So the e-mail said, in its crisp, straightforward manner–for when was our cool-headed colleague, Lennox Grant, ever anything other than crisp or straight- forward (unless you talking about?after we put the paper to bed on the odd Test match Friday night and rolled over to Vietnam, the bar across Charlotte Street from the old Express building that used to have a fight every hour on the hour, whether it was two-three Korean sailors with too much rum and not enough roti and/or jagabat, or sometimes two homegrown rum jumbie squabbling over the ends of PQs ("petit quarts" for the better-heeled of you who never saw the inside of a rumshop), those fights where it didn't matter who was combatant, no, what mattered was the combat itself, like in the steelband clash days of old, when the Warrior Spirit was more than the name on a boat park up on the Caricom jetty). And the crisp, straightforward news the e-mail contained was that the doc had ruled out the patient leaving hospital. So the e-mail, not so the Laventille male, anything but crisp and straightforward, this Keith Smith, of whom I start to think now, fondly, deeply, like the pond we used to call "Big Pool" at the source of the St Ann's River, where I played as a boy, but where boys don't go now, unless they playing man, bad boys looking for fight (that warrior spirit again) even in the most peaceful and pleasant of pastoral settings.
If Keith wasn't in a hospital bed, was at his desk, chewing his way to inspiration via his knuckles–the whole newsroom watching understood his concentration was deepest when his fist disappeared into his mouth–if Keith was working on yet another column that would touch the length and breadth of T&T, from Belmont to Brooklyn and Brixton, would make them laugh, or make them angry, or make them smile, or make them weep, or–at his best–make them do them all at the same time in the same column–if Keith Smith was firing on all cylinders, I know I coulda send Keith to sort out bmobile for me. So the e-mail, not so the Laventille male, and dry so, drier than East Dry River on a hot March afternoon, bmobile cut off my Trinidad cellphone Tuesday morning. They didn't send me a text–but Keith-self would say, but why they should send a text when they didn't bother to send a bill, left it up to you to ring them from quite Barbados–Bar-Bay-Dose–to find out how much you have for them? Dry so, them bmobile so-and-so cut off my phone in Trinidad for a blue note and two doubles. Which give me much more than slight pepper, and just where I didn't want it. See trouble now, because, for 24 hours, I ringing 824-TSTT (which really should be 824-DON'T-BOTHER) but dialling 1-868- before it, calling from my Barbados phone! Because my Trini cellphone could-n't call for fish in Chaguaramas on St Peter's Day.
And they giv-ing me the mother of all run-arounds. "You don't need to call from your landline," the girl insisting, "your handset can still dial us!" And I chewing my tongue to keep quiet. "You think I'd choose to call you on my Bajan landline if I could get through on a local Trinidad cellphone?" She quiet on the other end, as if I trying to spite her with troublesome questions. Then, as if I wasn't harassed enough in English, the next few redials–because you get cut off �connecting me to a call centre in must 'e Venezuela. English-eh-speaking eh-Spanish pipples firetrucking with me now. "No, Sor, ju cannot pay jor beel on de telefono. Ju have to ring 824-TSTT and press de eh-star and then key een de nombers." And I, channelling Keith Smith to chase bmobile like iguana (and give them the same iguana treatment if we only catch them) telling the dotish girl (she was the only out-and-out stupid one, eh, the others all extremely polite, particularly Noella and Julia, though never a-one being actually helpful), "But I pay my bill every month on the phone by credit card!" "Sorrr," she reply, rolling her Rs like a Despers flagwoman, "ju cannot pay jor beel to me. Ju godda dial 824-TSTT then press the eh-star." And me saying, "But how you could change the system without alerting your users?" And, after ten minutes of me stressing I have paid my bill by phone for 15 years, she change her eh-strategy. "Sorr," she say, "I'm gonna put ju on hold for a moment."
And she hang up. Which you had to admire, the cojones involved in the move.
And so it went for 24 hours. A slew of polite, unhelpful people giving me a series of contradicting directions, not one of them able to help me get the reconnection that should never have been disconnected. And me–though it had failed the 100 times before–for a 101st time dialling 824-TSTT and punching in everything on the keypad in desperation–#, *, 1 then #, 2 then *, every permutation and combination of them–until finally the roulette that is dialling 824-TSTT 1, 3, connected me to someone in "Residential" who could take my payment. In English. And then she trying to tell me, "Remember" and, before Keith Smith could reply, I hung up. And looked at the e-mail again. "The professor has ruled out the possibility of his leaving the hospital". And I added in, "For now." Because, however he might rile you–and he has riled me often, though he would be the first to acknowledge that teeth and tongue must bite–he's settled all of us far more regularly. And, though I've buffed him for not doing what I thought was the work on occasion, he's never deserted it. If you point your finger at him, remember three point back at you; because, far more than anyone else writing in the papers today, Keith Smith is T&T. And it's no time for him and the country to be flat on their back.
BC Pires is not imitating the stream but the Dry River of
Consciousness. Read a longer, more libellous version of this
column and more of his writings at www.BCraw.com
