WHAT RED HOUSE?

Chorus:
“A home for we Patrick?
Who say so, so, so, so?
A home for we Patrick?
No, no, no, no!”

So I am no Bunji, Rudder, Stalin or Shadow; the above attempt at “calypso” bares (and bears) my uneven cadence and lamentable phrasing. I am not even an Iwer. In recognition of my lyrical deficiencies, I provide the simpler prose translation of the clumsy mess of an opening.

Readers may recall that two Sundays aback, I was so offended at the daring of Patrick Manning putting the wife next to him, on the Government front rack, I wrote, “The PM must know that many of the people find his display of House family hour quite sickening.” The following week found me wondering what another Patrick, this time of surname Arnold, was trying to do to our Panorama, when he shifted the show to a western mini-track in the Big Yard. Into an abundance of racket and mud and into a space where no food or drink were to be had. It was a pan graveyard.

Now, here I was, yet another Sunday, returning my attention to the “first Patrick,” who had the gall to irritate us over the Carnival weekend, by playing Godfather of the Nation, Father of All. He was the last thing in particular I had in mind for this day of the Sun God, Ra. Yet, I felt obliged to join my voice to the chorus of those who wanted to keep the Red House and its history out of Patrick’s egocentric, shortsighted grasp.

Maybe because I had spent so many hours within its wonderful walls, so much time reading about its past, listening to its present. Now, I was seeing its future threatened. Unfortunately for lectors, I thought I would try my hand at calypso, given that several with more authority than I have in that sector, were saying the 2003 season had yielded a poor crop. Surely, I was qualified enough to join the bad ranks. It was a flop.

However, as a rejoinder, I could argue that my awkward ballad was no more amateurish than is the stuff on the air. Nor was it more politically maladroit than the man who drove me to write the number. But I readily admit that my melody will never be as cunning a PNM Government that could this ordain, on eve of the Carnival weekend, when it knew many electors had nothing, but revelry, on their brain. It was political silly season.

My verse was unquestionably less self-serving than Patrick’s decision to move his office into OUR Parliament building. It was certainly not as insulting to the intelligence of the nation than the explanation advanced by our PM’s right hand man, Dr Lenny Saith, for uprooting the congress. Saith could try his best, but this was one tale that would never get a sale. Neither was my little ditty as costly to readers, since the Sunday Newsday cover price is quite fair. I would, and could never sell my melody for the millions, taxpayers were going to pay to refurbish Manning’s Red House, knock down a block of buildings for the legislature of the new millennium.

It would be very dear. My piece was without a doubt, not as worrying as the thought of PNM financiers dreaming of the money that their bank accounts would soon bear, from all this construction, destruction and reconstruction. In addition, the composition was definitely not a threat to the country’s democracy, not like the danger of having an administration that felt it could make such an important, emotive determination without public consultation. Or, without going to the very legislature, it proposes displacing, for its benediction. But most of all, I felt my quarter calypso, would never be able to make people steups as loudly as they have been, since the PNM threw its cards on the table, Carnival Thursday, laid bare its Red House blueprint. I really wish I were a calypsonian. Because then I could have written a powerful tune, which carried the smell of the 1990 blood on the Chamber floor, the 1903 life fluid in the soil outside the House, that is of the same rusty hue. Were I not so prosaic, I could have chanted of water riots, of coup and of fires, of all our Red House history that Manning and his crew were about to retire.

Had I been of a poetic inclination, I would have penned a stanza, about grand ceilings of gesso work that contrasted with a shell whose bullet holes made it look, like it had pox, with fever. Of the unoccupied space, available for its countrymen, of the abandon the Red House had suffered at the hands of our NAR, UNC and PNM. I would have composed a piece that “mashed up” Patrick in his hometown at Skinner Park. Something stinging, witty, a number that warned the Prime Minister about the risk involved in his lark, the peril of occupying ground, which was a temporary cemetery.

The toilet paper would have been worth the risk. For someone had to try to stop this new Manning dingolay. Someone had to say, “we don’t believe the excuses about needing space. When it comes to our Red House, you are ‘sanimanitay’.” But, composing a piece to communicate all of that would have demanded talent and super human labour. As you have seen, I have neither the ability nor the fever. In anticipation of one day creating a hit, I did though, vary the chorus a bit. Feel free to sing along this weekend as you chip, chip, chip, and watch Manning again, sink the PNM ship, ship, ship. Second chorus of  “A Home for we Patrick”:

“A home for we Patrick,
Who say so, so, so, so?
A home in de Red House
Tell him, no, no, no, no!”

Copyright of Suzanne Mills, Editor, daily Newsday. March 2003.
Special thanks to Iwer George.