When I find myself in times of trouble/Mother Mary Comes to me/Speaking words of wisdom let it be . . .(From Let it Be, by the Beatles),
Ain’t life a bitch? The same compassionate government that two or more months ago decided to cut public sector wages by five percent—because our dead broke country can no longer afford them—now has determined its favorite people should get a pay increase.
So, once again it’s off to the blood bank. The hopeless unemployed, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning for just one of those promised “better days,” must not only give the blessed transit operators what they want (or else!) but they must also allow their own precious bodily fluids to be sucked out of them without complaint.
By the way: did I alone miss the prime minister’s appeal for commuter proposals before he handed the transport people their pay increase? Did the unions endorse the pay hike? By how much? Or did the idea just ooze out of the no-vision government’s Vision Commission?
On the other hand, you gotta admit it’s a pretty dicey way to make a living, transporting VAT-oppressed, deluded and depressed suckers up and down what’s left of the Castries-Vieux Fort road—with its Tomas-redesigned yawning chasms, its precipitous drops, and deadly lay-bys as prone as politicians to sliding from one side to the other. One slip and well . . . blame it on faulty brakes; blame it on horny boloms. Dead men tell no tales.
It must be particularly hazardous at weekends, with the human traffic signs nowhere to be seen. At any rate, at night when they are most needed. On Sundays the Stop-Go signalers are no more visible in the early morning or at sun-down than are the dirt-colored sleeping policemen any time of day or night.
I’m willing to bet the near-invisible last mentioned have claimed more than a bottom pan or two in their time.But enough horror. I have no doubt everyone will soon settle down and start saving up so that the poor abused transporters of human cargo are guaranteed their Christmas gift from our “compassionate government.”
Like the tool on the hill the other day observed, “we are a resilient people, used to hardship.” And she’s right. Or so it appears. I mean, it could turn out we’re really not all that resilient and used to hardship as the lady imagines.
Maybe we’re just a bunch of sheep-passive, chicken-choking butt-kissers concerned only with covering our coward asses in the name of survival. Not that we have much wiggle room, anyway: resilient you gotta eat, passive you gotta eat. And with that jobs-jobs-jobs promise looking more and more like bull crap, wha’ da f#@k!
One thing is undeniable, however: our sense of humor. Weird it may be, yes; sick, even. But never let it be said we are a people without humor, whether or not we know it. I mean, how else to explain why anyone would choose to advertise his or her product where last Christmas Eve the road had swallowed up a car and two of its three occupants?
Talk about a distraction to drivers who should be keeping their eyes wide open so as to avoid a similar disaster, not to say the hairpin bends that seem to spring like thieves in the night out of nowhere. As I say, at the precise spot where the road caved in and claimed two lives, some bright spark has chosen to set up his business advertisement. Is that sick-funny or what?
Look closely at the accompanying photograph. Check the pillar on the right. In conspicuous red lettering on that bolom’s white flowerpot, it says: Culverts for Sale. Do you suppose the culvert bearing the advertisement is itself being offered for sale? Or does the for-sale sign include the other barriers on both sides of the caved-in road?
Who’s offering them for sale, anyway? There’s no company name, no contact number. Could there be more to this curious for-sale sign than meets the regular eye? I mean, we’re not only resilient and used to hardship, we are also a most “creative people.” At any rate, so says the fool, er, I mean, tool, on the hill—reading the words of wisdom by her boss with no vision!
—Rick Wayne
