That habit of checking the dust at Temple Trees

Darling Rakneel,

This is what I've been thinking Sweetheart. I may as well tell you at the outset that while it is not unusual for Thellie to think, it is certainly not in the normal course of her daily routine to think before the decent hour of 7am and that too only after a generous swizzle of the fortifying stuff well laced with a spot of orange juice.

The reason for my current agitation is your habit of galloping over to Temple Trees off and on to look around the place and check the dust on the balustrades. That is all well and good. One admires your sense of cleanliness and a house inspection every now and then is not a bad idea.

Cleanliness as some compulsive, obsessive housekeeper once said is next to Godliness. although I myself find a wealth of charm in a bit of lived in clutter.

Gor blimey darling lived in or lived in not, it is a goodish piece of real estate - and a property you've being eying for some time now to boot. And we all know it's a buyers market these days and the real estate market is plummeting darling, simply plummeting. Ergo, it makes good sense one supposes to pop over of an evening and check on the guttersnipes..no..no..I meant gutters. Can't have them all leaky and drippy now can we? Whatever would My-three say!

But Thellie, astute and keen of mind as ever, recalls darling that last year, having crawled out of your lair in order to share a dish of Labookelle tea and a kurrakan viskothu with Ma-hinder in his temporary den, resulted not only in a bad stomach for you, but also a sick in the gut feeling for many Paradisians. Believe you me or believe you me not those 17 chaps doing a cross country run at the time immediately following your talk with Ma-hinder was not the kind of sport to whip up a cheering and a shouting among the spectators. Begorra and Begob dearie the Martyed Pee are screaming alright but they aren't shouting for a bally encore.

All this cross country running is giving Thellie a bally headache as well. And I've been downing a little wine for my stomach's sake all week.

It is perhaps nice to walk the Araliya Abode gardens and stroll around a bit among the Frangipani bushes, but couldn't you have told your buddy Ma-hinder to implement the 13th Amendment over the phone? After all being in cabinet and part of the government that 20 years ago brought in the 13th and what not, there was no need for you to go all the way to the bally place to discuss it.

Ditto for that bit about the Constitutional Council as well. Three words darling. Short and Sweet.

Simply put..and I mean to say with Ma-hinder there's no other way to do it, all you had to say was 'Appoint CC pronto.' That is all.

One understands your need to get a breath of fresh air at Galle Face Green but despite the fact that telecom rates are on the up and up you must be mindful of the fact that fuel prices are increasing by the bally barrel and belts are getting tighter than ever. On a scale of one to ten it would have cost you less to call than it did to make the trip.

In fact, your darling friend Ma-hinder, keeps reminding the martyred proletariat about the tightening motif. It is all that they can do to buy three grains of rice a day darling but as Baa-sil famously said, if this is a dictatorship then the people like it.

A chap can hardly afford to own a bally belt these days let alone tighten it. I mean to say do you know how much even a lower end Pierre Cardin belt is these days in the Pettah market?

Only the other day I saw the poor, the weak, the hungry and so on and so forth not so much congregating in teams of two and three around Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty but on Crows Island and a dump of garbage.

In that inquisitive way of Thellie's, she was to stop her diesel powered 1926 black Volkswagon and peer into other people's business and there they were fighting over leather belts possibly discarded by your friend and his century plus of ministering angels.

As Baa-sil said darling the people are hanging on to Ma-hinder's every word and looking for belts which they could then put around their waists and tighten whenever the call came from him...your friend and fellow Marie biscuit muncher.

It may have occurred to you by now that Thellie fond though she is of you is a little miffed over these pointless meetings you have. Take care dearie that Ma-hinder is not planning in that deviously crooked way of his to offer a few more goodies a la paradise to entice a few more bad men. A mess of pottage is easy enough to find (one could always ask the generous Indians to drop more lentils) but a willing political Esau is a dime a dozen these days too eh what!

PS:

I hope you don't mind Rakneel that I am using a little space in your letter to pen a few words to a bloke - Angelbert I recall his label to be, who seems to think my missives are directed only at the top of the rung, the head of the game, the big cheese, the grand panjandrum, the rich and famous, you get my drift. Darling Angelbert, much as I would love to fraternize a tad with the downtrodden.needless to say only after a goblet or two of France's finest, you do know what Newton or Frankenstein or perhaps it was Einstein said don't you? What goes up must come down. And I may add that what goes in must also come out. So I am merely fraternizing now with those who would in the near a distant future most probably  be plain ole citizen Silva. Apropos Satellite! If there ever was a former peacock turned current citizen Silva that walked the cocktail circuit alone at night - there goes one.

And darling Angelbert, you know what they say don't you? 'The poor always ye have with you.' (John Ch 12 V. 8) But boy, politics is an unstable game. Ere the ink has dried on my perfumed letterhead and barely have I had time to lick the stamp than a change occurs. So here's to change dearie. Wink, wink.

Tara for now

Thellie Bellie