A little update: the book cupboard event.

The cole left me on Sunday, but one tiredness ketch hold o’ me since the book cupboard event.

The book cupboard event start on Sunday. That was when my mother and Fazal decide was the right day for the flakin’ back bedroom walls to get a bright new coat.

Days before that my mother and Fazal been watching the rain, waiting for the sun. Not good to paint on a wet day. Early o’ clock every morning my mother phone Fazal. If rain fall or if he got to work elsewhere, she say, If sun come out tomorrow...

One day last week Fazal also known as gardener also known as handyman also known as painter scrape off crumbly paint from the bedroom walls and clean them flakes from the floor. He say when he ready to scrape and paint behind the book cupboard he gon move it.

“How you gon move this cupboard, Fazal?” I ask.

The book cupboard is heavy like a pregnant cow. It is five feet, six inches tall, four feet wide and three books deep…that is to say, each shelf does hold three rows of books - back, middle, front. The book cupboard got twelve shelves in all behind two doors.

Fazal laugh like a schoolboy, teeth shine, eyes glimmer. He is a happy-chappie who don’t worry about nothing. “When the time come we gon see,” he say.

“Aw man, just shuve the roller behind the cupboard and paint it without scraping off ole paint,” I say. I been thinking, horror spreading like weed, if he only empty that book cupboard guess who gon get the job to repack.

Guess who get the job to repack on Monday.

Because guess who did promise she mother she gon clean the cupboard one day. Also, because my mother and Fazal empty the cupboard on Sunday afternoon so he can scrape and paint the wall at the back.

I been watching tee vee when Fazal come to the living room. “G, you can come help me empty this cupboard?”

“Me nah move,” I declare.

Ten minutes later, conscience and curiosity kerry me into the room to see how they progressing with the emptying of the cupboard, and to help.

It take me the whole of Monday to vacuum them shelves, repack them books according to writers, throw out ancient car manuals, old text books, crumbling novels, and to clean that entire room.

Dust. If you see dust. I swear it was in that cupboard that Africa and Arabia originate.

I don’t want to say how many books we got in that cupboard or you gon accuse me of exaggerating. Lemme just say, is plenty. Books stand three rows deep on twelve shelves, each shelf is two feet wide, each book is between one to two inches thick; one or two o’ them is fat like A Suitable Boy and The Pickwick Papers; some got the size of Things Fall Apart and Short Stories by Chekhov. Do the math yourself, I tired.

In the middle of this cleaning-up tamasha, a strange letter arrive from a literary agency Abroad. But that is a gyaff for another day. I tired.