Welcome weary wanderer.

When this whole world feel like there ain't nothing to be joyful about...welcome!

Here, you get heapings o' light and delight!

Book to come later this year, August 11.

In the meantime, see you on your blogs.

Pssst! Y'all can spot the monster in the picture? Hint...no, it ain't the parrot.

An old interview.

Hello Everyone!

Howdy-do-dy?

Sundy again, and what a day! Sunny and warm with a cool breeze making them trees go we wish-dis we wish-dat. It did feelin' like one o' them Enid Blyton-days, you know when she describe pixie and fairy village, and when you was a chile, it feel like something different and wonderful?

(I really need to grow up and stop being so childlike or childish, choose the adjective).

Me and Mum been for a walk and coming back, I stare at them sheep-clouds plodding in the blue scene up there, and the sunlight lick me face. I smile wide like the sea, then I think, "Shees, imagine what the people driving by must be thinking."

Me 'n' Ma been proper mellow. Now and then, when the moon full, we does have a li'l misunderstanding, y'know. Tell me who don't. (Between you and me and these four walls, Ma is a Very Stubborn Oldster! Stubborn as a Teenager!). But we don't stay vex for long, thank goodness.

Anyway, I come home, and been going through some old stuff, and find this link, a' interview I do back when we been living in the big ole family home by the sea:

https://globalvoices.org/2005/12/29/a-conversation-with-guyana-gyal/

Ahh, them was days, when blogging was the thing.

I want to go and read blogs, so see y'all soon....

Au naturel.

My dear friends,

How you all doing?

Yesterday morning, I been thinking how, if I been back home, I woulda been tripsing out with the sunrise to the market.

The morning fresh like the world start over, the sun and dew-in-the-long-grass and birds and earth and everything in between feel like they singing. Hardly any traffic.

At the market, I meet and greet and gyaff (chat) with vendors, and I give change to beggars who, when they collect enough money, buy hot breakfast, complete with tea. One o' them does probably feed he drug habit, but who is me to judge, what if the man is buying food instead?

Going home, I drive into the rising sun sitting in a sky full o' orange and pink, tangerine and grapefruit and peach colours. I does find meself singing loud-loud.

After breakfast, I empty me basket, wash the earth off everything cos, yes, it is produce straight from the soil. Everything come in they own natural skin, not wrap-up in plastic. And too besides, I like to support the market vendors.

That ain't a banana...is a plantain.

One o' me favourite food that I buy is breadfruit. It taste like potato and sweet potato mix-up together. but the texture is not so soft.  You can make chips with the green one, curry with the half-ripe one, pie with the ripe one, milk-shake with the super-ripe one.

Breadfruit!! How me love breadfruit.

If you come to visit me back home, I gon make a good ole-fashion fish-soup like the one I make last week, right here in Merica, for me and Ma. Plenty onion, garlic, celery, yam, sweet potato, potatoes and spinach. And fish, naturally.

SLUUUUURP!!

And for dessert, I would feed you fruit. I hope you don't mind. Honest, we fruit taste like bliss. They gon make you' eyes roll over in you' head in ecstasy.

Sweet, milky star-apple gon drive you wild.

Papaya ripe in the sun.

Sapodilla is like caramel and butterscotch.

As you can see, I like me food all natural, none o' that artificially-inseminated-flavours.

Oh! If you don't like fish soup, I can make something else.

What you like eating?

Hammock or chair?

Dear Friends,

You ever, while travelling past homes, get curious and want to know what they got inside?

Confession...hehe sheepish grin...

...when I see the local people photos on social media, I don't look at the people. If the photos is of the people in they homes, I does check out the background.

I want to know what they table look like, what they got on it, how much plastic flowers they got in they living-room, what kinda decoration they put up. I stare at they ceiling...look, look, blue zinc roof, hammock in the kitchen, wow...

...yes, I got insane curiosity about people homes.

So, anyway, I decide that if I's so fass (curious...nosy), you might be too, and I decide to share with you a couple o' things I useta have in me li'l apartment by the sea.

You don't mind leaving you shoes at the door? 

Like I explain in a mo' early post, we leave we shoes at the door. If you squeamish, scroll past while I explain again why...

...them streets got...

squash-up dead frogs
cow pat
horse pat
and I don't mean you pat them on they head
dog poo
mud
man wee on the roadside, ewwww, think of the dust drying on that.

See now why we leave we shoes at the door?

Okay, look we here, right inside the door, sorry, no plastic flowers, only these:

From Ikea. I paste them on the door instead of the wall.

Fresh frangipani on the bookshelf.

More books. And things from other parts o' the world.

Anyway, if you not interested in them-these things, we can gyaff...chat. Everything you tell me, gon stay with me. I gon be like these 3 bears.

I ain't see nothing, I ain't hear nothing, I ain't repeating nothing.

We can sit in the living-room, but most people prefer the verandah.

Like me purple plant from Mars?

If rain start up, we can go into the kitchen and, as the locals say, skin we teeth...laugh-laugh-laugh...while I warm up the food on the stove.

Laugh 'n' gyaff (chat)

Y'all don't pay any attention to this frog here, he always trying to get this lady to kiss he. He ain't turning into no prince. He is me servant, let-we full up he belly with tea and put he in hot water.

What kinda tea you want?

Hungry?

Hold on a sec. while I put some food to eat.

Coming up...food....

On the move.

Me Dear Friends!

What a tamasha that fall upon me in the middle of the year after two dear friends die.

I been feeling chirpy like them birdies the day the trouble land, I been bright like sun and happy like grass (don't put that in you' pipe and smoke it, 'cause it ain't that kinda grass, and anyway, I can't stand smoke), the Manager-Lady come to see me in me home by de sea. She take off she shoes. She come inside, she sit down. All this she never do before.

She say, Everybody got to leave, we ain't running this place no more.

Ow, people, ow, how me nearly break with fright. Nearly.

The rent all over town is catering to foreigners. Since they find wells of oil in we land of many waters, citizens turn every nook and cranny into Furnished Apartments. Lizard dung pon de window-sill included as decoration.

Ohhhh, the places I did see.

Ohhhhhhh. The packing, the boxes, the work, the tiredness, the sadness, the money it cost to move.

So, there me was, in me new place, trying to create me own li'l space.

Birds sing from dawn 'til dusk, crickets holler, frogs soak in de canal and stop calling to one another when I go to watch them, and it got big garden with a landlord who don't mind me gardening.

Then...poof...was time to go be with my mother in Florider. And here me is, with she, learning patience all over again.

Now...only now...I can feel the creative spirit moving in me, calling to me to write, to get to work, to put things in place to start with the publishing that been waiting long, so long.

How y'all doing?

Biography

Hello!!

Or, to quote me li'l nephew as he emerge from he parents' bedroom and see me and me mother at they kitchen-table once upon a time in Florida:

HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

:-)

How you all doing, dear Friends?

I working on putting up de first manuscript for pre-order, online. Yes, I self-publishing. I ain't able look for literary agents. 

Here is what I figure. If I manage to sell plenty-plenty books, then the agent gon find me. hehe.

I got to write a biography of me.

I muster up this, which all of you who been following me blog for ages can figure out. I had to write it in English but I toying with writing it in we local lingua, Creolese.

***************************************

I live in Guyana, between Venezuela and Brazil, on the north-east tip of South America. 

Guyanese are not Latino though. We are, because of our history, like the people of Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados and the rest of the West Indies. We are Asian, Caucasian, African, Syrian, Lebanese and more. Our official language is English but, as we are an ornery lot, we've concocted our very own colourful way of speaking. 

I am addicted to people, music, books, craft, art, earth, sky, sea.

I am an optimist trying to feel safe in an unsafe environment ( bandits, bandits everywhere). I daydream about rearing and training snakes, black widow spiders and geese to bite the bandits in their front and back ends.

***************************************

I think I gon write it in both English and Creolese.

That should be fun.

If writing ain't about experimenting and expressing the self, I ain't know what this world coming to.

I coming back soon to gyaff...chat...with y'all on y'all blogs.

I better get back to wuk...werk...work...

Mwah.

Books that make you feel better.

Dear Fellow-Bloggers-Friends and Passers-by,

There me was, one Friday in March...only a month ago and change...was a real nice afternoon, sea rockin' in the afternoon sunshine, I watchin' the water through me window, swingin' to a Trini song, famalaylaylay.

That very night, I cry meself to sleep.

Soon as I sit down from the dancin' and the watchin' of the sea and sun, the phone ring. A friend in Miami callin'.

Another friend, we former co-worker in The Island, die. The swine flu kerry she away.

She was one o' the kindest, sweetest, funniest, mad-craziest, most organised-est person you could ever know. She was more than friend to me. She was family.

I text me sister, and when she call, I break down in sobs.

Was dark, lonely days.  I haul meself out and start to walk - same ole surroundings but I discover something new-not-new-yet-new-again...if you know what I mean.

Early April, when the sun shine in me again, another sadness descend.

A family friend in the ICU. Every morning after dawn, I visit for a week. That man been good beyond good.  Gentle, with a playful, quiet sense of humour. Never carry baggage. Always had a wise word or a joke to share. Or a mint...you dare not cough, he would hand you a mint from he car pocket (he useta drive taxi). He and he wife did adore each other.

Yes.

Past tense.

He too gone.

Not long after that, I been to a dust-covered street in a small village, where another friend lose consciousness at she mother funeral.

You know what help me to not feel overwhelmed?

A book.

A book hilarious from start to end...Daisy Fay And The Miracle Man. If ever you dealin' with sadness, flu or anything that bring you down, read that book. I promise you, you gon recover like light switch flick on.

Speaking of books with humour!!

I got me book cover from the artist. It wild and mad and funny. My Florida brother did introduce me to the artist who been born in Guyana, study at Pratt Institute, now living in Florida. This chap is brilliant-brilliant!

I gone to write my book description now..........

If y'all know any books or films or videos or podcasts that full o' humour, please share!