column in the middle of Amoco Renegades's rhythm section.

There’s also the ongoing marching around the Red House, there's the New PNM/Old PNM Spot the Difference competition, the Red House Rabble/Uniformed Police Officer Spot the Difference competition, there's the Responsible-Minister Spot the Resignation Race between Colm Imbert and Russell Huggins, there's the Obscene-Pay-Rise Spot the Withdrawal Non-Starter, there's panyard-liming, calypso tent clashes, Panorama, costume collection, more cricket, Abu Bakr (don't forget him), Kings and Queens, controversy, controversy, Carnival, corn soup, corruption debate, kaching-a-nik, kaching-a-nik, kaching-a-nik....

If all of life is a steelband side, we're right smack in the middle of the engine room!

And the rhythm's going wild.

Phase II never had it so good and Despers only dreams of this kind of racket. There's cricket all around me as I write, marchers all around the Red House as you read, probably, police morale and discipline all over the place, police funding and support nowhere at all, rumours of J'Ouvert uprisings whistling around the North Stand, disgruntled East Port of Spain eyeing speculative St Clair, nervous Queen Street and noisy Savannah between them, five-band jams at every car park every night, kaching-a-nik, kaching-a-nik, kaching-a-nik...What happens next? Do we wine or riot in the streets? This might not be a fete in here. This may well be madness.

At least the marching might convince some people that it won't be necessary to obstruct the Savannah to get in shape for Carnival, although there'll have to be a few marches from Sando to town to trim down my pardner Francis Mungroo.

I should compensate with some skinny jokes this week but it's so difficult to find a thin trade unionist. David Abdulah is slim but too earnest to be funny. Errol McLeod probably secretly wishes there could be a motorcade around Parliament and not a foot march. If Natuc could find enough Nissan Ultimas, he'd probably go for that sort of engine room.

And, if you permit an aside – and we wouldn’t be on this page at all and certainly not this far down it, if you didn’t – but, in a very short time David Rudder has made an amazing firetrucking contribution to this country. Just think of the number of words and catchphrases he has made up or uncovered that we take for granted: engine room, permission to mash up the place, dus' in dey face...you could hardly have advertised a fete without him in the last five years.

For Rally round the West Indies alone he should get a medal. He also makes inventing wildly infectious musical hooks seem as easy as falling off the doctrine of ministerial responsibility. From "bim-be-lim-bim-bay-lay" to "booyaka-booyaka" (borrowed from Jamaica), his chants have been so universal other musicians have been able to use them in their songs without effort.

When you add the songs he's given us, it's mind-boggling. Just pull out one or two: Madness, Rough and Ready, Panama...Superblue wouldn't have won the last couple of road marches if Bahia Girl had not been written and he'll probably take it this year because of Bacchanal Lady. If calypso history was recorded in the way the Americans score sports, Rudder would be credited with many “assists."

BC Pires is an iron man beating hubcap in cyberspace to scare out TGIF