The cravings of an omnivore - Castell Amsterdam

A life beefed up

The weather was nice enough to persuade me to go out for a walk of sorts. As I got into town, I suddenly had a craving for some meat, a steak, something succulent, juicy and palatable.

Oh! The omnivore in me was tending to the carnivorous than the herbivorous. I just cannot comprehend veganism or the tendency to ignore our predisposition for meat and vegetables for a life of trying to chew the cud unsuccessfully, we are neither bovine nor canine – I know what I want and our bodies are crafted by creation, nature, nurture or evolution, if you may, to handle meat well.

The craving had to be satisfied well away from all the Amsterdam tourist fare; so, none of those restaurant chains of conveyor-belt food pretending to serve Argentinean steaks or some other fancifully named stuff.

For our delectable pleasure

I needed a place where the ceremony of sacrificing a member of the bovine species on the altar of the satisfaction of the homo sapiens sapiens' palate was fulfilled from the sacred cow in the right condition to when it landed on the plate.

Probably only 2 places in Amsterdam offer that quality of service with an attention to presentation that is so different and quite authentic.

Cafe de Klos on Kerkstraat near the junction with Leidsestraat, reputed to serve the best spare ribs in the land and Castell on Lijnbaansgracht not too far from Leidseplein.

Not all my dentition is mine, so I am not so much a fan of spare ribs because it carries great buccal cavity risks that I have already succumbed to, too many times already.

At Castell

So, I walked further down to Castell where I was warmly greeted and set in my seat at the bar where there was ample table space for a meal.

Castell exudes a rustic atmosphere, dark as if lit by a log fire, the setting is cosy and the music is mellow.

It is unpretentious as the lobster soup gets served with splashes of Courvoisier without the uncouth hedonism of bling-laden hip-hop genuflection, it is not a case of trying to arrive but a simple question of good taste.

Medium is not rare

As far as my tastes are concerned, I have come a long way from West African cooked beef that was nigh on leather to when I demanded that my steak be cremated and brought back as ashes through when I sent my steak back 5 times in a French restaurant in Paris because it was still pink on the inside.

I can never have it blue but medium rare is just right for my tastes, the flavour of beef is just right when the juices are not completely cooked out of the meat as if one were autoclaving food.

A knife to the plank

I chose the Dutch fat arse steak (see menu); I suppose that means rump steak whilst I downed a glass of the house red nibbling on white bread with garlic butter. I was not keen on a jacket potato and opted for a salad.

The steak arrived on a wooden cutting board and for cutlery, I had a fork and definitely not a sissy serrated steak knife but a decent French Sabatier 8” chef’s knife – it could well have killed the cow if it were Halal-prepared.

My craving was fully satisfied as I carved into the steak and having cut off the excess fat, diced portions to chew, sometimes interspersing that would mouthfuls of salad, preferring the garlic and herbs sauce to the curry thing.

With the most appreciative approval

Every other omnivore in sight just nodded in approval after their first bite and were effusive with praise at the end – new-comers were persuaded of anything the connoisseurs said was good. One could say there were more regulars there than first-timers, but once you've had a steak at Castell, you probably would be back with friends.

At the end, after the tips and the pleasantries, if only there was a way to thank the cow or the bull for being so delicious, we are yet to genetically modify beef for life and death – not in my lifetime.

Rough Spelling Though Thought Tough Enough

The three Arrrrghs!

Every once in a while, an academic at the height of his powers and erudite mien decides to counteract very good tenet and principle learnt over years of earning respect and accolades to hog the newswires.

When I went to Corona School, Bukuru, Jos, the curriculum was very strong in the so-called 3-Rs [1] which rightfully or wrongfully was the acronym for Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic.

There are many times I did wonder where write required a W when right and rite which all sound alike could live without it. Maybe the answer should have been closer to ansa, but that would have been the wrong answer.

Reading and writing

In what would be a luxury today, once a week, I had 30 minutes in a one-on-one session with my teacher where all I did was read aloud to her and she helped me with the intonation, accent, context and comprehension – it just made reading alone more fun afterwards because you learnt just how words work together.

I never really did like writing at all, and even though I write a lot in blogging, my system (me as opposed to my computer) sometimes seizes up with writer’s-block and my rather over-active mind churns with ideas that probably would get expressed if there was a way to link my mind to the autocue of a keyboard allowing me to read my mind on screen.

Spelling opinono

Twice a week, we had spelling classes and I do remember spelling opinion opinono, but spelling classes were easy on the teacher, we did 10 words, exchanged our work with other classmates and we were marked and scored by our peers.

You just had to know how to spell no matter how irregular the word, because spelling words right are the foundation to good communication – living the Netherlands has even made me a bit more purist about correct spelling which in my book is English spelling as in what is spoken in England (Britain).

I think I am allowed to use English in the general context of English spoken in the United Kingdom because when I was learning German some 9 years ago, the course clearly differentiated between English and Americanisch, which we took to be American English.

I like my U in colour, I like the ae in encyclopaedia, the Z must not replace the S in organisation, recognise and sympathise, basically, like I learnt in German, some words are just the way they are, you should learn the gender or article with the words and then you would have no problems.

Catching you out

So we have with English where it is not necessarily a phonetically-sensitive language but it separates the men from the boys especially in names and places.

Islington does not start off like Island, Leicester is Lester, Southwark is Sudork, Greenwich is Grenitch, Southern does not start off with South but is Surthern, Featherstonehaughs is Fanshaws, Menzies is Mingies, Magdalene [2] sounds as it is as in Mary Magdalene but becomes Maudlin for the college at the University of Cambridge and so on and so forth.

So, imagine my chagrin when a so-called Emeritus Professor of Phonetics who happens to be the President of Spelling Society suggests [3] that give should become giv and river should become river and we go down the zeeeee lane by dropping the S for the Z and embrace Americanisms. If this is a sop to dyslexia, well, just imagine that the word that pertains to people who cannot spell correctly is as difficult as you can get it.

I am beside myself with apoplectic rage and I would have felt less so if this came from a non-native English speaker who had not spent a lifetime giving English its essence, quality, timbre and mystique, if it ever had that status.

To the stake with the heretic

But I would not be perturbed if I can be the first to light the fire, because the Economist last week helped bring a clear perspective to this matter when introduced the issue of Czech scepticism to Europe [4] with these lines.

Throughout history, heretics have faced unusually horrid punishments—and it is no mystery why. Most faith-based systems can withstand the threat from non-believers, sinners and the like. But heretics are a menace from within: dissenting believers, who question key articles of faith. [4]

Indeed, I can withstand all the talk about putting milk in my tea, driving on the left, liking roast beef and spelling words in peculiar ways from foreigners, I would not however brook the idea of a priest of church of English spelling and expression questioning those articles of faith in the uniqueness of English as a medium of communication as we have it today.

Light the fire now

This suggestion makes Professor John Wells a heretic, a menace from within, probably worthy of ex-communication from English as a means of expression but better still, he should be burnt at the proverbial stake like the heretics of old.

Maybe we can make him recant by putting him in a dunking stool [5], but at his position, the great commission to keep English English would have failed if he were allowed to support these views with more commentary and airing as to create a following.

But just when I set fire to the stake and had the mob chanting heretic to the death, a comment showed up that pooh-poohed the whole idea of spelling – it would appear my word processor would have a heart attack after this – I was surprised how easy it was to read, probably making nonsense of my hysterical histrionics about spelling.

Beyond spelling

The discourse does go beyond spelling, to expression, use of language, punctuation, nuance and so on, I am no professor and I intend to keep the faith.

Courtesy of Ice Ko who placed this comment in the news story alluded to in the Daily Telegraph [3], just see how easy it is to read this:

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid! Aoccdrnig to a rseereachr at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are. The olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? And I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was so ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs, it srue anit!

Sources

[1] The three Rs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Maudlin or Magdalen? - This is Oxfordshire.co.uk

[3] Irregular English spelling should be scrapped, says leading academic - Telegraph

[4] Charlemagne | The heretical Czechs | Economist.com

[5] Common scold (Dunking Stool) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Childhood: My aunts saw red

They were with us

As we settled down in Nigeria we never were a nuclear family, we always had relations most especially paternal relations staying with us as my father was somewhat a patriarch and pioneer of sorts, later on, it was friends and cousins.

When we were in Jos, my uncle affectionately called Unculu had moved with us from Kaduna, then my aunt, my father’s kid sister and his niece who was much older than my aunt.

The deluge of ridiculous names

One interesting Yoruba culture that probably still persists is that when a wife is brought into a family, the wife never refers to any of the younger ones she meets in the new host family by name.

As a sign of respect or deference for being a new inductee which probably paints the wife as a rank outsider, each person gets a name or nickname they cannot refuse and are known by for the lifetime of the marriage in most cases.

My uncle who we affectionately called Unculu and I think I came up with that name for him was called Eyin Afe (Which I think translates to having the teeth for a good life of enjoyment), my aunt was Modesty; I thought that was after Modesty Blaise and the father’s niece was Idi Ileke (Connoting ideas of Nubian beauty with a waistline of strings of beads).

The more people the wife had to name, the more ridiculous the names became, in fact, for names given in Yorubaland, they were probably the most trivial and meaningless set aside for traditional purposes separating blood relations of the feminine sex from those who had become relations through marriage.

Catching up

I remember a conversation I had with Unculu when he was 22 and I was 8, always playful, friendly and giving me lots of his time – I asked if he could wait from me to catch up to him at 22 – I suppose, it was just a sign of how much I adored my uncle.

Elopement from terror

The girls, my aunts had a tougher time; there was always the fear that girls might get involved in all sorts of unspeakable activity that they were given the impression that their lives would become unliveable if they got entangled in anything of a sexual nature.

My father, gave them the strictest upbringing and he was a disciplinarian of the order of a sadist to my little mind – in all the time I have incurred his wrath, I have never experienced any of the punishments those girls had.

Idi Ileke was well passed puberty and was put into vocational training to become a seamtress, I would suppose whilst she was busy sewing zippers to dresses someone took her fancy and in one of the most distressing times for the adults in my family she eloped with the man.

It probably took a few days to find her, at which time, my father had had enough and he sent her back down south.

I cannot say if she eventually married the man, but we never did see much of her after that.

A mattress ripped apart

Modesty was the younger, I think she was just about 7 or so years older than I, saw her eldest brother in shades of light that would represent terror, fear, anger, violence and control.

Again, in Nigeria, these shades of light were supposed to be read as signs of respect from the protégé and the mentor saw this fear as deference and exacted control as a sign of love – bizarre as it sounds.

When she first tried learning Hausa, it was so funny to hear her completely off accent as she started counting from one – diya, biu, uku, hudu and so on.

But the most tarrying times for her were when somehow my father found that her mattress had been ripped probably by using a blade and he could not get to the truth about how it had happened.

The Spanish Inquisition was visited upon her with tortuous punishments and my father never got any closer to the truth of what really happened – we all heard the cries, the noise, the howling and so on, we were just as terrified and dreaded any circumstance where my father would ever have to be so un-nice to us.

The sweet fruit of tattoos

The cashew fruit tree on grounds was a tree that grew into some sort of shapeless both artful natural thing, we could sit on its splayed out branches and it never grew into anything tall. In season, its fruit were low-hanging; I could just reach out and pluck the fruit.

Versatility of the fruit was revealed when I found out that pod-casing on the succulent fruit could be harvested and dried out for cashew-nuts, however, before the pods were dried out, there was a sap that could be applied to the skin which was used for tribal marks.

Modesty then applied some to her thigh that spelt out her name – over the first few days it blistered, it became septic and then it dried up, healed, leaving an indelible black mark representing the letters of her name.

A whisker away from death

It was then that my father found out and all hell broke loose for her – I saw her lay face down in an incline, her feet on the side of the cupboard and her hands on the floor. She was flogged in that position till I think my father was exhausted.

Could men be so capable of dishing out discipline in that way and still be human with the excuse of preventing the child from having a life less ordinary?

But these are the kinds of rights and authority our elders and seniors in school had the liberty to exercise on us without being accountable to anyone for their actions.

In fact, people were lauded for being this sadistic in the name of discipline and I have read many obituaries where part of the eulogy included a phrase like “strict disciplinarian”, a euphemism for be a brutal brute with a merciless streak all couched under the impression that it was all for the good.

Between discipline and torture

In all, I suppose, there were always a fine line between discipline and brutalisation, in many cases, I have seen parents seriously brutalise their children whilst believing it was just maintaining order through discipline.

The fact that the grown up children still bear physical scars that the parents were probably too ashamed visit the hospital and seek treatment for belies the feeling that parents sometimes never think they can inflict grievous bodily harm on their kids because they love their kids too much to see them devoid of punishment.

This is where I would sometimes agree with the lobby against hitting children because the few times I have been struck across the face in anger when it would have been better parenting to smack me or ask me to do some mean task just shows many parents are confused about discipline, order and control.

They did what they knew

Again, on the whole, my parents did their best, and parenting does not come with manuals or certificates – I am still proud of my upbringing though hindsight does indicate that maybe some things could have been done better.

My uncle and aunts went on to live their own fulfilled lives, sometimes fearful of big brother, sometimes in awe of big brother and over time, big brother has become cuddlier, lovelier and well fatherly-er? Modesty stayed with us till she got married some 8 years later, Unculu had left 6 years before.

AKO is hardly the best at rush hour

Shopping time for the commuter

In the commuter world, the station is a place where everyone should appreciate the context of time and the instant gratification required by customers to get in, grab something, catch the train and relax in a seat fiddling with whatever was acquired.

I have however come to the conclusion that many shops in Amsterdam Central Station have no idea of the setting in which they are based.

The shops may very well know they have a market but they do not understand their customers, the characteristics of shops in the high street are quite different from those in a train station and very different from those in an airport.

The psyche of a shop

In the high street, you have time to browse and flit around in perpetual indecision till you end up with something really expensive that you never really needed.

When you shop at the airports, the purchases could be impulsive or based on the need to acquire gifts for those back at home – you may not have as much time, but you would hardly be in a panicky rush to get on your plane, except where you do not arrive on time to check-in, in which case you would hardly be shopping.

Corner shops or late night shops are a different genre; they are open until just that time when ghosts have finished putting on their makeup; they are that last refuge to interact with retailers because you have missed the regular shops and just need a quick TV dinner or something that prepares you for the next body engine trouble.

Rush-hour in tardy shops

When in comes to station shops, it requires a completely different mindset and business model – those shops are in premium rent areas, the customers hardly have the time and they definitely want prompt and efficient service, at least, that is my opinion.

For three days now as I have half-rushed to catch my train to work in the rush-hour at because of the newsagents in the station, the experience has left me quite seriously annoyed.

First off all, these newsagents has three shops in the station and somehow have failed to get it right for all sorts of reasons.

A Knock Off

For the want of controversy, AKO [Source: AKO.nl - Online boeken bestellen – In Dutch, the online site of the store] which prides itself as the best bookshop in the Netherlands seems to be failing in its prime purpose at Amsterdam Central Station.

It is almost unimaginable that at 8:00AM in the thick of the rush hour the all the newspapers are yet to be stacked up, at the most accessible store at the East side of the station, half the papers are still on the trolley in cellophane wrapping and chance has it that the one I want is in the pile.

One can go to the West side but the queues are just interminably long, with much more variety, the choices are their to keep you there for longer than it healthy for your heart; further down near Platform 14, the papers are staked up but the price scanner cannot read the barcode, forget the queues, they are long too.

Poor staff management

It is absolute chaos at times, as you find staff that should be at the tills doing other things around the shop and the queues stretch out into the concourse – I would presume the customers have another hour before their train.

In my case, I only have minutes and by the time one has walked to perimeter of the station for what should have been available 10 metres from the entrance of the station, one is almost running for the train – it is utterly beyond the pale.

The other day, they put a greenhorn on the till, he spent minutes charging the wrong price and giving out excess change along with his obvious state of discomfiture, I heard enough of the Dutch in the customer’s frustration when he cursed about how they could have put an inexperienced lad on the tills in the rush-hour.

I do wonder if these stores realise that people who pick up a newspaper really have no time for food parcel queues – in fact, I have seen setups in London where on trust people are able to use a paper dispenser, saving time for them to catch their trains with dignity.

Today, it was the Platform 14 store, a queue 10 deep and just one till available whilst the other staff were stacking shelves with non-essentials, I just could not wait 10 or more minutes to pay for the paper so I put it back.

They can sort this thing out

I am incensed that I ended up having to travel an hour without my paper just because there are three shops in the station that cannot seem to be managed properly with a clear knowledge of their setting.

These shops probably have to open earlier to stack up their shelves in time, they definitely need to have staff manning all the available tills in the rush-hours, the greenhorns should only do the quiet hours, in the meantime they can be stacking shelves if necessary and the prices of all major international newspapers should appear on a price board, just in case the scanner cannot decipher the barcode.

Thankfully, I am not the regional manager of that group of stores, else a good few heads included mine might have rolled for what is just gross incompetence and the lack of attention to the possibility that customer impatience could have lost them a good deal of business.

Nigeria: Palm, Panic, Pandemonium - Yar'Adua's Lesser Hajj

From predilection to prejudice

We tend to palm off the essential, have premonitions about the immediate, procrastinate on the important and leave everything else to prayer with clasped palms in the direst situations.

To prepare for eventualities is to prognosticate and usurp the supposed will of God about any situation such that failure then gets passed off as the work of the enemy.

For too long we have allowed our leadership to palm off too much, we got saddled with a very sick president and a vice-president he did not choose so as to assure a kind of continuity and stability that is fast becoming a mirage.

A man unknown or a public president

Now, I have no business and neither am I interested in the health of a Mr. or Mallam Umaru Musa Yar’Adua [1], for all I care, he could have two hearts, four lungs – even though we are forlorn with apprehension and he be as fit as a fiddle – I wish him well.

But when the same man assumes the responsibility of the Presidency of Nigeria, it becomes a completely different matter, something his aides have been trying to palm off without due realisation of the duty to truthfully inform.

Regardless of how this man was chosen, he is now de facto President of Nigeria; one would expect that he holds the reins of power and administration as any executive president would and where he finds that he is indisposed, the necessary steps should be taken to temporarily vest the vice-president with executive responsibility until when the president is better disposed to carry out his duties.

For two weeks we were left in a quandary about who was in control of Nigeria as rumour fed speculation so rife about the well-being of the President who presumably had gone to Saudi Arabia for the lesser hajj having cancelled other pre-arranged foreign trips to other nations.

A Soviet past replayed

By the time we knew what was going on, the man had allegedly had the knife in him to deal with a renal condition that required a new kidney.

Meanwhile, his public relations people palmed all this off as a non-critical medical checkup and asked us to run to our panic stations in prayer for the health of our President.

Since the vice-president had still been left in the dark initially about the condition of the President and had not received due authority to act in the place of a recuperating President who was far away in Saudi Arabia presumably making peace with his God – things that should have been done on Nigerian matters were left on a desk which had an empty chair whilst Nigerians were left somewhere between panic and possible pandemonium.

The secrecy that surrounds the real condition of the President, health-wise rivals the Soviet-era when the likes of Brezhnev [2], Chernenko [3] and Andropov [4] were long dead if not buried before we found out that they had been through a long and possibly incapacitating illness.

Power in the hands of hoodlums

It goes without saying that an incapacitated leader who has not properly handed over his responsibilities in a constitutionally sanctioned process of delegation allows for unelected and unaccountable mandarins in his circle to pull the levels of government in ways they should never have been entitled to do in the name of the President; leaving the nation in danger of reckless malevolence for personal ends.

In that alone, the President does us a great disservice on the verge of being unforgivable, but we would relent on the condition of some disclosure, if not full disclosure. What would not do is this wielding of the axe to give the impression that one is in control - it is closer to pandemonium than patient contemplation.

The need to know

Not knowing whether like John F. Kennedy [5] was addicted to barbiturates and pain-killers, the President lives a drug-fulfilled life to get from day-to-day where such medication may impair judgement is worrisome enough.

It does not help if like Franklin D. Roosevelt [6] was in a wheel chair, the President rides an invisible one that has him wheeled off to Germany in the instant of a relapse from whatever ails him.

Yar’Adua is no Kennedy nor Roosevelt and this is neither the 1940s nor the 1960s, it is however instructive that the Freedom of Information Bill still languishes in the Nigerian Congress in times where transparency should be the underpinning foundation of any democracy that seeks to be respectable.

Facts are needed now

Thankfully, we hear that the President is back in the country, either spiritually refreshed or medically patched up but it is disingenuous for his sycophants and obsequious troop of praise-singers to contend that it has been much ado about nothing and we should have just remained on our knees in sackcloth and ashes praying amiss in ignorance about the facts.

The BBC Headline - Nigerian Leader Appears in Public [7] - reads like one would expect of Fidel Castro [8] in Cuba or Kim Jong Il [9] in North Korea who many already presume dead, but exists as a double till the power struggle in the cabal of rulers gets resolved.

Unfortunately, we still do not know fact from fiction, truth from conjecture or reality from rumour, all we know is our innocent and concerned inquiries are palmed off into darkness, we are aroused in panic for the call of national prayer and around us pandemonium breaks loose for the lack of leadership in the matters that really do matter about Nigeria – this is not good at all.

Sources

[1] Umaru Yar'Adua - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[2] The Brezhnev Syndrome - TIME
[3] World Attention Turns To Chernenko's Health - New York Times
[4] Andropov Misses Moscow Parade, Stirring Rumors - New York Times
[5] In J.F.K. File, Hidden Illness, Pain and Pills - New York Times
[6] Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial: Struggle with Disability
[7] BBC NEWS | Africa | Nigerian leader appears in public
[8] BBC NEWS | Americas | Castro seen in rare TV interview
[9] North Korea: Nation To Mark 60th Anniversary Amid Claims Kim Jong Il Dead Since 2003 | World News | Sky News

The matter of tying the knot

We speak now

I was chatting to my father the other day, one of those New Year’s Considerations I had to get over with.

Sometimes, I wonder about why our relationship has been so estranged as a result of a process of growth from childhood to adulthood and independence rather than some particular seminal event.

I suppose up to a point, the patriarchal survey of my father had tried to envelope my sometimes antithetical views which at certain times of expression simply created conflict.

Now, though I have many years ago been in outright conflict with my father, it only lasted about 8 months during which my mother secluded from an outrage that was about to consume me because of my failures.

Eventually, we made up and he actively participated in my rehabilitation for which I am very grateful. When the successes came, he was the chief cheerleader and though he upbraided my mother for not making preparations for the celebrations, I really felt that duty was left to my mentoring auntie and uncle who took over the responsibility of seeing me through my toughest years.

Leaving from the chapel of love

One topic that has been dusted over and over again is that of marriage, he has the opinion, I am scared of the issue and hence, I have not settled down.

The fact is, I did once seriously consider marriage and that was just under 20 years ago, the lady and really the one lady that caught my attention then had me in dreamy spires – Oh! What could have been – but I did not pursue it far and time overtook everything else.

I am as settled down as I want to be, maybe not as happy as I would like to be but grateful for what I have and glad to be able to count my blessings.

Incy-wincy spider at 40-plus

Then, I saw that advertisement of a lady who instead of starting a family had a very successful career, but strikingly she noted that children of old school mates as she reminisced where now coming out of university and she and her child had only started on incy wincy spider [1].

I believe that advertisement was to encourage women to start families even if they have had fulfilling careers, because motherhood also had its fulfillments – I took from it that idea that I could be still raising children as an old man.

In the background someone was attending to the toilet requirements of a half-brother that was hardly three, nay, nay, three times nay – I have been sold completely on loving the kids of others and giving them back when I need my peace.

This, considering that by the time my parents were my age, at least two of their children were out of secondary school.

Premmies hardly procreate

No, the matter of marriage and children fell off the burner a long time ago and I have spent a lifetime encouraging my parents to accept the notion that I am settled with the encumbrance of happy families with little running feet.

I would not use the next issue to corroborate my situation, but it makes interesting reading about the lingering effects of premature birth predicated on the likelihood to drop out of school which I did not do and the unlikelihood that they would bare children [2].

Born at 26 and a half weeks, I do not think I had any serious developmental problems apart from growing my feet a lot faster than my age group and having an astigmatism that was not properly diagnosed till I was in my twenties.

I was a year below the average age of my class in primary school and was always in the top three apart from the last year when I was away for 4 months doing entrance examinations and still came out in the top half of the class.

In secondary school, I was just under 2 years below the class average and still held positions well above average amongst my peers. I do wonder if studies like this would dare to explore predispositions to particular traits including that of sexuality.

Accepting the situation as is

It does not bother me that much really, I told my father, we need to begin to appreciate that there are exceptions to the idea of marriage and kids for certain people and somehow that exception happens to be closer to home than is comfortable.

Besides, in what might sound rather cruel though not expressed, I cannot say that I have many role models who have attended to the institution and sacrament of marriage with the determination of a life-long inviolable partnership to one partner.

Marriage has its purposes and I am a supporter of the proponents of marriage to the extent that I care less about whatever sexual pairing that makes up that family unit of love, devotion, commitment and responsibility.

Indeed, one does crave companionship but in many ways those relationships have fallen somewhere between a soap opera of unmentionable antics to the shrill cacophony of an opera coming to its final crescendo.

I have probably become an onlooker and observer of the kisses and hugs that sometimes get expressed as hisses and shrugs – I look away from the worst parts of something really good that has turned too bitter for taste.

Citizens of different classes

The conversation then skirted other topics as my career and other activities and then that issue about living in the West and how that must affect me adversely.

I could understand that when my parents were in the UK in the 60s they came against a number of unpalatable issues with racial tension and war going on at home in Nigeria.

It lead my father to say at one time that living here left me in a position where I could be treated as a second-class citizen; an interesting view where in Nigeria being treated as a so-called first-class citizen security and safety were at a premium as well as the gauntlet of corruption I had to run through to get anything done.

Beyond the race to success

My memory served me well because my father passed his accountancy examinations winning the Faulks-Lynch prize in 1969 – Cannot find any record of it now, but it appeared in his listing for the Men of Achievement – he appeared on television and suddenly all his colleagues who were generally condescending grew in admiration and respect for him.

In some ways, achievement and success trumps the unsavoury rudiments of racism, I wish the situation were better but like I have written in another blog, see those situations as an opportunity to educate rather than be offended – hopefully, a quick wit would see you through it all.

In any event, it was a big first step, as we exchanged pleasantries and talked at length. I know that the matter of marriage would not die a natural death, but like I told him during our conversation, he gave me an education that allows me to speak my mind – I think our conversations would sharpen my ability to express myself better on matters I feel strongly about in a man-to-man and father-son heart-to-heart exchange.

Other matters of the heart that could unsettle him are not in the purvey of what I view of settling down.

Sources

[1] You Tube – Incy wincy spider

[2] Study: Premature birth has lingering effects - USATODAY.com

Childhood: The fruits of a chicken napping dog

Fruits of many trees

When we finally moved to Jos and settled in the suburb of Rayfield, we had a full house with Unculu (my paternal uncle) and other relations of my father that included his niece and kid sister.

Our colonial bungalow was set in grounds that included an orchard of mango trees, a lemon tree, a fig tree, a cashew tree, a few orange trees and lots of grazing ground for cattle.

There was a separate garage for the car and a block of rooms set aside about a minute’s walk from the main building which was the boy’s quarters – a colonial definition of apartments for servants.

Blood of thieves

Besides the help we had from our relations we had a maid servant who despite her work was offered the opportunity of schooling and a gardener who doubled as a watchman of sorts.

This however did not stop the watchman of being robbed once, where some of his family possessions were stolen and on one occasion a thief tried to gain entry to our house, broke and window pane and cut himself badly.

All the blood and the trail of blood from the scene of the crime was quite unsettling for me as a child, in fact, it was just as scary as when we found a bat squeaking in the kitchen sometime before.

Et tu Bruté?

However, one of the memories that stuck with me was of our very first dog, Brutus, a very nice cheerful dog that seemed to have a taste for chickens in the neighbourhood. One day when I was away at school, the people came round, chased the dog into the bushes which were downhill from the house some 500 metres away and ran a spear through it, as I was told.

Rumour has it; it ended up in some soup pots, the killers probably doing well to retrieve their chickens by eating the dog that ate their chickens.

It was something of a traumatic experience and it took a while before we got another dog that I named Scot after the dog Scot in the Janet and John books we read at school.

Beheading the chicken

Thankfully, Scot did not have a taste for chickens at all, considering we had quite a few chickens then on the grounds.

Every once in a while we chased a chicken to exhaustion for a meal, none of that frozen chicken stuff and I had been taught how to clamp the wings under one foot and have the feet under another foot, grab at the head, holding it up to reveal the neck and cut without necessarily decapitating the bird.

Once, I did cut the head completely off and did not let all the blood out or allow for the last breath, lifted my feet and got half chased by a headless chicken before it expired – thankfully, it did, because there was no way I would have tried to catch it after what had happened to it.

Imagine if the chicken ended up like Mike the headless chicken [Source: Mike the Headless Chicken - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia] which survived for 23 months, sometimes; the weirdest people do the craziest things and find a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.