I hope you all have recovered from the Christmas blues and that the flu and cold that was spreading all over the place just before Christmas has not been permanent and, that you have all settled down to face the madness of those who think they have better ideas about how to govern Mother Sierra Leone this year.
My own prolonged cold, having lasted out till last weekend, worked up into a sore throat, headache and temperature and a few unpleasant days in bed, and an excuse to be idle and the chance to catch up with my reading just before 2011 left us, to the delight of my darling wife and the little princesses.
An unprecedented amount of drugs backed with good old Jameson Irish Whiskey came to my rescue New Year’s Eve, and I found myself dancing down at Aqua Club, in Murray Town, on New Year’s Day, but Johnny Walker was not very pleased with the news that I needed Jameson to get out of bed. Unfortunately, I had no cigar to smoke out the jealousy, but as you can tell, I survived the battle between a 90 years old Jameson Irish Whisky and the Master-Scot, Johnny Walker, which I had on New Year’s day down at Aqua club.
So how was your Christmas holiday? I heard there was plenty talk about no money at the banks and this news troubled me for a while because, I fear we were heading PIGS Ways (Portugal, Ireland, Greece & Spain). Thankfully, the Chief at Sam Bangura’s House was on top of things when others were rushing to press the panic button.
Cold and sore throat aside, Christmas for me is the point on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, when I turn on the radio or when in London, the television to listen/watch the solo treble of a boy chorister singing unaccompanied the first verse of the processional carol, Once in Royal David’s City, in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, in England.
Listeners of the BBC World Service can confirm that since 1919, the BBC officially starts the Christmas Season with the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.
The pleasure of listening to this song on Christmas Eve is indescribable. And it is extraordinary the sense of exaltation and wellbeing that a perfect singing voice can produce, somewhere deep within. At that moment, I thank the Almighty Father for his mercies and my emotions soar. It is undisputed, Life is beautiful and we all should give thanks to the Master (as my mother calls God), for his Goodness and Mercies.
I was in this mood or should I say my sense of seasonal happiness was rudely interrupted whilst I was in the bed on Christmas Eve, by a call from a friend in London, extending Christmas Greetings to me and my family. With all the niceties out of the window, I had hoped this friend would have left me in peace, especially when I have told him, that I was not feeling great that day; but oh no, he just won’t put the phone down and leave me in peace.
“So what’s happening?” he asked, as if, I was Odin the magician. I ignored the question and asked about the cold weather in London. But you know the type, who wants to go to a party, and say things that are not accurate and then say, Oh, I have talked to a journalist in Freetown, to give his statement some credibility and beef.
With a quick passing statement about the weather, he asked again. “How is the politics going on, any new development?” At this point, the panels of my brain were heating up, with the cold, headache and sore throat, and my desperation for him to say good-bye. But this man was determined to know what is happening in the political arena, as if I belong to any, or have the privilege to be in the know.
“Do you think Kadi Sesay is the right choice for a Running Mate, and what is Ernest doing about Sam-Sumana? I kept quiet, thinking he would realize that it’s Christmas, and that I do not mix madness with The Cherry Tree Carol-possibly one of the oldest Carol in the book, which was playing on the radio as he continued to bombard me with questions about politics.
If you know The Cherry Tree Carol, you will agree with me that it captures beautifully the emotional crossover from the ancient sacred story of the birth of Christ to the everyday world, in which we live, and for a short period only, I wanted to escape from the present day madness, but my friend won’t let go. So I got mad.
“I don’t know much about Maada Bio or Kadi Sesay. And I am not Ernest’s keeper,” I said in a hush voice, trying to put the phone down, but my London friend just won’t go. He asked another question, to the delight of my wife, saying “I thought you like talking about politics, answer the man!” So I did.
“Maada gave a speech back then after he won the election to be the SLPP flag bearer, and made several reactionary speeches and Press Conferences. Then he left for heaven to speak to the Gods. I will let you know when he returns to earth.” He laughed loudly and then changed his tone of voice…..Come on man, talk to me, he pleaded.
“On Ernest Koroma, I told him that the President has turned Freetown into a “workshop” with Chinese peasants struggling to change the face of Freetown. I said, the President wants to transform Sierra Leone, but he is not willing to be sufficiently radical to make his vision work. And, it seems as if he too must have gone to Heaven, because these days he can be found one day in a church, the next day in a mosque and maybe, just maybe, he might decide to visit the Indian Temple at Wilkinson Road.
He got the message; “I think I should say good-bye before you insult me this Christmas weekend,” he protested over the phone. With those words, we had a few more exchanges about London and he said good-bye and I reverted to my Seasonal happiness and sore throat.
I have not found any great writing on that wonderful often unappreciated art form, the insult.
There are two kinds of insult. “I was bored by your book/telephone call” is one kind. “This person bores me to death, or “Your book/ newspaper? Once I put it down, I couldn’t pick it up,” is the other.
Although both are insults, only one is witty. Or, at least, funny. I suppose we should reserve the accolade “wit” for the highest practitioners of the artParker, Wilde, Shaw Twain, Kaufman, Levant, Marx et al. Some would include Rickles.
However if there is a Top Ten list of insults, Churchill’s most famous one would be at least amongst the top three. It is, of course, the well-known exchange between Sir Winston Churchill and an irate lady MP.
And as it is the case with these kinds of exchanges, it is often botched in the re-telling, the correct version according to an MP who claimed to have witnessed the notorious exchange, was:
Mr. Churchill, you are drunk.
Madame, you are ugly
Mr. Churchill, you are extremely drunk!
And you, Madame you are extremely ugly. But tomorrow, I shall be sober.
Somewhere the wittiness got hold of him and he added “……and you’ll still be ugly,” shamelessly spelling it out for the slow to catch on. The underlining of and the verbal stress on “I” needs no further help. The boobish add-on sinks it.
I love Jackie Gleason, despite some of my London friends who used to wonder how I could admire both Grouch Marx and the Gleason, whom they considered crude. If you ever had the chance, watch “The Honeymooners” or, if you prefer, “The Hustler” and see the definition of the phrase “never make a false move.”
Contributing to his collection of neuroses was the fact that, when he was quite young, his father went away one day and never came back. It’s said that Jackie Gleason went to great lengths to find his lost father, even trying psychics and trance mediums. And like the Churchill parliament exchange there is one famous one for Jackie as well.
One of Jackie’s writers had been summoned to his penthouse offices of the Gleason show in the Park Sheraton in Manhattan, New York. And from experience, according to the Jackie Gleason’s biography, the writer knew he could expect a chewing out, (or a put-down), to you and me. The writer was on time but the great man was not. An hour passed. And then another.
The writer, presumably with an already ample list of grievances over this sort treatment, apparently decided that employment in a salt mine would be no less pleasant than the current gig. He’d had it. It was time to quit.
He announced this to Gleason’s secretary and headed for the door.
“What shall I tell Mr. Gleason when he finds no one here?”
The writer vented his accumulated bile with but a few words:
“Tell him his dad dropped by.”
Have a great week. God Bless Mother Sierra Leone.
By Winston Ojukutu-Macaulay Jnr.
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