Circular No 834

Newsletter for alumni of The Abbey School, Mt. St. Benedict, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.

Caracas, 28 of October 2017 No. 834

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Dear Friends,

Sad news, the more so for the Circular.  One of our chief writers has gone to better pastures.

His was a silent suffering, since it took me by surprise.

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Jon Golding <jon@financialist.com>

19 Oct

Announcement of Death - Jon Golding

To all Jon’s contacts,

With regret, his four children, Alex, Francesca, Victoria and Michael would like to announce the death of their father Jon Golding, who passed away last Thursday after losing his battle to cancer.

All are invited to his funeral which will be at 9:15am on Thursday 26^th October at St Mary’s Catholic Church, Cadogan Street, Chelsea, SW3. This will be followed by a burial attended by family and close friends at Brompton Cemetery.

The family invite you to attend the wake to celebrate Jon’s life, which will be held at the Admiral Codrington, 17 Mossop St, Chelsea, London SW3 2LY from 12pm.

We are asking that donations should be made in lieu of floral tributes to The Royal Marsden, Chelsea who helped our dad tremendously over the years during his battle with cancer.

Please pass this message through your networks to anyone who knew Jon.

This email address will no longer be active however if you wish to contact the family you can do so on contactgolding@gmail.com

Kind Regards

Alex, Francesca, Victoria and Michael Golding

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Making peace with VS Naipaul

Wayne Brown

Sunday, October 21, 2001

"...when [Naipaul] decided to leave Trinidad, separation gave him a great theme: the condition of being an expatriate, a stranger to places, a wanderer, an outsider, undiluted by local loyalties, always looking in. And yet nothing disgusts him more than to be called a Caribbean writer. "Nothing was made in Trinidad," he said; but in a deeper sense, a number of his own books were... In retrospect, he despised Trinidad so much that he couldn't bring himself to mention it in his thank-you remarks on learning he'd won the Nobel."

(Robert Hughes, Time magazine, October 22nd.)

"To be converted [to Islam] you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say, 'My ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'."

(VS Naipaul at a reading in London, the week before he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, explaining what he called the "calamitous effect" of Islam.)

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On Friday last, the lead story of the Internet [Trinidad] Express was adorned with a photograph of two local firemen, resplendent in bright yellow man-on-the-moon helmets and "space suits". The caption read: "Fire officers are all geared up to protect themselves from possible anthrax exposure in responding to a call from Royal Pharmacy, Prince Street, Port of Spain. The pharmacy yesterday received a 'suspicious package' from Australia."

The pharmacy's proprietor, it should be said at once, revealed he thought the package suspicious because "we never get mail from Australia"(!)

This aside, the story read in part: "The Trinidad and Tobago Fire Services responded to more than 10 reports of fears of anthrax yesterday... all... proved to be without substance. Fire tenders screamed through the streets..."

Then, zeroing in on the pharmacy case, the paper described how "Two specialists, Mario Collin and Rohan Singh" -- and let the reader note the political correctness of the Trinidad Fire Services: one Indian, one Creole -- "boarded the specially equipped Hazmat truck at 2:07 pm. By 2.15, after snaking through Port of Spain traffic, the officers arrived just outside the pharmacy, which had been closed following the discovery. The excitement (sic!) heightened as the specialists donned their yellow protective suits, equipped with gas masks, an air supply, special gloves and boots. They entered the pharmacy, took the package and placed it in a special container which was then covered. They emerged, placed the container into the rear of the Hazmat truck and walked along Prince Street to the East Dry River (EDR). On a grassy area next to the EDR the men were then hosed down using detergents contained in the Hazmat truck which quietly followed behind..."

"The excitement."

I read that story with high amusement and thought: "I've been out of Trinidad too long." How else could I not have realised, at once, that there was no way Trinidad would be able to resist claiming the US anthrax drama as its own -- no way it would be able to refrain from making mas with it, both earnestly -- or at least in unconscious parody -- as it was doing now, and again as real mas' (sic!) come Carnival 2002, all of world history repeating itself, in Trinidad, twice, first as tragicomedy, and then as farce?

(And you can be sure that, between now and then, Trinidadians will get a third bite of that apple, and that even if, to their profound -- if unacknowledged -- bereavement, they're not gifted with a single authentic anthrax case, the next flu virus to strike that two-island nation will be dubbed "The Antrax" (as in: "But how you looking so poorly today?" "Boy, The Antrax lick mih dong!"), Trinidadians being the only people in the world to affectionately give nicknames to their flu epidemics -- and so to personalise, internalise, and in a sense be stricken by, the great destructive personalities and events taking place around them. I myself, e.g., having lived in Trinidad for most of the years between the mid-70s and the mid-90s, can remember having suffered from The Ayatollah, The Chernobyl, The Abu Bakr and The Saddam).

To understand that is to understand the heart of Trinidadian-ness, which is the Trinidadian's promiscuous, self-dramatising, and earnest reduction to absurdity of everything taking place in the world around him. Trinidad is less a country than a way of engaging and abolishing the real world; and carnival is its true expression.

With that in mind, cf Naipaul's attack on Islam quoted at the top of this column.

"To be converted [to Islam] you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say, 'My ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'."

Now, a certain kind of Naipaul detractor, having read books like The Middle Passage and An Area of Darkness, will protest that that is exactly what Naipaul has spent most his writer's career doing: claiming that his ancestral culture -- whether by that one means the culture of India or that of Trinidad -- "doesn't matter". But for such an acute and dry-eyed observer (the Nobel committee rightly praised his "incorruptible scrutiny") Naipaul has seldom been wise. To the contrary, self-contradiction has long been the ice on which his prose sails so flawlessly (which makes him a better artist than a philosopher); and that kind of putdown interests me less than the quintessentially Naipaullean sentence, "You have to stamp on it".

The point is, the latter is also a quintessentially Trinidadian sentence. No other English-speaking people, I would venture to affirm, whether from the Caribbean, the West, the African subcontinent or the East (Australia, New Zealand), would think to speak that sentence -- not in the context in which Naipaul speaks it. For Naipaul in his denunciation of Islam is being dead serious (and brave: cf the fatwa issued on the head of Salman Rushdie); and yet it is, of course, a cartoon image. One is invited to imagine a Garfield or a Calvin (from "Calvin & Hobbes") or a Lucy (from "Peanuts") stamping on....

Well, stamping on what, precisely?

...Stamping on "his ancestral culture".

???

The very image achieves the reflexive Trinidadian twist and lash, the work of reductio ad absurdum. Moreover, it is a pleasant reminder that, fully 45 years on, the essentially comic sensibility of the author of these lines (from Miguel Street) hasn't really changed:

"Laura used to shout, 'Alwyn, you broad mouth brute, come here'. And, 'Gavin, if you don't come this minute, I make you fart fire, you hear.' And, 'Lorna, you black bowleg bitch, why you can't look at what you doing?'

"The oddest part of this whole business was that Laura was no beauty. As Boyee said one day, 'She have a face like the top of a motor car battery'."

So this columnist is one Trinidadian who isn't overly exercised that Naipaul clearly made a point of omitting any mention of Trinidad in his first response to the Nobel news.

My younger daughter Saffrey was in her mid-teens when, in response to my (not-entirely-serious) complaint, she explained patiently, "We're your daughters, Daddy. We don't have to read what you write."

I understood at once what she meant. And though I would have had trouble explaining it -- or explaining this -- hey, listen. In the same way, and for the same reason, Naipaul doesn't have to acknowledge Trinidad.

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11-09-2017 14:57:24: Mt Berment Joseph: Happy Birthday, Toddy!

11-09-2017 15:02:22: Mt Ramsahai toddy: Thanks Joe

11-09-2017 15:03:32: M Rampersandsingh Anand: 🎂🍾 HAPPY BIRTHDAY 👍

11-09-2017 15:03:38: Ladislao: Same here Toddy Oldboys in Bogotá

11-09-2017 16:05:26: M Zanelli Enrique: Names? I recognize Ladislao but who are the others? Vintage? Happy bday Toddy

11-09-2017 16:22:15: Mt Ramsahai toddy: Hey thanks old boys

11-09-2017 17:12:36: Ladislao: Names:  Ladislao Kertész,  Anthony Obrien, Luis Guio, George Iwaszkiewicz. Photo taken Yesterday 10 sept 2017

11-09-2017 17:45:16: M Zanelli Enrique: Is George Iwaszkiewicz AKA Nazi?

11-09-2017 17:49:51: Mm Charles Neil: Is that Luis ghio from Valencia?

11-09-2017 17:51:43: Ladislao: There were two Georges, the other is mickiewicz.  Same time. 1959

11-09-2017 18:17:42: Joseph Habib: Quick question, this Luis Guio, did he have to sons that also went to the Mount? I knew 2 Guios that were there in the 70s. They names were Carlos, being the elder and Luis. They were from Columbia. Happy birthday Toddy. Hope things are in your favour.

11-09-2017 18:19:44: M Rampersandsingh Anand: Carlos live in  Mississauga Canada

11-09-2017 18:25:09: Joseph Habib: You mean he lives there now. I was wondering, the guy in the photo, is he related to the 70s Guios?

11-09-2017 20:25:24: Ladislao: Luis guio lives here in bogota

11-09-2017 20:35:28: Mm Charles Neil: The Ghio in the 70's lived in Valencia, his mother is the person that organised the trip for the aqualads in 1972. They had horses and some of us went horse riding on their farm. I went back in 1974 and stayed at Gustavo Tar home and also spent a week in Caracas at The Holmes brothers. Jimmy Samaroo was also spending time at the Ghio's home in VALENCIA.

11-09-2017 20:38:26: M Coscarart Salvador: There is also another Carlos Guio in Canada

11-09-2017 20:38:57: Joseph Habib: Thanks for clearing that up. The Guios that I'm speaking about, went Mount from 1975 - 1979. They would be in they mid 50s by now.

11-09-2017 20:39:48: M Coscarart Salvador: Yes The guio Neil is talking about went to mount

11-09-2017 20:40:12: Mm Charles Neil: Yes, I know know Joe. Ghio is the way their name was spelled

11-09-2017 20:42:04: Joseph Habib: Ok. Thanks

11-09-2017 20:42:55: M Coscarart Salvador: Yes

11-09-2017 20:43:14: Mm Charles Neil: I know the Ghio's  that was in your time  Joe. I had  already left mount We had an old boys association from 1975=77 and went there on Saturdays .we had full use of all the facilities. Thanks to Cutty. We also played volleyball with the flight attendants from BWIA. Johnny Garcia, Poggy, Jimmy, Pig and myself were the ones that had the first old boys association

11-09-2017 20:56:24: Joseph Habib: Bring back those old time days. Let's have reunion before the world comes to an end. Lol

11-09-2017 20:58:05: Mm Charles Neil: Joe, I tried so fucking hard, I am just fed up And I know some other of the old boys did also But we have so many old boys that have pussies instead of a dick as they get older. We still have Fr Augustine and Bro Rupert, let's not forget them They played a big role in my time The fucking Canadian guys can kiss my ass. They are all full of shit. Must be the cold that freeze their fucking brain. And when I say Canadian, I meant the ones in my time that migrated there.

11-09-2017 21:09:52: M Rampersandsingh Anand: Like Who

11-09-2017 21:11:42: Mm Charles Neil: Anand, u probably just know them by name, no big deal. They are not worth remembering

11-09-2017 21:12:32: Joseph Habib: Oh!!! I see. I will talk to some of the guys that live in Trinidad. Hear what they have to say or suggest. There's no more Fr. Cuthbert and was the one keeping us together. Now that he's gone, we have only ourselves. I will be in touch.

11-09-2017 21:12:49: Mm Charles Neil: Anyway. Time for my cocktails. Will chat tomorrow Joe Berment called me from New York to see how I was doing, my brother was worried about me because of Irma.

11-09-2017 21:16:26: Mm Charles Neil: Salvador is also a godsend. His heart is bigger than most of us I remember when  I went to visit all the priests at the mount after not seeing  me for over 7 years in 1985, I first saw Fr Odo, he was not too excited, then told me Cuthbert was at the yogurt facilities, I went there and he was filling the yogurt bottles. He did not recognize me, but when I told him who I was, he put down everything and gave me a big hug. I then saw Fr Benedict, he held my hand right and said....let me pray and bless you. I then went to visit “Bro” Fr. Vincent who was principal at the time, he knew who I was right away. I spent about 2 hours with him, talking about my time after leaving the mount, we walked the whole school grounds, and then went down to the church area.

11-09-2017 21:59:51: Mm Charles Neil: Bernard Lange and Bro Rupert was down at the pool. I stopped there and they were also happy to see me. The pool pump was giving trouble and I offered to donate one, but they said they had it covered.

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EDITED by Ladislao Kertesz,  kertesz11@yahoo.com,  if you would like to be in the circular’s mailing list or any old boy that you would like to include.

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Photos:

06WK0671REUNION2006, Fr. Cuthbert and group

12LK3827FBGMOAMO, Gonzalo Montiel and Alfredo Montiel

15JG0001JGOGRADUATION, Jon Golding Graduation

08UN1595REUNION2008, Reunion group