My muscley thighs and 3 days in church

I'm so disorganised. Maybe because my mind's constantly flitting from one thing to another and I get a little lost on where I am and what I'm doing. On one occasion I searched my room looking frantically for my glasses, riffling through cupboards, throwing clothes hither and thither, cursing myself and my appalling short-term memory only to realise that they were perched on the end of my nose the whole time. I was 11 years old when I did that. This is reassuring because when something similar happens these days I know it isn't dementia. I've always been like this.

This trip to Canada is both poignant and significant, so I felt a little pressured. My best course of action, I surmised, was not going to sleep to make sure that I had enough time to go through my list again and again and again so I didn't forget anything when we left. I handwashed my Evisu jeans at about three in the afternoon, but didn't want to put them in the tumble dryer, so I was checking on them intermittently as they hung on the maiden in the kitchen whilst ironing and watching the outstanding French cop drama Braquo (thanks again, Gordon). It makes The Shield look like Cagney and Lacey. Amazing.

Anyway, I still managed to get to my Mother's house late and then when we got to the airport I left her laptop on the backseat of the taxi and didn't realise until after it had left. I had to ring the taxi firm to send the driver back.

It's been a while since I last got on a plane, so these new security protocols were a bit of a shock. If you know me, you know my muscley thighs are never going to fit inside a pair of skinny jeans. I was instructed to remove my belt and I was thankful that I was wearing underwear when I raised my arms to be frisked. They're a bit zealous these security guards, aren't they? This fella had a good grab at my firm buttocks and a bit of a rummage down the front of my trousers (I wore Diesel jeans to travel in addition to the 3 pairs of Evisu jeans I had packed. Is that too many for a week?). He brushed roughly against El Monstruo (my nickname for Basil Junior Junior) and I briefly wondered if he wanted to induct me into the Mile High club right there in Terminal 3.

The flight was pretty much crash-free, thank fuck, but the diversion to Maine for refuelling meant our arrival in Winnipeg was delayed by 3 hours. A 22 and a half hour journey, door-to-door. Hardcore. We were staying with my Auntie Donna: the rebel of the family, which also means she's the most fun. Oh, and Auntie Donna is the one who called me a bow-legged bitch.

Winnipeg has a large Carribean community which has the church at its centre. Bright and early on Sunday morning, washed out and bleary-eyed, we all went to the Life and Truth Centre for a service, the first hour of which was comprised of a God-themed R&B concert. No kidding. There was a full band, four female singers and a saxophonist laying down hot lead lines which recalled Eric Leeds in Prince's Sign O'The Times/Lovesexy period. Everyone in the building was dancing, and not that nervous shuffling foot-to-foot type thing either. The congregation was going for it! One fella performed a slow robot stomp around the perimeter of the church, pausing dramatically to mop his brow with a sharply pressed hanky. I'm a cynic, boys and girls, but this was awesome.

The following evening was a viewing service, where everyone gets a chance to see the body and pay their last respects. The Life and Truth Centre was packed. Standing room only as family and friends took to the microphone to reminisce about their times with a man referred to by Auntie Donna's husband as "The Martin Luther King of Winnipeg". This is the second funeral I've attended with my Mother this year and on each occasion I've been floored by the vast number of family members I never even knew I had.

The Faith Temple in downtown Winnipeg was chosen for the funeral service proper on Tuesday. As a man whose death had made the evening news a much bigger venue was required for everyone to say "Goodbye". It was pretty harrowing. Myself, Wade's four sons and my cousin Andrew were the pallbearers. There were rivers of tears spilled and much heart-rending wailing and the Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines sent a letter of condolence in which Uncle Wade was described as a "fearless warrior on behalf of the poor and the disadvantaged."

His youngest son, Maurice delivered a moving eulogy in which he intimated that being part of a family in which the Father was consumed by the bigger picture resulted in a very strained relationship, but that as Wade 2.0 he would ensure his Father's legacy was carried forward. It was a pretty emotional day. It's been an emotional stay. Pushing my Mother in a wheelchair makes her frailty a jarring reality which I don't ordinarily have to confront and yet another funeral puts me right back in the hospital 8 years ago when my Father died.

Now, I'm not necessarily a fan of church or Christianity. Even back in the days of the Roman Games they would use burning Christians as torches at night, because their inventions were perceived as being dangerously crazy. Throughout history armies have marched behind a crucifix to subjugate, commit genocide and dehumanise billions of people. Billions. I shift a little uneasily in my seat whenever I see Luis Fabiano, Kaka or any Brazillian footballer score a goal, cross themselves and then look skyward. It's like they're completely ignorant of Christopher Columbus and his murder of their forebears on an industrial scale to make their gesture a reflex. If you go to the island of St Vincent there's a church practically every 500 yards giving the definite message that if only Black people worshipped our God they'd be a little more human.

There has been a lot of talk over the past three days about justice. Dogma, whether Capitalist in nature or Religious, has no capacity for empathy except on its own terms as part of its own agenda. When Capitalism required the toil of Black people to make plain old Britain, Great Britain, the Church was the cheerleader yelling "God's will" from the sidelines.

As a champion of the disaffected and the disenfranchised, Uncle Wade's mantra was "Injustice anywhere means injustice everywhere," and the Pastor of the Life and Truth Centre recalled a time when Uncle Wade called him and said, "The Haitians are in trouble. Who's going to pray for them?" Behind the pulpit of the Faith Temple two flags are solemnly draped: the Canadian flag and Israel's flag. Given the life he led and the causes he fought for, it was an ironic backdrop. Today Hamas' military chief Ahmed al-Jaabari was assassinated in Gaza, which is essentially an open air prison: a symbol of one of the last injustices of Empire. Could you imagine the British Air Force sending fighter planes over to Belfast to eliminate Gerry Adams as the head of Sinn Fein? Of course not. It's unconscionable. Once again the alien "other" are getting the short end of a very sharp stick. They plainly deserve it though, don't they?

The Pastor of the Faith Temple made reference to the congregation being "Friends of Israel" and it was met with nary a flinch nor a solitary sound. It was chilling. The Palestinians are in trouble. Who's going to pray for them? Injustice anywhere means injustice everywhere.

* Mother's laptop went missing again. This time somewhere between the airport and Auntie Donna's house...

Four More Years, Mittches!!!

1. Costa Coffee using my favourite song this week - I Was Made For Loving You by KISS - is awesome, even if the residents of Totnes are trying to kick them out of town. They may well be a rapacious multinational, but Damn! They know music.

2. Ash Dieback, the fungal disease laying waste to the trees of the British countryside, sounds very much like the title of a Rammstein song.

3. A death in the family forces us to contemplate our own mortality. I've been doing that a lot and getting very maudlin. Wade Kojo Williams passed away on Monday. He was my Uncle on my Mother's side. The 'Williams' part is very important. When we were growing up ANY virtues or talents we expressed were explained by Mater as being "like the Williams", whereas any missteps, plainly, were due to us being "so Creese".

I can't speak for my Sis, or my Bro', but as a youngster I was of the opinion that these Williamses were a little bit up themselves, until we eventually met them when we took a family jaunt to St Vincent. They were pretty all right actually (apart from the relative who said I walked like a "bow-legged bitch"), and Uncle Wade was a bit of a legend: a journalist, a celebrated songwriter, parliamentarian and an active member of the community. In his time in Winnipeg he served as:

• President of the National Black Coalition of Canada (Winnipeg Chapter);
• President of the National Council of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Associations in Canada;
• President of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Association of Winnipeg;
• President of the Manitoba Intercultural Council (MIC);
• Representative on The Visible Minority National Council on Canadian Labour Force Development;
• Chairman of the Black History Month Celebration Committee;
• Member of the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination - Social Planning Council of Winnipeg;
• Chairman of the Martin Luther King Memorial Committee;
• Executive Member of the Afro-Caribbean Association of Manitoba;
• Founder and Chairman of the Manitoba Coalition of Organizations Against Apartheid and Racism;
• Founder and Chairman of the Forum for the Awareness of the Minority Electorate;
• Multiculturalism Director of the Liberal Party of Manitoba;
• President of the St. Norbert Liberal Association;
• Executive Member of the Assiniboine-Fort Garry Residents Advisory Group (City of Winnipeg);
• Founder and Chairman of Students Against Apartheid (University of Winnipeg);
• President of Caribbean Students Association (University of Winnipeg);
• Founding Executive Member of The Calypso Association of Winnipeg;
• Co-Founder of the Winnipeg Calypso and Reggae Competitions;
• Co-Founder of the annual Winnipeg Soca-Reggae Festival and Member of the Manitoba Senior Provincial Cricket Team.
• He was also a member of several Caribbean Folk Groups/Choirs in Winnipeg.

Truly an exceptional man, and a bit of an inspiration. He will be greatly missed.

His funeral is taking place in Winnipeg, Canada, and I'll be accompanying my Mother, which'll be a laugh riot. I get my sense of humour and sunny disposition from her. Ask my sister. She calls me 'Smiler'.

4. So I skipped over to Liverpool to sort out my passport. The last time I was in the city was a few years ago to rehearse with an early line-up of Damaged Gods, which disintegrated when the guitarist and bassist started banging each other - Gina, the bassist, went on to play briefly for all-girl metal maidens McQueen - so I was surprised at how well I was able to navigate its streets.

Having about four hours to kill before my passport was ready I popped into a Tesco Express to grab some overpriced sustenance, and scanned the newspaper stand for a publication which would entertain me whilst I sat in my car waiting for the paperwork to be completed. Obama's face beamed triumphantly from the front pages of the newspapers whilst, on the shelves above, a scarlet tressed Holly Hagan proffered her sizeable mammaries like shoddily constructed Blancmange desserts. I decided that Roger Moore's autobiography would prove more engaging and stuck with my Chicken and Bacon sandwich, Strawberry and Banana smoothie and a pack of Cool Breeze Extra chewing gum, resolving to check out the Obama reaction to, and analysis of, his re-election online when I got home.

Ah, Obama... He's as war mongering and as slavishly bound to the notion of the expanding American Empire as his half-wit predecessor. That Hopey/Changey thing didn't really pan out, did it? Drone attacks and Guantanamo aren't going away anytime soon, kinda proving that even if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it still might turn out to be a bit of a cunt. On the subject of cunts, seeing the response of the sore loser Republicans was definitely worth it.

Donald Trump called for revolution. A subdued and sombre Ann Coulter intoned, "I'm pretty pessimistic about the country. We have more takers than makers and it's over. There is no hope," whilst Ted Nugent tweeted, "Pimps whores & welfare brats & their soulless supporters have a president to destroy America". Fox News host and attack dog of the bigoted right, Bill O'Reilly, lamented the erosion of the white establishment:

"The white establishment is now the minority. The voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them those things? Obama wins because it's not a traditional America anymore. The white establishment is the minority. People want things."

Poor fella. His whole world had fallen apart. He looked devastated. I almost felt sorry for him, even as he employed the stereotype of ethnic minorities being feckless spongers. And that's the Republican Party's problem: its hijacking by the extreme neo-cons means that it isn't inclusive enough and as a result Mitt only made inroads into the hearts and minds of the electorate each and every time he moved to the centre, which left him open to charges of 'flip flopping' and hypocrisy. Ronald Reagan would be too moderate for his own party now.

They and the purblind others of their type need to wake up and recognise that times are changing. Watching one's parents forced at gunpoint to engage in sexual intercourse in a bath of warm excrement would be more fulfilling and better for one's conscience than voting Republican. Compare their separatist language with the following from Obama's acceptance speech:

"The idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try."

Much nicer and genuinely inspiring, isn't it? But then, he meticulously employs a lexicon designed to be inclusive, which is a very good thing indeed. Just try to avoid looking at the detail, eh? At the very least the average American woman will have control of her own uterus for the next 4 years, which I shall address during my 2 hour stopover in Chicago later today. BOOM!

I'm kidding.

Or am I...?

Yes. Yes, I am.

* The Monkey Obama t-shirt comes courtesy of the white supremacist website Tightrope. Also in this series "Fight Crime. Abort Black Babies."and "Bureau of Negro Control."