It’s approaching midday in London on Carnival Tuesday (aka Shrove Tuesday, aka Pancake Day) and Trinidad Carnival Diary Facebook page has, understandably, been posting like mad.
“For live coverage from the Queen’s Park Savannah, Harts is about to cross stage,” is the latest status, complete with a link to the NCBA’s live stream.
I’m sitting at my desk, in my office, at work. The sun is streaming in through the window and I’m next to the radiator. London’s blue sky has just a few fluffy clouds, but other than that, it’s glorious weather (if only it were 20 degrees hotter.)
My eyes drift back to my PowerPoint presentation, my shoulders droop and an involuntary sigh is released from my body. Is it my soul literally dying? I Google it to see if there’s any scientific, ontological or philosophical way of knowing.
I find a Stanford University paper which describes the ancient Greek understanding of a person’s soul as referred to in Homer’s poems: “The soul is something that a human being risks in battle and loses in death. It is what at the time of death departs from the person’s limbs and travels to the underworld, where it has a more or less pitiful afterlife as a shade or image of the deceased person…”
Yes, I decide, it must have been my soul escaping to the underworld. It’s probably disappearing into Goodge Street tube station as I write.
I hit “send” on an e-mail to my sister entitled, “How do you make pancakes?” and wait for the response. Eventually her response comes back: “Make some batter (eggs, flour, milk), put it in a pan and flip it.”
Sounds easy enough, but then there’s the dilemma you’re faced with when you unload it from pan to plate: lemon juice? sugar? butter? jam? syrup? Nutella? Something exotic, like bananas? It’s basically an existential crisis—making pancakes. But at least it’s something to look forward to this evening.
I have my lunch. Last night’s leftover spaghetti Bolognese in a Tupperware container heated up in the microwave. As I munch away, I pretend I’m eating pelau or dosti roti from the Indian woman on Western Main Road, St James.
Then it’s back to the prison of my desk. Unlike Foucault’s Panopticon, however, I know I’m not being watched. I’m in the corner seat, my laptop is still streaming as band after band crosses the stage. I borrow a colleague’s headphones and things suddenly don’t seem so bad after all! This is like an open prison if anything; there’s no shackles or punishment beatings (although at one point I am required to attend an hour-long workshop on recruitment, which I suspect was put in my diary as some kind of psychological torture method). There’s labour, of course, but here in my window seat, it’s a little bit like solitary confinement—in a good way!
I’m hearing Machel Montano’s Like Ah Boss for about the 30th time today and resisting the urge to jump up on my desk to mime playing a trombone singing, “Pah-DA…Pa-da-da-da-DAH!” and urging my workmates to join in the call-and-response routine like the Power Soca Monarch at the Hasely Crawford Stadium.
Four days previously, on Fantastic Friday, we had attempted to have a soca party at my tiny studio flat in North London, paying the US$12 subscription for the live pay-per-view event. In the end I crashed asleep at 3 am, just after watching Destra throw away her shot at the title by failing to get “loose.”
I’m intermittently woken by cries of derision and whoops of excitement from the living room where my girlfriend is displaying her stamina, fighting off fatigue and skyping her mother in Trinidad and best friend in New York. The benefit of her three-hour pre-ISM nap had clearly kicked in. At 6.30 am UK time I blearily watched Machel drive onstage in a racing car and deliver a sermon to the people.
That late night, or rather early morning, impacted slightly on Valentine’s Day as a romantic brunch became more of a “brinner” (brunch-dinner) served up in the early evening as the light was beginning to fade and we emerged from slumber.
As J’Ouvert kicked off on Monday morning I was putting up my umbrella at the bus stop as the rain grew steadier.
By Carnival Tuesday, tabanca had turned us slightly demented.
“Put on your Carnival costume and head piece, turn up the heating full blast and play a mas in the flat,” I dared my girlfriend by text. She couldn’t resist it.
Another friend, locked in tedious jury service in the London suburbs, suggested (over-optimistically) that it was sunny enough to go outside and play a mas in the park. The fear of arrest, however, prevented any further indiscretions.
“Idris Elba is here!” messaged my friend from Port-of-Spain, and I opened the window to let what remained of my inner spirit fly into the fading light of evening as I watched the clock in the bottom right of my screen count slowly down until home time.
“Close the bleedin’ window!” somebody shouted. “It’s blinkin’ freezing!”
And it was, so I did.
