Life's Fare Read online

  Greg Yevko asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book.

  Published by Riverside Publishing Solutions, Salisbury, UK

  Copyright © 2019 Greg Yevko

  Printed and bound in the UK

  Paperback edition

  ISBN: 978-1-913012-12-0

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  They often say that you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. If I could choose my family, past or present, I wouldn’t change a thing.

  For, and inspired by Fedor Stanislav Yevko, a Ukrainian immigrant to the U.K.

  Feb 1921–July 1996

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Foreword

  Glossary

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  INTRODUCTION

  So, what is life about?

  It’s about the choices people make, how much control they have, and how they manage to cope when things don’t go quite to plan as they go through everyday ups and downs.

  You know, the normal stuff you’d expect to come across in life.

  Okay, so what is this book about?

  It’s about the choices people make, how much control they have, and how they manage to cope when things don’t go quite to plan as they go through everyday ups and downs.

  It’s also about two gods who were involved in the corporate team-building exercise which resulted in the creation of the earth, who have a dispute about whether humans really can survive on their own without the gods helping them along the way, just a little. They agree to observe a case- study to prove the point one way or another.

  The case-study just happens to focus on an immigrant from the Caribbean arriving in the UK shortly after World War II, so they follow him and his family through the joys and adversities they face in typical day to day situations over the 75 years from his birth in a faraway hospital to his death in a not so faraway hospice

  You know, the normal stuff you’d expect to come across in a book like this.

  By the way, two other things you ought to know about this book:

  1. A lot of the stuff in it is actually true, or is at least factually based on someone’s real life experiences.

  2. Quite a bit of it is complete fabrication.

  As you read through it, you’ll probably think that you recognise all the bits which fall neatly into either of the two categories above; you’ll probably be wrong.

  FOREWORD

  Life is made up of moments. There are good moments and bad moments, then there are periods that are merely there to fill the gaps between the good and bad moments. You could initially consider each moment to be determined by three things;

  Someone being in

  1. a certain place at

  2. a certain time whilst

  3. a certain something is going on.

  However, there are two other things that are important to make up a moment – two people can be at the same opera, at the same time, in the same concert hall. The one may be having the most wonderful experience of their life whilst the other may be considering puncturing their own ear drums with the nearest sharp object to stop what they believe to be an infuriating racket. Hence the fourth element of what makes a moment is …

  4. the way that an individual reacts in any given situation that life may throw at them.

  The final part of what makes up a moment is the part that is beyond all of our control and takes place no matter how well we react and no matter what we do. It is sometimes what differentiates between having the best day of your life from having the worst day of your life, and that final part is

  5. Just pure luck; or as some people would have it, being in the hands of the gods.

  Elements 1, 2, 3 and 5 are very much just externally driven factors, mostly beyond our control anyway, though to be fair, we can sometimes influence our whereabouts to match certain times. However, we are rarely able to have a lot of influence of what may be happening whilst we are there.

  It is the fourth element that we can have control over, the way we choose to react, and it is that element that we most often mishandle.

  The life of an immigrant to the UK can throw up all sorts of moments, often leaving people wondering if they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when an Unfortunate Incident happens to take place. The way that the situation is handled by any person is what distinguishes optimists from pessimists, extroverts from introverts, go-getters from the down trodden. It is this part of an individual’s makeup that determines which journey through life will be taken and which path through life’s fare will be forged.

  GLOSSARY

  Golland: A fictional, corporate-like environment, which is the home of the gods.

  Umhlabathi: A Zulu word meaning, ‘The Earth’.

  Tempus: A fictional god in charge of Time.

  Bondje: The supreme god from Caribbean mythology.

  Perun: The highest god of the pantheon, and god of thunder and lightning in Slavic mythology.

  Altjira: Creator of the earth according to Australian mythology.

  Uluru: A sacred rock for the Aboriginal people; also known as Ayer’s Rock.

  Apistotookii: Creator of the earth according to the Blackfoot Native Indian religion.

  Chiminigagua: Creator of the earth according to the Muisca people of the Andes in South America.

  Katonda Buganda: Creator of all things according to the Buganda people of East Africa.

  Yu-Yu: A fictional god, re-named from a mythical Asian god, Phra-Ram, creator of all things.

  Obeah: A sorcery, practised in the Caribbean.

  Mal de Ojo: The evil eye, a legendary curse.

  Engimono: Traditional Japanese lucky charm.

  Amadlozi: African spiritual figures, ancestors of the Nguni.

  iJuba: An alcohol based yogurt-like beer, mainly drunk by African workers.

  Ubhiya: Zulu word for beer, or beer house; often used to refer to a small house or room where African workers would stop off on their way home for a “quick drink”.

  Braai: Abbreviated version of the Afrikaans word braaivleis, literally meaning, ‘roast meat’, used to describe a barbecue.

  Tavarisch: Russian word meaning, ‘comrade’.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Golland 1.1 Sadderday

  It was always the same; the poor old Coordinator would have to sift through all the feedback from the meeting’s KEEP / STOP / START session at the end of the event and try to get some meaningful and helpful data put together in order for there to be, quote, continuous improvement, unquote. There was always the usual stuff about keeping the meetings off-site away from normal distractions, and there would always be some who would complain that the room had been too hot whilst others at the same meeting would be too cold – there was no pleasing some of the gods.

  To be fair to The Management, it was following such feedback on a recurring basis that they had agreed to make two special days, which they called Freezeday and Fryday, the first being to accommodate those who preferred the colder environment whilst the second was, not surprisingly, geared to those gods who tended to be a bit more relaxed and enjoyed those warmer moments. These two days became part of the regular week, and were deemed to be so successful that The Management decided to introduce a system wh
ereby other gods could give direct feedback to them via the Celestial Registration And Proactive network, commonly known as the CRAP network. Following that, The Management was inundated with CRAP ideas for a long time, but they were able to distil some of them down to a few workable items, most of which they made new days around for the gods to work out their issues on the associated day.

  So, for example, some of the gods felt it would be beneficial if there was a special occasion when they could raise their concerns with The Management with an amnesty which meant they could not be taken to task for problems they might raise – this became known as Moanday. Some of the gods felt there was a distinct lack of music around the place, so if some were introduced then it might help them feel more creative – this turned into Tunesday. On a similar theme to Moanday, some gods felt it would be beneficial to have a time when they could air their personal grievances to their supervisors on a 1:1 basis – welcome to Woesday. It had been recognised for some time that openly grieving on sad occasions was a deeply cathartic exercise and part of a natural healing process and so Sadderday was born. Realising that there was only one day of the week remaining as yet un-named via this new process, some wag of a god had anonymously put into the CRAP system that, being as how all this moaning, woes and sadness would be coming around again sooner than people might be expecting or indeed wanting, how about we call the last day Soonday. It later came about that one of the other gods snitched to Management as to the source of this idea, and that source was last heard of on a special assignment heading up a small team in Purgatory.

  Tempus was a very contented soul. The main purpose of his existence was to studiously flip over the huge double-bulbed mechanism around the golden axle through which it pivoted, every time the luminous grains finally emptied from the upper to the lower bulb. On the front of the top bulb in big bold letters was the word FUTURE; on the bottom one, the word PAST. On the reverse of each bulb, written in exactly the same style, but this time upside down, were the words PAST and FUTURE. Fixed to the golden axle was a single sign, always pointing forward, always saying NOW. So, every time Tempus flipped the bulb over 180 degrees once the top bulb had emptied, much to his delight, another full FUTURE bulb appeared above the NOW axle, and the PAST had been completely wiped out, albeit momentarily, only to start filling again straight away as more and more grains rushed through NOW. He did notice, however, that occasionally some of the grains would stick to the sides of the bulb, so that, no matter how much he tried banging on the side of the bulb, some things would always be in the future, never quite making it to NOW, and some things always seemed to be stuck in the PAST.

  After ten turnovers, each carefully noted by moving one incandescent orb from a pile on the left of a silken thread to the right until there were no more of the ten orbs remaining on the left side, his job was then to announce in a solemn voice, that it was now a new day, and he would look at his chart to see where they were, then would proclaim the new day according to the list that The Management had given him. The order was Soonday, Moanday, Tunesday, Woesday, Freezeday, Fryday and Sadderday. Once all the ten orbs were over on the right-hand side of the silken thread and each day had been announced in order, his instructions were to repeat the process, but this time by moving the orbs from the right to the left back along the thread each time the bulb emptied. He was initially a bit confused by this, and in the early times he had in fact started to announce the days in reverse order after moving the orbs from right to left, but once it had been explained to him using the simplest words that his supervisor could come up with (his supervisor had started with “Hey, Tempus, we need to dialogue over this” but quickly realised that a rather more straight-forward phrase was probably called for once he saw Tempus’ blank expression), he eventually got the hang of it. Tempus liked the regularity of his work, even though he couldn’t fully understand how it all fitted together and what the other gods actually did once he made his announcements. Regardless of his lack of understanding, or possibly because of it, Tempus would dutifully execute his role without malice or rancour, day in day out, for ever.

  It was this simple process that kept everybody on schedule no matter what they were doing, as this unassuming procedure that Tempus carried out was beamed into every single area that existed in Golland; there was no argument about it, Tempus was the best timekeeper ever.

  She hated it when directives came straight down from The Management. It always seemed to be something banal or incomprehensible which would end up causing more obstruction to the usual smooth running of Her department, and previous experience had proven Her to be right more often than not.

  You need to organise a team-building event for your department, She had been informed. She had tried to rebut the suggestion, pointing out that Her’s was one of the highest performing groups within the Whole System.

  We can all always do better, came back the reply, and anyway, it’s the latest management think, so, suck it up and get on with it.

  She had gone back to a serene area in Her sector and cursed quietly to Herself.

  “Team building, team building…” She quietly repeated the phrase idly over and over again to Herself in the hope that something inspirational may come into where Her head might have been.

  “Got it!” She exclaimed out loud. “My reports often refer to me as The Creator, so I’ll get them doing some artistic design classes where they can work together to come up with joint creations. Once a week should be plenty. Let’s give it two weeks.” She felt pleased with Her idea and smiled smugly to Herself as She sang Her motivational chant that She had made up for whenever She thought She had come up with a great idea – “Who’s the Top God, with the knees of a bee. I’s that god, none’s better than me – oh yeah, baby,” and with that She de-manifested in a strange and unworldly fashion.

  Tempus had announced that today was Sadderday a couple of turns ago, and The Creator had forewarned her reports that She wasn’t going to have any of the usual downbeat nonsense that usually cropped up during this day.

  “No, not today,” She had chastised one of her team as he had started to offload how sad he was feeling since he had dropped the Soonday culprit in the mire and he hadn’t seen him since.

  “No, today is going to be the first of our team building exercises,” She continued, “and the topic is Creativity. You’ve got the rest of this turn of the bulb to sort yourselves into three teams, then by the time that the bulb of Tempus’s next turn runs out, you’ve each got to have contributed an area to My masterpiece I created during last week. So, off you go.”

  There was the usual confusion common to starting all break-out groups as various gods expressed what they thought She wanted, whilst others argued, “Bullshit, that’s not what She said,” whilst still others would just quietly skulk in the background waiting for the usual alpha gods to take up the leadership/bossing about roles in the task. Eventually, after copious amounts of discussion and debate, with two thirds of the second bulb run through already, they started the task.

  The FUTURE bulb was now nearly empty.

  Bondje pursed what would have been his lips, if he had had a body, and frowned.

  “There’s something missing,” he exclaimed exasperatedly, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was exactly, if he had had a finger to put anywhere.

  He looked over at Altjira, who was quietly working a swirling mass of material into a particularly barren area, with one noticeable bump of Uluru.

  Even the northern and southern rivals Apistotookii and Chiminigagua seemed to be content with their lot, working away at their creations and gently moulding artistic ranges to the west of their respective regions.

  “You need mountains!” boomed Perun, lightning bolts cascading around in a wild frenzy as he feverishly worked away at what would one day be called the Urals.

  “Yes, that’s it! Mountains!” cried Bondje, and forced up a solitary lump in his little piece sandwiched between the much more senior gods of the Nor
th and South Americas.

  “That won’t do!” boomed Perun for a second time, “You need at least two,” and with that, a second bump to match the first rose out of the swirling mass.

  Katonda Buganda looked up from his own swirling creation; “You know what?” he said. “Looks like a pair of tits,” and with the African belly laugh he was famous for, he carried on with his work, chuckling all the way to the end of the class.

  “Boys,” muttered Yu-Yu with a shake of her head, adding more colour to her already beautiful landscape which would eventually become Asia.

  “Okay everyone,” The Creator called out, watching the last grains of the time-piece disappear from the FUTURE bulb into the PAST bulb, “That’s time I’m afraid.”

  She surveyed the results of Her team’s work.

  “Not bad, not bad,” She muttered to Herself as She looked down at the various creations that lay before Her. They had started with the lump of rock She had made about a week ago, to which She had given the name Umhlabathi. Onto this base they had each put their own areas, trying, but not always succeeding, to avoid any over-lapping where possible. She had correctly reasoned that to make a good job of this would require a lot of working together, something that The Management seemed to like in principle, though was not always recognised in practice. There was still something though that wasn’t quite right with what they had put together.

  “Somehow, I still think it needs a little something.” She sighed, and looked again. There were nice dry hard bits, lots of wet bits, tall bits, flat bits, empty hot bits, empty cold bits with lots of white stuff, bits with lots of funny-looking green things which started off little then just expanded at varying rates – all sorts of odds and ends. Earlier in the week She had had the brilliant idea of putting lots of different things on both the dry bits and the wet bits, and giving them the ability to move around and make funny noises. Initially, She found this very amusing until She realized that soon all these moving bits somehow kept mysteriously multiplying, though She couldn’t really work out how. However, She had noticed that occasionally the noisy moving things, unlike the quiet, big green non-moving things, did seem to get on top of each other now and again, make several sudden jerky movements, then go off on their separate ways. She found a good solution to this potentially ever-expanding situation by ensuring that after a certain period of time, the bigger, noisy moving things would eventually wear out and just stop working, then rot away, which would make room for the new, smaller noisy moving things to take their place.