The WR investigative unit has been hard at it again eavesdropping on last week’s Cabinet meeting where the discussion surrounded what Guyana could get out of the upcoming breakfast meeting with President Bush:

Jagdeo: Colleagues, Comrades, fellow countrymen let me have your suggestions for my breakfast with Bush...

Ramsammy: We need to get more money to fight HIV/AIDS..

Jagdeo: I like it...I like it... Good stuff, anyone else?

Insanally: We need to press him on the International Criminal Court. He’s busting our b&^*! over this one. Oh and by the way I recommend you order a bagel.

Rohee: I have to concur with my colleague...go with the bagel, but negotiate hard for cream cheese. Don’t let Bush slip on that.

Jagdeo: Are you writing this all down, Roger?

Luncheon: Yes, boss....(repeating) ‘Push hard for the cream cheese’...But may I suggest you throw him something to unnerve him...such as an order of sada roti and boulanger choka. This would be like a diplomatic googly.

Jagdeo: I like... I like it... wet or dry?

Luncheon: Dry with lots of tomatoes.

Insanally: I must warn you, Mr President, ordering sada roti and boulanger choka would be a high-risk strategy. The only equivalent time I saw it pulled off was when Kissinger used kippers against Russia’s Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko during the SALT II negotiations. You will need a fall back position.

Rohee: Duck Curry and Roti?

Insanally; No, we need something more conventional, something he can relate to, I would order poached eggs on toast but with pepper sauce to show you are not fully compromising your principles.

Jagdeo: Shall we go with runny or hard?

Insanally: That’s a tough call. Not so runny that it dribbles down your chin while you talk, but not so rubbery he thinks you’re scared of salmonella poisoning.

Jagdeo: Good work Rudy, many thanks. Ok, that seems to be concluded. Let’s eat.

Meanwhile in New York, the Caricom leaders also got together to discuss a common position for the breakfast:

Barbados PM Owen Arthur: (talking into speakerphone) Are you there PJ?

Jamaica’s PJ Patterson: Yes Owen, sorry I can’t make it. But my suggestion is to go with the ackee and saltfish.

Trinidad’s Patrick Manning: (groans) We knew you would say that. I think black pudding and souse is more representative of the region.

Arthur: No, no, let’s have eggs and toast.

Jagdeo: That’s what the Queen eats! You have too many tourists, Owen. Some good Guyanese cook-up would show we have belly...

Manning: We don’t want your stink rice, go with the black pudding and souse...

Antigua’s Lester Bird; Let’s go with Ducana,

Everyone: What’s that?

Bird: A pudding made from grated sweet potato and coconut, sugar, and spices boiled in a banana leaf.

Manning: Let’s go with black pudding.

Patterson: Ackee and saltfish!

Jagdeo: Cook up!

Bird: Ducana!

Arthur: Hold on everybody! Time for a reality check. What are we doing fighting amongst ourselves? We all know that when the four of you go to the breakfast, the region will only be eating the crumbs from under Bush’s table. Let’s decide not to go and we can have breakfast by ourselves with the dignity of proud, independent nations.

Jagdeo: Who’s going to pay for that?

Truncheon signs three-novel contract with Harlequin

WR’s literary department has a huge scoop this week with the serialisation of the new and very steamy Harlequin novel by renowned author Lodger Truncheon. It’s now available at bookstores nation wide:

Torrid Teachers

Chapter 1

Torrid Teachers

By Lodger Truncheon

“It was him,” thought Eva, a sharp flush needling her cheeks as she spied the Caribbean’s premier technical advocate on nursery school education striding into the symposium on Linguistics and the Immature Larynx. His pronounced forehead was deliciously furrowed, his long beard rippled in front of his food-stained shirjac. She almost tore her informational folder in half as he coolly strode up to her in his sensible shoes: “Eva...my intuitive supposition was correct. I had a feeling you would be in attendance...” his voice trailed off suggestively. “Henry...It has been so lonsg...”

Was that all she could think of? Silly girl! But to think of more, might

have brought memories flooding back of their rendezvous during the 12th Inter-regional Conference on Strengthening Mathematical Curricula for Toddlers, in Saint Lucia.

His speech on geometrical reasoning among nursery school students had knocked her starched theories for a loop. But it was the smooth click of his Power Point presentation, the way he wielded his pen when emphasising the importance of early education budgetary allocations, that had driven her to delirium.

Later they had had dinner next to a large and noisy table of DFID technical consultants, part of the BEAMS-facilitated PRSP project. Like a first-year student, she only had eyes for his pocket protector and ears for his multi-syntactic analysis of regressional tendencies in children of single parent households. She felt a thesis stirring deep within her. That night in his room they breathlessly pored over the body of his own doctorate, a revolutionary dissertation that probed deep into the core of the fundamental handicaps of pre-school education, reaching a climactic and all embracing analysis of primary socio-economic factors that left her breathless in the naked enormity of its concept.

The next morning she was racked with guilt. Once home she failed to mention this theoretical tryst to her husband, a professor of Post-colonial Indigenous Handicraft at the local university. She considered his personality to be much like the 1984 station wagon they would silently travel in on Sunday afternoons to visit relatives in the country. She wanted more, dammit she deserved more! And now the man of her dreams, stood before her, his briefcase bulging...

More great wines of Guyana

For those who feel aggrieved at being left off the great wines of Guyana list. See below:

Tesco’s own Bordeaux ‘Samuel Hinds’ 2002: Honest plonk

Carberry Valley Chablis 2001: Much like Le Luncheon, but lacks any real power. Best drunk when high

Chassagne Montrachet Corbin 1989: Murky

Savigny Les Beaune, Kowlessar 1996: Timid, almost reclusive and quite, quite forgettable

A 1978 Chateau Mouton Rothschild ‘Ryaan Shah’: Tough, ballsy with just a hint of paranoia

Question of the Week

Wouldn’t ‘Deconstructing Freddie Kissoon’ make a great Off Broadway play?