WHO IS the writer here! According to a German saying “Life is writing the best stories.“ It is, however, Wole who keeps telling the best stories of, from and about life. All I can do is to try to re-tell some in a rather dilletantesque fashion…
Sometime into the new millenium he is reading in the town of Weilheim, in Bavaria, whose secondary school students – thanks to the initiative of ‘the DENK’ (see below) have since awarded him their annual Literature Prize.
And as usual he reads ‘far beyond the agreed honorarium’ to an enthusiastic audience; with a long discussion as an extra. We reach the Italian restaurant only around midnight. His new friend, ‘the Denk’, (The THINK), a German high school teacher by the name of DENK, and the ‘number one defender of“orthodox German orthography”’, has told the owner he must keep it open beyond hours because of the ‘famous shon of....’
Wole is – once again – in one of his best moods. All the more so since Il Padrone really serves some of the best Italian Reds (na, later some excellent Grappa as well). Wole is again the unequalled world champion of ORATURE!
But the problem is that he entirely forgets about the excellent meal, with the Pasta and the fine seafood going cold. Several times I try to warn him, telling him to ‘please shut up and eat. Now I am going to tell a story!’ Which earns me a firm rebuke:
“Who is the writer here? You or me!“
Which, in turn, earned me half a dozen rebukes afterwards, from the politically correct female German students of African Studies, anthropology and what have you. And yet another – this time private, laughing, rebuke from the ‘man’:
“Serves you right for trying to keep me from telling a good story!” |
