{"id":378,"date":"2020-05-22T10:22:21","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T10:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jez.caudle.me.uk\/?p=378"},"modified":"2020-05-23T08:19:40","modified_gmt":"2020-05-23T08:19:40","slug":"the-story-behind-the-picture-jouvert-2002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jez.caudle.me.uk\/index.php\/the-story-behind-the-picture-jouvert-2002\/","title":{"rendered":"The Story Behind The Picture. J\u2019Ouvert 2002."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"J'Ouvert
ME in 2002.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So here I am, stood in the spare bedroom at number 24 in Arouca, so drunk that I can hardly stand at 8 or 9am in the morning, covered in paint and grease. How did that happen?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It starts on the Sunday before Shrove Tuesday in 2002. I\u2019ve been roped into going to Trinidad Carnival. I\u2019m told it\u2019s great and I\u2019ll have a good time. And as a dutiful fiance I have got up at stupid o\u2019clock to catch a flight from Heathrow to Bridge Town, Barbados and then onto Piarco, Trinidad. The flight is long and I don\u2019t remember much about it except that we were buying duty free cigarettes for Grandpa Ken. The amount allowed was two cartons but it was buy two, get one free. So we did. We are about to clear customs with one extra carton \u2013 in my mind because it was free we shouldn\u2019t need to pay any tax on it. Tax is a percentage and any percentage of zero is still zero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

11 hours after leaving London we are in the new Piarco airport, the one Basdeo Panday had been banging on about last time I was there, despite the fact it was massively over budget and, more importantly, not finished. Panday is no longer PM, Patrick Manning was handed the PMship by the courts after an electoral tie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The passport control people have the same attitude as last time \u2013 \u201cgive them a uniform and they think they are Hitler\u201d – as the saying goes. No smile, no \u201chello\u201d, just inane questions \u2013 why are you here? The temptation to launch on an existential musing is great but I resist. \u201cCarnival\u201d I answer. She looks at me in a strange way \u2013 at the time I thought it was a look of contempt. I will learn later what that look was. Then the grilling regarding where I\u2019m staying, who lives there, why do they live there etc etc. I pull out my Palm Pilot and before I can look anything up, my papers and passport are stamped and I\u2019m in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we wait for the bags. And we wait. My body is telling me it\u2019s 10pm at night but the clock says 6pm. The air conditioning, that was so good in the passport control area, isn\u2019t as good in this bit. And I\u2019m starting to get warm and a mild case of culture shock. The bags eventually arrive, ours are almost last but this works in our favour as the queue to clear customs has almost evaporated. And then, there we are, at the front and the man is talking to us. I can barely understand him, my ability to translate Trini to English is not up to conversational level yet. He really looks glum, he clearly doesn\u2019t want to be there. Mummy answers his questions, he is happy and waves us through. He doesn\u2019t mention duty free cigarettes, so neither do we. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We walk into the main area and a man tries to pick up our bags from the airport trolley. I ask him not to but he is very insistent. He explains that the trolley can\u2019t be taken past a few metres from where we are stood. I tell him that I\u2019m happy to carry them. Mummy is looking for Aunty Helen, see\u2019s here and I pick up the bags and off we go. Mummy\u2019s bag is very heavy but I pretend it\u2019s not as I don\u2019t want to give the porter the benefit of being right. For the few TT$ he charges, I really should have used his services. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I say hello to Helen, bags go into \u201cColours\u201d, her Nissan, with bright colours down the side and a quick hop to Arouca to drop the bags, say \u201chello\u201d to the family and then straight off out to a party. A quick drive down the motorway, we turn off and we are at a blocko \u2013 a street party where the street has been blocked off. I\u2019m hungry and they have food but not a lot of it is veggie. I find some salad and breads and have a beer. I can\u2019t remember how long we spent here. Then back to Arouca and I was very tired so I went off the bed. I\u2019m not sure how long I slept until Mummy woke me up with an egg sandwich in one hand \u2013 ordering me to line my stomach – and a half bottle rum in the other. Time, for me at least, has stopped but it was dark so anytime before 6am Trinidad time. And now we were going to J\u2019Ouvert in Arouca. I don\u2019t remember who drove us and where we were dropped. All I remember was a handful of guys with buckets of paint and grease and they dirtied me, and the rest of the group, up. From head to toe. I\u2019d played \u201cdutty mas\u201d once before at Nottinghill Carnival with Pure Lime and it wasn\u2019t an altogether fantastic experience \u2013 it had rained and Mummy had gone missing on the route. By the end I was cold, wet and dejected. I was hoping for better. Once we were all painted up we wondered off some where and I had my first swig of rum. The bottle went round and came back empty. Luckily the owner of the local rum shack had decided to open up and a few more bottles were bought. Then it rained. For the first time in Trinidad I felt cold as I huddled under the eaves of a house. This was going to be Nottinghill all over again, wasn\u2019t it? The rain shower lasted only a few minutes and a few minutes later all evidence of it had evaporated – literally. I was onto my second bottle of Stag, dry and warm and off we went to join the parade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loud music, more Stag \u2013 and the odd Carib \u2013 more rum and loads of people doing the same thing. I have no idea how long this went on for but I recall that we did either two or three laps and the booze was flowing like water. Eventually it started to get light \u2013 so it must have been around 6am \u2013 somewhere close it was raining as a magnificent rainbow appeared. Which triggered me and I cried a little with joy and thanked a god I don\u2019t believe in for promising not to kill us all again. I think we walked home and once the photos were taken we went into the back yard to be hosed down and cleaned up. I then retired to bed and slept for rest of Monday and until the early hours of Tuesday. Mummy kept waking me every few hours to administer water and some soup. I did manage to spend some time asleep with my back uncovered and the mosquitoes did their worst. My back ended up looking like a pizza. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve use the term \u201cwe\u201d a lot \u2013 I genuinely can not remember who was there and wasn\u2019t. I was there, Mummy was there, Uncle Keith was their and because I remember the photograph in the newspaper, Aunty Hazel was there. Your cousin Tricia was there. I think Uncle Hayden was there and it\u2019s possible Uncle Hazley was there. I\u2019m sure more people I know where there, but I just can\u2019t remember. If I can find the photos then I\u2019ll confirm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first ever J\u2019Ouvert was brilliant and an experience that defines and almost certainly \u201copens\u201d another chapter of my life. It was the point that I starting bonding with Mummy\u2019s family and started to get an understanding of the history, the culture and the people of Trinidad. And with that understanding I got a deeper understanding of Mummy herself. It wasn\u2019t just the day that opened, it was also my mind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

P.S. My miserable Nottinghill was a one off and I\u2019ve had many brilliant experiences since with Pure Lime.
P.P.S. The passport control woman\u2019s facial contortions were a mixture of jealousy, I bet she was working for the whole of Carnival, and pity, as I\u2019m sure she knew I wasn\u2019t up to it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So here I am, stood in the spare bedroom at number 24 in Arouca, so drunk that I can hardly stand at 8 or 9am in the morning, covered in paint and grease. How did that happen? It starts on the Sunday before Shrove Tuesday in 2002. I\u2019ve been roped into going to Trinidad Carnival. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-memories","tag-trinidad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jez.caudle.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jez.caudle.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jez.caudle.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jez.caudle.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jez.caudle.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jez.caudle.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"https:\/\/jez.caudle.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jez.caudle.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jez.caudle.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jez.caudle.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}