DEAR COUSIN A FARRIN:

Oh yes. It is that time of year again. How quickly the present has made its way to becoming the past! Time certainly waited for no one. In unrelenting haste, it swept us through to this point. At one stage it seemed that even Christmas was likely to be forgotten, buried beneath the rubble of our unrelenting foolishness. Christmas having outlined doubts and fears for 2000 years and more, however, will survive. So, here we are.

We cold cyaan done. I know it is nothing compared to what you’re experiencing, but cold is cold. We’ve been watching with shock and awe via TV, etc, the assault of the elements which you are enduring and winter has only just begun. It amazes me how people can continue to hold the view that global warming and other environmental concerns are not relevant. How do they explain what is now taking place?

Uncle Hezekiah says to tell you that you must not forget the good old Jamaican remedies. He wants to remind you that he knows what cold weather is about, having passed many a winter in the freezer of Britain. He offers the following prescriptions: First and foremost, keep your mole covered.

He refuses to accept your response that the mole, known scientifically as the fontanelle, the soft spot at the baby’s head top, was closed not long after birth. Scientists, he says, know what they know and he knows even more. He says he knows for a fact that it is through the mole that the cold weather invades the system. So, it follows, the mole must be kept covered at all times, especially in this season of hostile weather.

Secondly, the chest…Pay attention to the chest, another vulnerable point of attack by the Darth Vader of Weather. Uncle’s advice, therefore? Old newspaper – Hello please! Uncle Hezzie says old newspaper, folded neatly and standing guard between the chest and the merino (you wear one, don’t you?) will repel all Arctic winds. Uncle is quite aware that you will be tempted to dismiss this advice as old-fashioned foolishness. So he adds: “Yuh can gwaan. Forty years in the icy wilderness and I never ketch a cold yet, said he, “coughingly”.

The cold weather brings other challenges. I haven’t been out to the airport since the freeze began, wreaking havoc on flight arrivals. I am willing to bet your Christmas remittance to the family that there have been and continue to be people who give the airlines hell, because they had to wait for sun and ice only in a drink. They should be told, however, that they have got to stop their uncivilised habit of taking out their frustration on our Immigration and Customs personnel when they land here.

SO, ASSUMING THAT you have got home in one piece (even if your luggage decided not to follow you), we bid you welcome. Now that you are here, don’t start about the state of the roads. We’ve come through one of the roughest spells of bad weather in years and it is going to take time to recover. Mark you, some of our road repair practices do leave us open to questioning. I don’t know where the technology was developed, but the habit now is to send out workers to square the circle of the potholes then leave them to lie in wait and send unwary motorists mad. Okay, so we are a crazy nation.

Another thing… Don’t be confused by the rumours you’d heard that Christmas was being postponed because “we bruck”. But, when it comes to Christmas, when has that ever stopped us? So, what if green gungo dear so tell…all of $500 per quart? Sorrel has weathered the storms but it ain’t cheap. Nothing is. People who like their “waters” are seething about taxes hastily imposed on their favourite beverage. Householders have cut back on the lavish displays of Christmas lights but with all that, Christmas lives. It is what we make of it. There is a reason for the season.

CHRISTMAS APPLES: Sold from candy bowls at Parade in downtown Kingston at Christmas time. For a start, a candy bowl was not even a bowl. It was a square box of wood and glass from which freshly made Jamaican candy was sold… Coconut drops, guava doasie, “tie teet”, stretcher and wangla, delights of a simpler time. The apples were stacked neatly on a tray on top of the candy bowl to tempt passersby and become the source of one of my father’s Christmas treats.

He made a ritual of slowly peeling the fruit with his pen knife. (Do you even know anyone who owns a pen knife, for peaceful purposes at that?) I would watch, like a dog waiting for his dinner, as the strip of peel grew longer and longer. My father’s goal was for it to come to the end, unbroken. In my memory, he always succeeded. Then, with his trusty pen knife, he would divide up the apple into neat pegs. What are slices to you were pegs to us, to be eaten slowly, to make them last.

My father didn’t/couldn’t buy many apples. They were outside the normal food budget for a rapidly growing family. We were poor, but so was everybody else. A simple peg from an apple, which had travelled mysteriously from afar, became a Christmas treasure. Today, I can buy a whole-a apple for myself. Yet, when I recall my father with his pen knife and two apples at most, I remember the sweetest gift of all.

AND A CHILD SHALL LEAD: Thanks to my editor (with the seasonally apt name of Gloria) for facilitating my request for the repeat of Lionel Rookwood’s study of these three little angels, first published in the Observer on Wednesday. They remind me of the most valuable gift we can give our children – the preservation of their innocence and sweetness.

And so, rest the Wikki and the whatever for now and have a Merry, one and all…Peace, love and guidance! YOUR COUSIN.

gloudonb@yahoo.com