Latest update October 18th, 2024 12:58 AM
Nov 26, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
On a lazy, hot Monday afternoon, last week, I told my wife we should go to Providence to eat at the New Thriving Restaurant.
I never saw the place since it started up. It is first class. It is a world class dining facility. Obviously the Chinese would have patterned it after what obtains in Shanghai.
As we sat down to study the menu, something breath-taking was happening and my memories were running wild. They were playing the music of Burt Bacharach. It wasn’t the songs of Bacharach being sung by others. It was Bacharach conducting his own orchestra, playing his own compositions. I knew the music very well, because I have the CD and it is one of my favourite albums. I asked the attendant who selected that music and she said it was the wife of the owner.
There was I, dining with my wife, listening to the music of a giant of a composer and those very songs we listened to when we were courting thirty-nine years ago. The memories came tumbling down of my boyhood escapades in Wortmanville, my time with my siblings and my courting days with my wife-to be.
One sister, Janet, was crazy about, “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” the other liked, “Raindrops keep falling on my head.” All my siblings were fanatic fans of Burt Bacharach. It was simply an enjoyable moment to be dining in a fine restaurant listening to the saccharine strings of Bacharach’s orchestra, playing some of the greatest love songs that have been written.
I never asked my wife which is her favourite song, but I think it is “Alfie,” one of three philosophical compositions of Bacharach. If I had to choose five philosophical pop tunes, I think “Alfie” would be one of them. There are haunting lines in “Alfie” that should cause deep reflection on the human condition. Here they are;
“What’s it all about Alfie?
It is just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give?
Or are we meant to be kind?
And if only fools are kind Alfie
Then I guess it is wise to be cruel
And if life belongs only to the strong Alfie
What would you lend on an old, golden rule?”
After visiting Massy’s Supermarket, we headed back to town to see the new version of Mattai’s Supermarket on Water Street. We passed three pedestrian overhead walkways and I showed my wife where persons were standing on the road waiting to cross the busy East Bank Road. I wondered whether they would use the overhead constructions after they are commissioned. There is one right at the entrance of the Harbour Bridge and two young boys, one with a shopping bag in his hand, were waiting to cross the road. They appeared to be in a hurry. A trip up and down those stairways in the future may not be appealing to them and others.
Immediately my mind thought about the culture of Guyana and that of post-modern societies. Our people are not accustomed to bridges in the air that you can use to get over a busy highway. And I am wondering if they will ever get accustomed to it. I mean they should and I hope they will, but I have doubts.
The Mattai’s I knew so long ago is not the Mattai’s any longer. The modern version is superb. I once took umbrage at the length of time I had to spend in the line at that supermarket just to pay for one item – a bottle of coffee. So I did a column on my experience. That was about seven years ago, I think. I stated in the article that Mattai’s needed to have a fast lane.
The matriarch, Mrs. Mattai, came up to me to talk about what I wrote when I went back weeks after to shop with my wife. My wife didn’t want me to argue, so she kept pinching me on my leg not to reply. I am married to one of those humans who are extremely shy and quiet.
I hope seven years after, with a new spanking edifice, there is a fast lane at Mattai’s on busy shopping days. This is a handsome, impressive supermarket that is colossal in size. I had just left Massy’s Supermarket at Providence and I thought that was big, but it is far exceeded by Mattai’s. New Thriving and the new Mattai’s are great news for Guyana.
October 1st turn off your lights to bring about a change!
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