Mercredi 06.12.06 Incredulously incroyable
After my mega snooze I’m up early to write all my Christmas cards and letters. It does take all morning and by the time 11,00 rolls in I feel that I’ve used so much energy that I need a second breakfast. Some more tea and toast fuels me along.
Nicola rises just in time for lunch. Burgers. Umm. Melted cheese, caramelised onions and toasted baps topped off with a splodge of ketchup. But wait. How come I can no longer hear the burgers sizzling in the oven. I open the door. There’s no flame – no gas. We’re up to Arlette and Charles in a flash. She’s not overtly snide but I can’t help but feel that’s how she wants us to interpret her forced concern that we have food in the oven and no car to go get another cylinder. Of course gas isn’t included in the €75 expenses we each pay on top of our rent. We retort in mock disbelief. “Is it not included in the rent?” I ask incredulously. She thinks for a minute and then says that she’ll give us one this once. I’m amazed I don’t have to use the festive kindness card but she knows she’s in the wrong and this is her way of covering her tracks. Charles carries one of their spare cylinders down to our place and sets it up. It seems less straightforward than any cylinder changing process I’ve ever had to encounter. The kitchen’s too small so I leave Nicola to watch while I finish off the last of my letters to my long-lost great Aunt in deepest, darkest Peru. I do feel like Pooh today. I’ve been ravaged by mosquitoes and even ants. I’ve a nasty, prickly bit on my foot and I took some antihistamines which have left my head heavy and fuzzy. Charles passes by and asks if I’m writing him a card. For a split second I thought I saw a flash of meaningless mosquito-men wilfulness about him but I let it pass and tell him what I’m doing – though the piles of addressed envelopes should have given the game away.
We’ve a bone to pick with a certain Mr Garber, our neighbour. He’s actually at home today so we invite him around after lunch. We lure him in with idle chat about Christmas and as he’s an atheist and a boring Belgium we’re soon down to business. We gripe about how unscrupulous and greedy Arlette is being. He listens to our concerns and agrees that this is not proper order but at the same time it is not his problem so he is non-committal in his advice. But dear, sweet William you are involved; you were our point of contact prior to us coming here. You were the one acting on Arlette’s behalf. You were the one who told us it was all inclusive. Nothing mentioned about charging for visiting friends. Or other extra overheads. What next? If we got a car would we have to pay for parking? He doesn’t pay he reassures us. On verra…
Apart from prattling on about Madman Arlette; her nocturnal cackling, her dawn dialling sessions and her hawkish ways, we talk about business. William has just set up an advertising company with two business partners. Work is tough and he tells us that they’re not making anything. He lives off money from his private lessons. He has about 10 classes a week and he receives some kind of minimal social welfare so he does get by. He also talks about alternative banking in Dominica, St. Lucia and elsewhere. His other business ventures seem like a scam; though at once I’m both dismayed to know him and intrigued by his incredulous depraved money-making methods. He is the process of setting up a website www.justaprayer.com which invites people to pay him to pray for them. Him? An atheist. You can pick your required religion and concern, fill in your credit card details and voila the placebo will kick in and your life will be sorted. I’d give him 10/10 for business acumen, and if anyone is stupid or desperate enough to fall for it then they are the bigger fool for being reeled in, but it’s totally unethical. Then again do atheists have ethics when it comes to religion? As a business man is he not just profiting in a similar way to that of others… “If the Pope can do it why can’t I?” he asks. He says that Jesus was a very clever man, with some friends who wrote a book about him… yada-yada. Quel con! What a surprise when we’re also told that he’s writing a book on how rich people get rich and how poor people (like him he says) can get there too. He obviously doesn’t practise what he preaches, though he defends himself by adding that this is a side venture. www.getpowerfast.com I realise I’m giving him free advertising by just giving out about his dishonourable corruptness. “If you want to run the race you’ve got to run fast”: those are his parting words before he’s off to give English lessons to some ignorant French people, as he calls them.
I’m flabbergasted, well, not really. I’m not at all surprised that after living here for two years he has been moulded into the Martiniquan way of thinking. Money. Dinero. Lolly. Airgead. Bread. Argent. Dosh. If I’m not careful that may happen to me too. Hang on. Maybe it has already. I’m from Cavan so I have a head start. But a head start to what exactly? Monetary wealth or fiscal stealth. We can all be economical – with the truth. I’ll tell you that for free…
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