I’m lying in my darkened bedroom, grey light creeping in around the curtains.
The air is humming with the pulsating blades of a helicopter, hovering pretty much directly above my home. It sounds like a noisy tractor, chopping away at nothingness instead of a harvest.
The tractorchopper started whining at 7:30am. On a Sunday.
Somewhere in the background – don’t think we don’t hear you, brother – is a bass beat, straining against the sabbath calm and heavy with the anticipation of bigger, better, louder tunes.
The crafted oil drums are out, lying idle under cheap B&Q pergodas, ready to billow and belch out half a ton of jerk chicken. The blades keep on chopping.
It’s Carnival and I’m scared. And tired.
I hear a click of key in lock and the clunk of a chubb bar falling back. The door squeaks open and old uncle Jamaica’s obscenities, muttering murmers and self-banter drift in through my open window. Slippers shuffle along stained concrete towards relief. Any second now, I will hear the trickle of old man’s piss falling pathetically into the gutter, meandering down the red brick wall and dousing the weary drainpipe.
