Lord, don’t stop di caravan!
SOMETIMES, A little success can go to one’s head. Suddenly, the Old Ball and Chain believes this is HER space. She has been sending instructions on what I should write and applying corporal, lieutenant and captain punishment because she considers obedience unduly delayed.
While most of us concentrated on the presentations at JLP’s recent conference, Old BC focused on the preparations. She didn’t like them. So, on November 18, she pushed me away and took over the controls.
Old BC: I’m tired of Old Grey Balls ignoring what’s happening right outside his gate to make all sorts of profound (he thinks) comments about reform this and reform that! Old GB should be insisting political leaders put their money where their mouths are. Every time there’s a political meeting, loads of followers are bussed to the venue carelessly.
Buses break every rule of the road and, despite other road users expecting them to be curbed, not one policeman is stopping the drivers to ticket them. They are dangers to themselves, the motoring public and pedestrians. Accidents have taken place in the past and it’s only a matter of time before a catastrophe occurs. What moral authority do police have to stop me on the road when they constantly ignore these political caravans?
Old GB: I take it they recently passed your gate?
Old BC: All morning. And the noise pollution is another matter. As bad as Donald Trump is, he would’ve sent troops to stop these caravans long ago. And built a wall ... .
Old GB: Sigh. You realise that one man’s (or woman’s) meat is another’s poison? Why you getting all het up over people enjoying themselves? Twitter, that notorious JLP garrison, is overjoyed at the same phenomenon. Many celebrated the size of the crowd, the jubilation, the excitement, without a moment’s concern about how this was accomplished. Bussing? Twitter says both sides do it, so it
must be OK.
Old BC: You can say what you like! Next time police stop me, I’ll inform them they can’t ticket me because I’m on my way to a political meeting.
Old GB: You’re the most miserable woman alive. You bawl too much! Big girls don’t cry-yi-yi (they don’t cry)
Big girls don’t cry (who said they don’t cry?)
Old GB: You realise undisciplined transportation of supporters to political conferences is like nuclear disarmament? Which tribe will be first to disarm? Or do we order simultaneous disarmament while they watch each other like hawks to make sure neither is tricked into defencelessness?
Old BC: Foolishness! Simple things like this are the easiest to do. But, when I say so, all I hear is supporters singing:
Lord, don’t stop the Caravan! Lord, don’t stop the Caravan!
Old BC: Simple things like this help to develop a disciplined society. Simple things like this don’t cost money. All it takes is moral fibre and political will. PM, show us you truly want to make a change. THERE’S NO EXCUSE! In the 1955 western Tennessee’s
Partner, starring John Payne, Rhonda Fleming and Ronald Reagan (yes, him!), Payne’s character slaps the blonde bombshell played by Fleming. When he asks how she feels, she replies, “Big girls don’t cry.”
Four Seasons producer Bob Crewe, half-asleep watching the movie, liked the line and jotted it down. The next day, with group member Bob Gaudio, he wrote Big Girls Don’t Cry.
Trinidadian calypsonian Cecil ‘Duke of Iron’ Anderson, famous for his bawdy lyrics, recorded Lord Don’t
Stop the Carnival in 1946, which included the seminal lyric “Carnival is a creole bacchanal”. In 1968, the year Cecil Anderson died, No Don’t Stop
the Carnival (contains an identical sounding chorus but different lyrics) was written and recorded by Englishman Alan Price (original keyboardist for The Animals on magnificent recordings like House of
the Rising Sun). Yet another ‘version’ was recorded by Harry Belafonte in 1971.
Peace and love.