|
Over
my dead body
 By
Henry Holdenbottle
....Or should I say over 38,000 dead
bodies? Nobody, not even a dead and soggy one could say I was
not fond of you dearest. Not that a dead body such as it is,
would be able to say much I mean to say. But you get my drift.
Many who know me well would even go so far as to say that I
love you like a sister, but there are sharply defined limits
to what I am prepared to stomach, by way of verbal pish-tosh
to further your own power-hungry interests.
This habit of yours to look upon Boxing
Day 2004 as some sort of whatchumacallit, some kind of dies in
faustus, or even a type of dies irae, a day of wrath, a time
of judgment has got to stop darling. My dear old soul. I
haven't heard so much of Revelations Chapter 11 Verse 56 since
I attended the infant bible class at the Assembly of God
Church in Colpetty.
The hardest part of the project dearest
is really to comprehend what you are trying to say. Not even
the choicest scholars at Sciences Po or even the University of
Paris or dare I say it, Sorbonne, will be able to decipher
your cryptic utterances at Hambantota. The part about having
one of the world's numero uno mineral resources, ilmanite in
the east I can understand. I can even agree that due to a war,
Paradisians were prevented from mining this rich natural
resource to its full potential. But why darling did you,
wriggling from base to apex with girlish enthusiasm speculate
rather fatuously about chopping off the leaves from the trees
and Paradisian nitwits not even collecting the cow dung to be
freely found everywhere, but letting it get washed off the
face of the earth? 'If we were,' you say in that mysterious
tone of yours, 'to strategically use these droppings, this
bull guano, this bovine resource, we would not need the same
stuff from men and or women.'
And so nature, rather miffed according
to your theory, that Paradisians were not using all these
resources given by her, took it all back in the cruelest of
ways. By destroying the lives of a million Paradisians.
Whether they were innocent or not I of course cannot say.
Though it is rather kitschy and hip to use the term 'innocent
lives' when talking about this sort of thing.
Be that as it well may, if as you say
this is the wrath of nature raining down on a pitiful land,
then m'dear it seems that nature is re infecta... her business
remains unfinished... her purpose only half accomplished. For,
as one parliamentarian was heard to retort, if this were a
punishment as you say, why pray didn't nature take the
politicians away? May I hastily add that while I wish no harm
to anyone and would be left alone to my whisky and soda thank
you very much, there seems to be a point to what the bloke
said.
I remember thinking many-a-time as I
happened to glance at one or another of your public utterances
in the daily rags of a morning, that with you if it wasn't one
thing it was bound to be something else. As I read of your
master plan to rebuild Paradise and to stay on in power
forever by not holding elections for five years, I blanched my
dear. I felt somewhat like Hamlet as his father's spirit told
him a tale to harrow up his soul and freeze his blood. Ichabod,
I would go so far as to say that the very thought of having
you for another five long years made my face flush, my eyes
bulge and each of my 10 or so hairs stand on end like 'quills
upon the fretful porpentine.'
I don't know darling whether you, like
those early Hellenes, have a tendency to treat the presidency
as a ktema es aei - a possession forever. But it surely seems
that way.
I sympathise with your natural
inclination to forget dear, I suffer from it myself at times,
but you do recall that in November this year there is that
little thing called a presidential election that has to be
held tsunami or no tsunami. Considering that you publicly
admitted you didn't even know there was a word called tsunami
let a lone what it meant, it is a tad trying m'dear, that you
attempt now to use it and those who died from it in this
opportunistic manner to cling as never before.
If I remember correctly it was you, who
not too long ago castigated a gaggle of teachers at a school
hall for their lack of general knowledge and teaching skills;
while you demonstrated - not very well - your total grasp of
everything under the sun. That you characteristically got the
number of countries in the United Nations wrong did not deter
you. My point darling is how this master and or mistress of
the general knowledge and intelligence quiz, this whiz kid of
politics, this wonder woman drenched in French wine could not
have known what a tsunami was even though the green election
manifesto had the word "tsunami" specifically
written under the title "disaster management" in
Paradise. My advice. Read this bally rag darling. You might
brush up on your GK.
To attempt to use disasters and dead
bodies to extend your term darling is just not done. As
Captain Cool would say if he ever got round to it, 'tis not
playing the straight bat.
If as you claim, the tsunami was meant
to teach Paradisians a lesson by inflicting a curse on us,
then surely m'darling it will be the very fact that we shall
have no elections and you will remain president of this
blighted land that will be the real curse on these wretched
people.
Eternity take it from me, is a terrible
thought dear. I mean to say where the bally dickens is it all
going to end? You may think you are the voice of the people
dear. You may think you have a relationship with the masses.
But you know what they say about relationships? The passion
always goes. Only the boredom lingers on.
Yaaaawn
|
