Tomato Movie Awards

The makers-happen in our ‘measled’ movie market amaze me mindless. You roll and eddy over one another like confused crosscurrents with your myriad flimsy film awards. If you don’t close them to a classy one or two, you’ll continue to clutch at celebrity straws.

Assad, Gingrich and Other Random Questions

Has the EU ever needed Britain?
Should Iran give back the border-breaching drone?
Shouldn't we put an assassin on Assad?
Why did they allow Gingrich to rise again?

The Art of Public Peeing

Yes, I understand that art must mimic real life. It matters nothing if ‘real life’ is a national dishonour for us. But the movies strike me dumb! Why must the movie-makers stream sick scenes of men dog-peeing in the open where civilised people live?

Faux-Fang Vampire

Twelve or thirteen year-old spectre haunting the Mahogany avenue at 37 beneath where the bats hang upside down. He has his hand to his mouth. He stirs the cars to motion and makes me wonder why. Then he ghosts up to my window and drops his hand. Geez, he has two-inch fangs for canines, and he tries to shock you to give him money. I thought him unfortunate but a friend thinks they were faux fangs.

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Give the Bone a Dog

Yes, I wrote and meant that. Give the bone a dog. Imagine my voluptuous stimulation on hearing that profligate, plundering Portugal, who formerly came to explore, and then exploit, Angola is now imploring Her to save Him from imploding. Asking Her to buy fat stakes in His ex-economy. Oh, give the bone a dog!

Wanting

I have not felt the want of anything so badly in such a long time. I espied a loafing, adorable urchin on my street this morning, while everybody was at church. He was gazing over a dwarf fence into a neighbour’s compound. Even from far, I could tell his naughty contemplation. As I got closer, I saw his bait: a chandelier of low-hanging green mangoes. He panned from the fruit to my face, and then back. His honest hankering made me almost stop to aid the trespass. Such simple hunger! It is a feeling I have not had about anything in yonks. And the mangoes were not even ripe!

Pre-Mall Accra

I only do blue-moon drop-ins at the Accra Mall. The cars and crowds are too “clustered thick as seeds”. I nurse a middling memory of pre-mall Accra. There was the government’s GNTC. It lay down and died when I was still an embryo. Chandirams went out like a candle. Kingsway kicked the bazaar bucket. Glamour walked the plank, and UTC bit the dust. Melcom survived (sometimes on a respirator, I think). A&C came and found a niche and reposed in it. There weren’t too many cars, then; Kingsway’s palm-size car park worked just fine. There was no colourful range of glittering goods to spike your Saturday surprise. Now, as then, some stay at home. Then, there was too little (to choose from). Now, there are too many (people to shove out of the way).

The Unlawful Business of Serving Food in a Whites-Only Club in Accra

An Italian uomo hissed at a black Afri-lady that she could not gain membership of his degustation restaurant in Accra because she was “not white”. He laughed while hissing. She was outraged, and waged war through social media. The unsavoury jibe jarred on the public psyche-palate. The government boys ‘came to town’ and closed down the ‘club’.

I believe the Italian man. I believe that he was just joking. The Afri-lady was with a Spaniard and a Japanese national when the pellets smacked the ceiling. I understand that the Japanese was a member of the club. I have doubts that the Italian uomo would have thought the Japanese white. Plus, if there was real racism going on, why would they not simply make it a private, members-only gig? Why would they allow non-whites to walk in and eat, and only withhold membership with its (usually) dubious benefits?

That said, I believe it was a very lame defence for the Italian man to say the fact that he was married to a black woman was proof that he was not racist. Very lame!

So, I believe that it was a mere jackass joke, and not true jaundice.

But the joke exposed him. He was operating a legit, front-room, raw seafood shop and an unlawful, backroom, seafood eatery. He evaded certain taxes by giving worthless scribbles on paper as receipts. He was cheating the nation.

So, a cruel, ill-thought, stupid, unnecessary joke exposed the poor man to odium, opprobrium and ‘government matter’. Hopefully, he thinks before he speaks next time, but I don't think he is racist. Enough of this row now.

The Hair

Exquisite, Elysian locks in angelic interlace crown her pretty head, and cascade in delightful, comely tresses to settle on her shoulders. The ribbed ‘rawness’ at the top and the subtle smoothness sailing softly below then frame her fine-featured face in fifty flawless fancies.

Water Everywhere in the City of Accra

Monstrous incompetence sluiced through the City of Accra on Tuesday night. It turned God’s bounty into a Greek gift; destroying lives and houses, cars and mattresses. It is among us the depravity resides. The wealthy wise-ass who chiselled and cast his brick-and-mortar in a water way because there was space; because he could; because nobody stopped him; because be bought off whoever tried to stop him. His workmen bought food in plastic bags and created compost blocks in gutters. Between the government goon and the conniving contractor who constructed a ten-millimetre gutter, if any at all, don’t you deserve to go Gaddafi!

Feckless Form Filling

Excited employee is completing a 6-page loan form. I ask him why he won’t scribble with a pencil first. He can always etch in ink when he gets all the details right. His long look tells me I’m a bloody busybody. He used a pencil already, he says. But I can’t see the lead strokes any. He gloats, “I deleted them all before restarting with a pen”. Three hours later, he’s still ‘donkeying’ down the document.

Petrol Station Detectives

The car coughs and splatters into the petrol station. The commission-earning attendant fights off two others, and the car quivers and creeps to a halt. As the nozzle nears, the driver slithers out to eye the dispenser meter with suspicion. If the system is rogue-rigged to pilfer a litre or two, how could you tell? What do you know? Hasten back into your car, and don't come back; not when I'm behind you in the evening queue.

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900

My 900th blog post. Every 100 have been a pleasure, though the 800s have been difficult. I promise to rededicate myself to this blog and all you readers who give me feedback: encouragement, criticism, flattery. Keep them all coming (especially the flattery ;) oh yeah). Many thanks for being so great.

P.s. Happy birthday to my sister, Thelma. Enjoy Kenya and bring me  a lion's tooth. Love loads.

Spitting Cobras on the Streets of Accra

 I quickly formed a mind that he was a sleaze of a scaly-skin reptile from the way he slithered sinister-ly into my driving path. I thought little more of all that surrounding slime until he squirted out the first shocking stream. He did it once, he did it twice, four times; my revulsion lost count. The creepy-crawly cabbie was a senseless, spitting cobra.

Thirty-Second Chance

Skidding around the 'red-lighted' cars, on his termite-toothed wood board; a legless lad in a reflective jacket, sliced from window to window, head at door-handle level, cadging for coins at 10 pm. He had thirty seconds, maybe.


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Belgian Chocolate

Moist chocolate cake slices, made with real Belgian milk chocolate and topped with chocolate chunks.

Uh huh.

Stripping The Competition Naked

It's raining plaits and locks with eager green starlets looking to hit the silver screen. It's also raining vats and hogs with 'exposed' pics of those giddy girls. Who's 'doing' them like that?

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Human Sauna Selling Face Towels

Approaching midday on a dusty Dzorwulu dirt road, a sweaty, deep-fried dude in short sleeves was selling white face towels draped around his bare arms.

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Man in Black (and Yawning Yellow)

Fifty-plus-old man; beating the motionless morning motorcade a pieds on the Kanda kerb. Oh, his shiny black shirt tucked into yawning yellow trousers; spotless black shoes (if you don't count a splodge of fade on 'pension' patent leather); sun-blocking black hat; reflective black sunglasses; oh, the meddling, messy sweat rivulet drifting down his right leg. He made the morning smile.

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Random Radio Experts

Another caught my eloping ear this melancholy Monday morning. It was ‘crystal’ that he merely chanced to know some jockey ‘jackassing’ close to the ‘effing’ FM console. Stepped off the stinky streets as Joe Shmoe, then sat in the studio as the Duke of Air-head-inburgh. What did we expect? Some more of the ostrich analysis.