LOOK HERE NOW… You know how many days I have yearned – yes, yearned – to hear that much-overlooked phrase, “Scattered showers over high ground?” But alas (and let us throw in an “alack” while we’re at it, if only to let you know that we’re familiar with literary references), this has become the time of “the sere and yellow leaf”. Drought has us in its grip. Parched brown has been the prevailing colour scheme for some time now.

Last Sunday afternoon, in some areas of this dry land, the heavens relented and delivered their bounty to us. When the first drops began to fall, I thought it was a new riddim mix discovered by an alien sound system which has infiltrated our neighbourhood on a weekly mission to prove that the hills can really come alive with the sound of music. The problem is that it takes place on the one day of the week when unsuspecting neighbours are trying to ketch a lickle res’.

Last Sunday afternoon, the rain decided to take over. It started tentatively at first and then picked up pace, fat drops of water descending steadily from the sky. Before you could say “yow”, the trees were stretching out branches to welcome the bounty. Water was running everywhere. The stream at the back of the yard, which had lain sullen and almost invisible for weeks, found energy and began to run with it. After 40 or so minutes, the land was new. It was amazing how quickly the foliage was rejuvenated.

For a moment, I contemplated rushing out into the yard to let the raindrops bless me too. Maybe I could even do a dance to the beat of the water, ignoring the echoes of the sound system. The amplifiers seemed to be drowning but the deejay refused to accept defeat. He spun on, pushing out the muffled, water-soaked sound across the valley.

Discretion, I have been informed, is the better part of valour. As tempting as the rain-dance idea was, a voice of prudence echoed in my ear, “Mind fresh cold.” A word to the wise was enough. I stayed under cover and applauded the rain, urging it on to stay as long as it could.

I reflected on the fact that I’m now long past the point where I can wallow in the mud like crazed Carnivalites who, at that very moment were doing their thing in their annual orgy of beads, bosoms and bottoms. Nobody seems willing to admit that since the days of Byron Lee’s Jamaica Carnival, all that is left now is a tired display of copulatory gyrations, a half-hearted rite of passage in a bacchanalia of brownings, performing for the entertainment of vaguely curious onlookers. But I was in the hills, enjoying the rain, thank you very much.

All too soon the showers came to an end. I rushed to turn on the taps in the bathroom. Glory, Hallelujah!… then I heard an all-too-familiar sound… air rushing through the dry pipes. Say it isn’t so! If there was water OUTSIDE – if only for a little while, wouldn’t you assume that there would be even a little INSIDE? It don’t work that way, not in our kind of environment. When you dry, you just dry. Get it?

FOR THE REST of this week, I have tried to keep a cool head in my desert environment. We are now fully qualified, “bona-fidey” droughtistas – seeking water anywhere but in pipes. I know persons who have absolutely no tolerance when it comes to this water crisis. They wish to hear nothing about el Niño and other environmental conditions. All they know is that they want water and they want it now.

Any droughtista will tell you that the real enemies are the politicians, of course, the whole benighted lot of them, who failed to look ahead, who didn’t have the foresight to store water, somewhere, anywhere, against such a time as this. They should’ve built more dams! Run pipes from mountains high to valleys low, bringing water, water everywhere! So what if the communities through which the pipes would pass wouldn’t get any? While some bawl, some profit. A new breed of entrepreneurs has emerged selling water from heaven knows where and nobody seems to care.

Some persons have become so desperate they’d even shower with an enemy. Shower-sharing is always more pleasurable when done with a special someone, but I suppose if we have to go under the pipe with the enemy, so be it. “Society demands sacrifices,” says a wise grande dame of senior years. If showering with the enemy is the only way out, then sacrifice you must. Just imagine you are at Gordon House trying to communicate with “dem” on the other side.

Be advised that showering with the enemy will demand patience, diligence and dedication. It will require strategic planning to obtain maximum efficiency in navigating corners and crevices while retaining your dignity at the same time. We are a people of resourcefulness and imagination, however. Don’t worry ’bout us. We may even find a way to make the sea ital. No joke.

AS THE CRISIS deepens, have you thought of “bathing at the office”? Already, workers are bringing containers to the workplace to collect water for domestic duties when they get home. Why not speed up the process by bringing the housework to the office instead? For this, I here submit the following useful hints:

Use the restrooms as laundry centres after closing time. Clotheslines could be strung between departments. Ironing can be done on top of the desks. The multi-jet designer shower stall, recently acquired by the CEO to create a fresher approach to management, could be taken over by the union and made available to the staff in a well-calibrated system of rewards for performance. In that spirit, we could all aspire to bathe on the job. The privilege of who showers with the CEO would be carefully negotiated, of course, and included in the next Memorandum of Understanding.

A press release would be issued with a power-point presentation to follow, in keeping with the forward-looking policy of the company which will be diversifying shortly from Ponzi schemes to sparkling mineral water. This will be marketed for washing very expensive vehicles and maintain lawns whereon only the best dressed socialites will be photographed for That Certain Page…KEEP THE FAITH.

gloudonb@yahoo.com