Over the broccoli trees we go, into creeks the colour of tea…

Sun.5.Jan.2025.

Well, hello there! How are you approaching this new year? Back to serious business, no time to play?

Nah, man, no way! Always make space for creative-play (another day, I will show you the sorrows of the stifled self, I’ve witnessed this too often in my lovely native land). Let we have li'l fun, nah? Look here. See them doors in front o' you?

The black one is calling: Opportunities! Success! The red one whispers promises of daredevil adventures. What about the blue door, pretty like an Instagram picture? And the one that’s the colour of sunshine? The orange door, the green, purple? Which one do you dare open and walk through?

Yes, me frien’, I know you could very well be chook-up in you’ yard…stuck at home…due to illness, work, responsibilities. That's me, yeah, at home, not going out and about these days. Y’know what keeps me lively? Guess, go on, guess. I’ll give you clues.

In the rice planting village, curled up in an armchair, I strayed far and wide as a child. I watched Mary cross the sands of Dee, and stared in shock when I understood the end. Whilst my mother sewed, I followed little boy Atma in his dreams. I walked through Australia with the swagman and his shiralee.

After our family moved to town, I sneaked into the dark caves of rogues, climbed the Alps and flew in a wishing chair.

Over the years, I’ve roamed with ancient Greeks, been on wild escapades with a toad, and witnessed a blood wedding in old Spain. In the East, I saw a wealthy man seduce a beautiful, poor girl; he lured her from the lush valley to the city, then abandoned her some years later when she became desperately ill; I watched a poet die penniless and greedy men grow wealthy using his words.

Can you guess now? I think you know, play along with me, won’t you, m’dear? Share with me the places you've visited in books, the people you've met in those pages.

When you done, look a li’l more fun, zoom in to this rainforest maze. Is there only one way out?

Would you believe me if I told you this rainforest picture is a photo of a broccoli? What if I told you our rainforest is indeed broccoli? Here's proof, taken from a piece I'd written some months ago.

We’re now flying above the under-developed land of Guyana, that’s South America, not Africa…there, down there…see how the rainforest looks like giant broccoli? Guess what! The trees actually are broccoli, belonging to the species called Broccolie Giantifix. We’ve never released this titbit before because, y’know, greed and all that. Now, it’s safe to tell the world because, today, most people are carnivores.

Between the trees are creeks which flow brown, the colour of tea. It is tea, a Very Delicious Tea. When the leaves of non-broccolie trees fall in the water, they simmer and brew in the heat. You can’t drink straight from the land though, you have to add a special concoction made by the locals to purify it. Don’t…listen-me good…Do Not Ask for the recipe for this concoction, not one local is willing to share. Even if you offer them Merican citizenship. They suspect the Foreigner will take the recipe and make money for themselves without sharing the profits. (Greedy locals, eh?) As a matter of fact, they might give you a recipe for bushie…bush-rum. That bushie will make you see two of everything, including two jumbies…two ghosts…of yourself. Yourselves.

Don’t worry, you won’t have to fly deep inland to enjoy this fantastical tea. Now that we’ve discovered this Alluring Thing Called Tourism, there are endless choices of locations where you can relax and sip different types of creek-tea: coffee-tea, cocoa-tea, lime leaf-tea, fever grass-tea, to name a few. Sip, close your eyes and taste the legends, lores and tall tales of this wild and wonderful land; listen to the eetay-palm rustling whilst the warm breeze caresses your sun-kissed skin. If the breeze begins to feel too slither-y, open your eyes quickly, it might be a snake. If it’s a snake, close your eyes and pray.

Run, friend, run, let we scoot back to de coastland. Sip you’ coffee, tea, hot chocolate milk and relax with this other excerpt.

As a child, travelling from countryside to town and back, in my lovely native land, I would notice villagers sitting at their windows gazing out. Their homes were surrounded by rice fields, a coconut tree or two in the front yard.

As a teen, I began to think that these window-people were bored and had nothing better to do.

Who was I to judge?

Why would I assume that they weren’t imagining what I myself would picture in my mind…stories of the people traversing along - their lives and love, their hope and loss? Why did I assume that windows wouldn’t reveal poetry for them too, in the fronds of the coconut trees swinging lightly in the breeze; that they couldn’t hear the song of the rain also, that they couldn’t be choreographing dances like the swirling of the near-invisible motes in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the western window?

Today, remembering these windows-gazers I realise how, in some ways, I am like them. Give me a window that opens on to a busy street and you can bet your bottom dollar that I too will stare at people passing by, at the little plays that unfold out there. Live theatre, free of cost. Humanity for all the world to see.

Ha! Live theatre! Wait ‘til you see what I got coming in Book Two.

Phew! Ah hungry bad, me frien’! Ah gone to eat li'l food and, later, gobble a book.

See you two Sundays from now. Remember to take good care of you, eat nice food, dance up li’l bit. And, if you ever feel hemmed in any time this year, trek through a book, let your imagination climb tree, jump in creek, beat up bandit (add li’l sound effects to that), siddown pon yacht at sea, anything, man, anything. Plenty luuuuve, neena.