– Dedicated to my great friend Kamal Abdool who died last week.
By Tony Deyal
Nicolas Aujula, a London psychic, claims that in 2021 he had predicted COVID-19, Trump’s election loss, and Meghan Markle’s explosive Oprah interview. Now he has eight visions for 2023 including heartbreak for Madonna, King Charles will have health issues, and a British Cyclist will break a record, hopefully not one of Madonna’s. American psychic, John Cohan, has predicted that Prince Harry’s nude photos from his college days will be circulating everywhere so there is no need to wonder anymore what Meghan sees in him. An Irish psychic, Maeve McTaggard, is seeing conflict, explosions in London, warships, bombs dropping, and people in Britain and Ireland building bomb shelters. She is convinced there will be “mass warfare” in 2023.
Unfortunately, that is not all we can expect this coming year. Rose Smith, who runs the largest psychic network in our hemisphere, predicts the death of Vladimir Putin, maybe from the window of a high building, and Donald Trump, most likely in the “Lago” part of his Palm Beach resort. Rose by any name is top of the heap. She accurately predicted in 2020 that Trump would have gotten the coronavirus, and Joe Biden would become president. She also predicted in 2018 that Prince Harry and Megan Markle would quickly have two children with the possibility of a third. Smith also predicts that King Charles would become very unwell, Prince Williams will replace him as King, and an easier one that all of us already see coming, billionaire Elon Musk will be in more trouble than he is already experiencing.
I have to hurry now because I just saw what Nostradamus predicted for 2023 and I don’t think we have much time left. First of all, he predicts boiling oceans and a lot of dead fish, Then, more bad luck for King Charles. Nostradamus sees, “Celestial fire on the royal edifice” and that has nothing to do with the “bombshell” of Harry and Megan on Netflix. As if that is not bad enough, Nostradamus warns about “Seven months great war, people dead through evil”. As the post says, “In terms of the ‘evil’ Nostradamus blames, hate-mongering, death-dealing, Libra Vladimir Putin comes pretty close to personifying it.” In fact, even the daily killings in Trinidad and Jamaica are not in that league and, from what Nostradamus predicts, it’s only just big-gun.
I had identified some minor requests for the Almighty to help me out within the New Year. When I was growing up, I used to sing, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth” and my father always laughed and teased me, “But you missing five!” In thinking about it now, I should have realised that I was an early dropout.
First of all, with all the daily “Home Invasions”, I would like to get a break from crime and not a break-in.
Jamaica’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, declared a state of emergency in Jamaica not only because of the murders but also the “Violent crimes such as home invasions, armed robberies, sexual assaults and homicides…” Between January 1 and November 23 this year, there were 1,360 murders in Jamaica. I looked up “Home Invasions Trinidad 2022” and got 1,990 results in .52 seconds. I used to belt out “Take Me Home, Precious Lord” when Elvis Presley sang it and joined Jim Reeves with “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”. Now it seems there is a new one that scares the hell out of me, “Take My Home And Oh My God, Let Them Leave My Wife and Life Alone.”
I once believed that all I needed to do was pray for “Peace on Earth Goodwill to Men.” Goodwill is easy. It is an Insurance Company in Trinidad and a Mission store in Jamaica and elsewhere. But peace? In much of the Caribbean, peace depends on what you’re begging for and whether you can spell properly. You can still be appeased or, like what I heard one of my friends tell a young lady, “Girl all I want in life is peace and quiet. You give me peace and I will keep quiet.” She gave him piece – of her mind that is – and he left, but not in peace or quiet. If he was in my Elementary School, the teacher would have scoured his mouth out so thoroughly with soap and a scrubbing brush, he would have believed he was losing his Lifebuoy.
So what do I really want for the New Year 2023? What about making a serious commitment that I would keep for the entire 365 days. Unfortunately, I have to decline. One of my heroes, Oscar Wilde, put an end to that with, “Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
I don’t drink much again except for the occasional half-glass of wine but, had I been back to my old haunts and friends, I might have taken novelist and essayist F. Scott Fitzgerald seriously, “First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” Been there and done that. One thing I learnt as an English student and teacher was the difference between “I gave up drinking for the New Year!” and “I gave up. Drinking for the New Year!” One I am sure about is what I call a new Trinidad, and perhaps Caribbean, truism, “On average we live pretty well. Worse than 2021 but certainly better than 2023.”
One thing about the transition between the Old and New Year is that there is a lot of cricket playing. The West Indies men and women just lost (to use a Trump word) “bigly”. I used to bat for them, especially in my days as corporate secretary, but not me again unless Dave Cameron comes back. Even though he has a degree in Hotel Management, I would not mind if he accompanies the teams as chief cook but definitely not even the bottlewasher. I remember being in St Kitts and meeting the coach and members of the team outside the Hotel in which we all stayed. The coach asked me, “Tony! What you doing here?” I replied, “Well you heard that I have a broken finger, but I knew for sure that if I was ever to make the West Indies team, this is the best time.”
We can talk travel but I am a “nowherian” or, as Tobagonians understand it, “a person with no fixed place of abode.” I keep hunting down books I would like to read and get them free from sundry illegal sources. My friend Omar brought me a nice variety of my favourite drink, coffee, but I have to drink them locked away in a house, worried about who will break through the glass windows or use a battering ram on the doors. So what do I want for the New Year? A place to rest my weary bones without fears and scares. A place to call home.
*Tony Deyal was last seen saying that he doesn’t like to brag, especially to people who will go back and tell his wife, but he already has a date for New Years Eve, December 31.
