The Littlest Bookstore

I am not a shopper. Unless you count stationery shops and bookstores. But in my lexicon they don’t count as shops – they’re necessities.

One of the tragedies of our digital life is the disappearance of those wonderful bookshops tucked into a high street – you know the one, down the road from the butcher and wedged between the greengrocer and ironmonger. I, like most, have been known to use that convenient monolith that sends consumer products anywhere, anytime. However, each time I do a twinge of guilt shivers down my back for the bookseller who knows not only books but his or her customer. It is an art, a calling, and so much more pleasant than a nameless, faceless transaction or click.

That wonderful sense of new worlds and new words lining the shelves is missing. Hours spent browsing, then the excitement of finding the perfect book, or books.

Like most readers I have a pile next to the bed of ‘to be reads’ – it might take me a few months to get to them but get to them I do. Sometimes one just has to be in the right frame of mind for a book. During COVID I have strayed from books that would make me yearn to travel again – so stories from places never visited have been kept at bay. It made me sad.

Now the world, well most of it, is learning to live with the scourge of COVID and countries are starting to lift barriers, my curiosity is resurfacing. I want to read about Bhutan, about Poland, about Mali, as well as learn more about places I have been fortunate enough to visit.

I was in Trinidad last week – a place I once lived – but this time staying with my daughter, Kate, and her family. One Sunday we drove to places old and new to me.

From the capital, Port of Spain we headed east to where Trinidad’s coast stops the Atlantic Ocean in a thunder of waves, and the beach is lined with miles and miles of coconut trees. More than a thousand one of my granddaughters assured me. Mayaro, back in 1984, was my first foray away from San Fernando where we lived, and the first time Kate wriggled her toes in sand. Back then there was an occasional hut selling watermelon or pineapples. Now along the Manzanilla / Mayaro road there are many more, and nestled between them is the littlest bookshop in the country, perhaps in the Caribbean.

Started by Mr Ishmael Samad, The Book Junkie is one of those wonderful whimsical surprises that we come across every now and then. Philosophy and fiction jostle for space on rickety shelves. Literature and beach reads reach precariously for the corrugated roof. Leaning against each other on a low shelf are Enid Blyton and Carolyn Keene, the pseudonym used by the collective authors of the Nancy Drew detective stories, and which tempt younger readers, including my granddaughters.

On the outside shelf under Graham Greene and Clive Cussler, in somewhat faded glory, was Bruce Chatwin’s Photographs and Notebooks, published after his death in 1989. A wonderful reminder of the joy of travel, of curiosity for new customs and cultures and, for a Nowherian like me – a phrase coined by the St Lucian poet, Derek Walcott – a reminder of Chatwin’s telling essay, Anatomy of Restlessness. A feeling to which most global nomads fall prey.

That restlessness is what stopped me reading about far-flung places these last couple of years. Why research into my next historical novel has floundered. The knowledge I could not travel to unknown places to experience different smells, sounds, sights and tastes. To feel the fabrics, not just made in a country but of the society itself.

Back at The Book Junkie, the young woman presiding over the shelves, maybe one of Mr Samad’s granddaughters, suggested titles and showed us where, in the welter of books, we could find Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Paulo Coelho and then smilingly waved us on our way.

On the drive home, a granddaughter leaning against me sound asleep, I began to think about books with the word bookshop in the title. Books like The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George and
The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer drifted into my thoughts, then The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles. All stories about allowing words to teach, to arouse curiosity, to entertain.

The power of the written word, and reading, has over time been feared by dictators and anarchists alike – think of Hitler’s Kristallnacht in 1938, and more recently in 2013 the Islamist rebels of Ansar Dine who torched the library in Timbuktu.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this week brought to mind Geraldine Brooks’ sweeping novel, People of the Book based on real events which tells of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah – one of the earliest Jewish books to be illuminated with images – being saved from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war. Brooks follows the book’s journey back to its creation and tells a story of how people regardless of faith have risked their lives to save a book.

Lives come and go. But the written word must never be lost.

That’s why The Book Junkie on the wild side of Trinidad’s coast is so important.

The Pole

An air of calm efficiency encased the stark room. Two trim, attractive women came up the stairs carrying a folded mat. One went to the floor-length windows and lowered off-white roller blinds to shut out the night reflected back into the room by a wall of mirrors – if not the vibrating cacophony of cars driving past with radios blaring this year’s songs vying for bragging rights of Soca Monarch of the Carnival.

The other woman went to a wall upon which were attached eight lengths of 9’ tubular steel. Removing one from the brackets, she carried it to the middle of room, and looking up, manoeuvered it into the fittings strategically placed in the ceiling and began threading it in. The process was repeated four times. More women arrived, helping each other, straightening and tightening the poles until they were vertical and secure. Quiet murmurs accompanied the installation. 

The instructor, a tall slender young woman with hair in a tight bun, a sheen of sweat across her shoulders, watched intently as she gulped water and caught her breath after finishing the previous adult ballet class. She riffled through a straw basket and finding shorts and a crop top, went to change.

Upon her return she sat on the floor, legs outstretched and waited for her class to follow suit. And then the warm-up started. An entirely different set of exercises to those of the previous ballet class, but no less grueling. I noticed she was the only one to do the entire set with her heels hovering above the floor – her stomach muscles taut – as she guided her students. There was no talking just booming music to encourage the seated, sweating women – a mix of ages and ethnicities, all clad in variations of their instructor’s attire.

The warm-up complete, the instructor sprang into action. Her movements athletic as she reached and swung her legs over her head and wrapped one knee around the pole, the other leg stretching to a long, lean balletic point. It was, to use a much vaunted phrase, poetry in motion as the pole became an extension of her body.

Her students watched intently, their respect almost tangible as she went through a flowing series of graceful movements before dismounting with a calm, controlled release.  She divided the class – at least one spotter for each student of pole fitness as they attempted to emulate their teacher’s fluid movements. Some sprang with an alacrity that smacked of youth and confidence, others were more hesitant, their approach less agile, their strength less obvious but all with a palpable determination. Perseverance, interspersed with moments of laughter, floated around the music-filled room as poles were sprayed, swabbed, climbed and swung around until each tensed stomach was heaving with effort.

Each new exercise was demonstrated with a grace and ease, instruction clearly given, and as students attempted the task set, a gentle adjustment was given, a leg crooked more firmly around the pole, a quiet word of encouragement and when a seemingly impossible feat was achieved spontaneous applause gave added incentive.

But apart from the determination swinging around the poles, it was the complete lack of body consciousness that was astounding. Every student’s body was a machine to be manipulated into a rhythmic alliance with the pole. Eroticism associated with pole dancing was non-existent. It was a class of women intent on mimicking the actions of their instructor with no element of embarrassment with regard a hand touching a tush, or a breast brushed as adjustments were made, help given by the spotter whose turn on the pole would be next. The easy understanding and acceptance of each person’s different abilities.

It reminded of a play I saw in London a few years ago. Written by Dave Simpson, The Naked Truth told the story of a pole dancing class begun in a church hall. Ordinary people of all shapes, sizes and ages wanting to try something different – for a variety of different reasons. It was funny, but also elevating on many levels, with the finale being a show put on for the village to raise funds for breast cancer – a pathos highlighted when one of the students died from the disease.

There is something about the freedom given to a group of women, and men, whose learned lack of self-consciousness allows for a greater sharing emotions, of thoughts and fears buried deep which are given the freedom to surface. Perhaps the lack of physical restraints allows a greater freedom with regard the sharing of sometimes intimate details.

Pole fitness will surely be given a boost with the new Jennifer Lopez movie, Hustlers, in which she plays a pole-dancing stripper. But for those everyday people intent on learning a new skill, of challenging their body to new feats, of opening their mind to new experiences, pole fitness is is a growing expression of movement and mind.

And in Port of Spain, Trinidad, a pole-fitness teacher of balletic grace is able to to draw the shyest student into the pole’s encompassing circle to learn a skill that appears to defy gravity.

As the class ended, mats were folded as satisfied smiles and encouraging laughter floated around Harlow Studios. Each woman went home exhausted, a little fitter and perhaps a little freer in mind as well as body.

The world outside drew everyone back into its orb as another car raced past – a soca tune a reminder that Carnival is around the corner.

Along Came Clyde

Dejected and rejected strays have always found us. And so it was on the 29th December 2016 that Bonnie appeared. A harried waiter shooed a bundle of matted fur from an establishment on the Boardwalk in St Croix and as his booted foot moved I shouted, “Leave it, I’ll take it.” The ‘it’ concerned was a black kitten, so emaciated we couldn’t tell its sex. Carrying it home was like holding a bag of chewed chicken bones. Closer inspection found it’s gums and tongue to be white, it’s last vestige of energy gone in a final scurry from terror and pain.

A night spent with it sleeping on my chest was a night of sad shuddering breaths. But as morning tickled the hills pink and mauve it rallied and a frantic rush to the vet, an immediate blood transfusion and a number of nights in the clinic found it beginning to thrive.

Bonnie is deaf. Now, I don’t know if you’ve tried but training a deaf cat is tricky. She does not hear the crash and tinkle of broken glass or crockery. She does not hear the panicked shouts of “don’t” as she crouches ready to pounce on some imagined intruder flitting across her line of vision – a shadow maybe traversing a coffee table laden with glasses. But the purrs and kneading make up for the mounting breakages.

We joked that a dog would be a good companion – something to look out for her.

Then along came Clyde – our Trinidadian pot hound – though he almost didn’t make the flight. All entirely my fault. A miscommunication, a missed email and a near total fiasco. It was 2:30pm on a Friday afternoon, the day before I was due to travel to America – a day sandwiched between a public holiday on Thursday and another on Monday. Fortunately that island nation at the bottom of the Caribbean chain pulled out the stops – helped by the unwavering fortitude of my daughter behind the wheel of a car in Port of Spain’s notorious traffic.

In despair at gridlocked vehicles ahead I leapt from the car and made my jagged way along two city blocks, down a side street and burst into the Department of Agriculture. My breathing akin to bagpipes being primed, my hair plastered in grey and purple streaks to my neck and with sweat pouring down my face, I waved TT$5 in the receptionists face – words were hard to come by. To her credit she did not shy away from the mad woman babbling at her about a chop needed from Trinidad’s chief vet in order to get an export licence for a puppy from a trash heap in Cedros.

In remarkable short order the stamp was obtained and with groveling thanks I ran out to Kate and my granddaughters waiting in the car. There followed a mad dash down the freeway to the next government office where the actual licence could be obtained, normally in two to three days.

A stern, uniformed woman of East Indian descent looked me up and down from her perch behind a desk guarding entrance to the inner sanctum, and shook her head.

“Your shoulders are bare. You cannot enter a government building dressed in this way.”

Said shoulders slumped.

“And your feet. You do not have enclosed shoes.”

Begging, and I think with a glimmer of tears, I garbled an explanation, assuring her I meant no disrespect and that everything that could be my fault, was my fault. Her features softened and breaking into a crooked tooth grin and taking my hand, she said,

“Come. I will take you.”

Apologising profusely for my lack of correct attire to the disinterested young man tugging idly at his wispy beard, I felt my heart sink. And then he too smiled.

“You have the chop?” He asked, taking the papers from my damp hand. “Sit. It will take time.”

Twenty minutes later I was out the door. 24 hours later Clyde and I were on the plane with a glass of wine. Well, me anyway.

Global Entry allows a saunter through immigration with barely a missed step. At Customs I was told to wait for my suitcase to be delivered, when baggage, canine and I would be escorted to animal control.

I waited. And some more. Two cats and a dog, a yappy little thing, who came after us were ushered away with their owners and luggage. And then the dreaded words. Your suitcase does not seem to be here. Go through, then report it to the airline. Clyde and I were by this time eager to find some grass, and we scurried along to a woman standing sentry, her tan uniform bursting at the seams.

“Medical papers. Rabies certificate.”

After wishing her a good morning – it was 5am – I explained the latter was not needed as the animal in question was under three months and Trinidad and Tobago was a rabies free country.

“Every dog coming to the US must have a rabies certificate. It is on the CDC website.”

In the politest possible manner I disagreed, feeling beholden to point out Trinidad had been rabies free since 1917, which was more than could be said for Texas.

Her pink talons jabbing the air near my face, her voice strident, I was informed the puppy could not enter the US and would be returned from whence he came, on the next flight.

Calmly I told her he was already in the country – don’t play semantics with a writer – and that I would like to speak to her supervisor. A muted conversation took place between the taloned one and a pleasant-looking woman, presumably her superior, and we were waved through with the words, “I misspoke. You can go.”

The lost luggage ground staff were equally unhelpful, refusing to believe my explanation given over Clyde’s keening, that Customs had my baggage tags. About to lose my final shred of civility, we were all saved by an apologetic skycap hauling my case.

At least he had a smile. And Clyde was welcomed to America.

The Day That Was!

The monsoon season has made itself felt on and off all day and the frog song and cricket chorale are in full voice. They are the sounds of my childhood and transport me back to Africa and Asia. Tonight though I am in Trinidad. I am revelling in the symphony that surrounds me, interspersed with the occasional car being driven as if it is the circuit at Le Mans and not a narrow road meandering through Cascade, Port of Spain,

It has been a long day. It started at 5:30 with a warm little body snuggling up to me. My granddaughter likes her morning snuggles. We have reached an accord. I will cuddle but will not budge from bed until 6, when her little tummy sounds the alarm for breakfast. Who needs reveille? My other granddaughter meanwhile was glued to the iPad watching Jessie, a fairly innocuous program about a Texan nanny, a butler, and various children of different ethnicities all living in a penthouse in New York. I have yet to figure out where the parents are.

Which brings me to my granddaughter’s mother. My daughter, Kate. She is in London finessing the art of pole fitness in preparation for teaching it, along with classical ballet and Pilates – once her residency status is confirmed. Hopefully a rubber stamp as she is married to a Trinidadian. I am therefore helping out with the children so my son-in-law can earn a daily crust.

But I was telling you about my long day.

Not only am I responsible for two little beings. Getting them to school and nursery, along with packed lunches, water bottles, homework for one and any other seemingly extraneous necessity by 8 each morning, I am also playing Gigi to two dogs, a cat and a goldfish. I managed to kill the other goldfish, though in my defense little Johnny did not look well when I arrived.

Now I love animals and am a firm believer in children growing up with them. Responsibility and respect is taught, not to mention the sheer joy of pets. I was prepared for two grandchildren, one dog, one cat and two goldfish. The puppy was an unintended addition. Kate is a soft touch for waifs and strays – and days before my arrival they found an orphan pot hound on a trash heap at Cedros, in the south of the island. He was injured, riddled with worms and starving. She would not be my daughter had she left him to die.

The puppy, of indeterminate parenthood, is sweet natured. Their elderly Staffordshire is a dear and loving dog with humans and, strangely, the family cat, but any other dog, or gecko, or balloon, or kite is an anathema to his doggy psyche. This being the case, two days of a newly energetic and irritating puppy was enough to make him snap. Fortunately Buddy did not go for the jugular but rather a firm bite to the belly, puncturing the puppy’s little abdomen.

A tearful daughter on the phone before I left Houston, and she left Port of Spain, and I  found myself calming her down with the words, “I’ll take him. He can come and live in Houston with Bonnie.” I should add here that Bonnie is a deaf kitten I rescued from certain drowning off the Boardwalk in St Croix.

In order to keep the peace, and the vet’s bills to a minimum, we – my long-suffering son-in-law, the children and I – have had to come up with a system of separation. One dog in, one dog out. One dog in the loo, one in the kitchen. Meal times are tricky. Both dogs love cat food and loiter with intent if they have managed to avoid capture and / or expulsion, whenever the cat, Jax, tries to eat his kibble. Meanwhile Lilly swims in solitary circles waiting for fish fodder.

By 7 am this morning, I had brokered a peace treaty between feuding granddaughters, cleaned up the cat’s vomit and the puppy’s poo from the welcome mat. I did mention it is the monsoon season and this puppy from the rubbish dump, in a matter of weeks, has rejected rough living and will not perform his ablutions in the rain.

The school run was accomplished with little fuss, both girls loving their respective places of learning and, as I waited for the gate securing me from the perils of Port of Spain to click shut, I decided I had earned a cup of coffee on the verandah.

It is my favourite spot in my daughter’s house – it’s where I’m sitting now – and as I sank into a chair with my steaming café au lait and the last of the brownies, I patted myself on the proverbial shoulder at a morning managed.

I phoned a friend. Our conversation was though abruptly cut off and the reason for the vomitting cat became clear. The other half of the ingested fledgling was clenched, vise-like, between the puppy’s needle-sharp teeth. Refusing to play ‘pull ‘with poor mangled creature, I tossed a squeaky toy and distracted Clyde long enough to retrieve the remains.

Twelve hours after this last incident, I am enjoying a large bourbon and water, listening to the timbre of the tropics and thinking how lucky I am. Between bodily functions and dead birds, we have painted plant pots, played pairs, flipped omelettes for supper and read The Little Mermaid.

It has been a long day, but messy details aside, a truly lovely day!

Rise Up This Morning….

My father was a Gemini. As well as being a polyglot, he had an eclectic taste in music and the sounds from scratchy 45s and LPs was anything from Schubert to jazz, Bing Crosby to gamelan, Sousa to bierkeller oomp pah pahs and everything in between.

It is he who introduced me to calypso. Not, as you might think, sung by the Trinidadian greats of the day, the Mighty Sparrow or Lord Kitchener or even the American calypsonian Harry Belafonte, but rather the unlikely Danish – Dutch husband and wife duo, Nina and Frederik. I’m sure I never asked why a white couple sang calypso so convincingly. I learnt later calypso entered Frederik van Pallandt’s life when his father was the Dutch ambassador to Trinidad. The Danish connection came, not as I had thought, through historical links to the US Virgin Islands which were the Danish West Indies until 1917, but when Dutch Frederik fell in love with Danish Nina.

It is one of life’s ironies that my daughter now lives in Port of Spain, Trinidad. The country to which I swore I would not return after a year spent in the south, in San Fernando, in the mid 1980s. There is much beauty in the country but, for me, way back then it was a time of strange isolation. A difficult time politically with tensions between black and East Indian contingents. As tradition would have it, political commentary came through calypso and blared from speakers before, during and after Carnival.

When Kate extols the virtues of soca and ska, I remind her it was her parents who exposed her at an early age to the rhythms of the Caribbean. To Edwin Ayoung, aka Crazy, who won the 1985 Road March with Suck Meh Soucouyant and which we heard without cease when we lived there. For those unsure of the term, a soucouyant is a shape-changing character – by day a wrinkled old woman living in a shack surrounded by tall trees and by night, reverting to her true self and her pact with the devil, flies through the sky as a fireball searching for victims.

Trinidad and Tobago also lays claim to Calypso Rose. Born Linda McCartha Monica Sandy-Lewis in 1940, she started writing songs at 15, turned professional at 24, and at 76 and about 800 songs later claims, as the lyrics in Calypso Queen say, “my constitution is strong”.

St Croix has just celebrated Three Kings Day. Part of the Carnival activities include competing for the Festival Calypso Monarch. Won again this year by Temisha ‘Caribbean Queen’ Libert. Her entry, as others, took the opportunity to highlight flaws in local politics – a time-honoured calypso tradition no doubt a little uncomfortable for any politicians present. One of her songs, written by Carol Hodge, asked the question, “How could we smile? No way, no way”.

Another competitor, Campbell ‘King Kan Ru Plen Tae’ Barnes went so far as to say politicians were worse than Satan, suggesting some get elected by invoking obeah – sorcery, of the bad kind – perhaps similar to the type of interference reported in the presidential election!

It would seem, having heard Meryl Streep’s powerful speech at the Golden Globe Awards about the president-elect and his unvetted family and cohorts, that we need entertainers of every stripe to remind the rest of us to hold our politician’s toes to the fire. To not let them ride roughshod over We the People.

Though not a polyglot, I too am a Gemini with an eclectic taste in music. My father died a number of years ago but just maybe, one day, on a giant turntable in the sky, he will listen to a tragic (or perhaps comic) opera describing the events of the Trump presidency. Until that opera or calypso is written, I take comfort, as inauguration day looms, from the music of that other great Caribbean singer, Bob Marley. Because I have to believe “every little thing gonna be alright” and that, as Calypso Rose assures us, the “constitution is strong”!