Journal of a jackbooted jackass

Gaston de ROSAYRO

Sammy Jacks modestly believed his name was a household word although it was not even in his own humble abode. He crowed like a little bantam rooster, which he actually resembles, when it appeared he was wrong.

To begin at the beginning, Sammy Jacks is a sort of journeyman journalist who has somehow managed to make a living out of juggling words and phrases, not always his own. It does not take an analytical mind to conceive that SJ is essentially a plagiarist - a man with a penchant for literary grand larceny.

Sammy claims there happened to be a reader out there somewhere, who thought his weekly column in a Hong Kong newspaper was the cat’s pyjamas. To be perfectly honest, she - yes she, if Sammy was to logically assume that parents do not thrust the moniker Francine on a boy - did not say so in so many words.

Reader Francine, he claims, had written him a letter tinged with affection for his charming, raffish writing style. Again, he did not preserve his professional credibility by stating clearly that those were not her exact words. He held the letter close to his cold heart, not revealing its contents.

He asserted, however, that reader Francine of the soothingly scented monogrammed letterheads and beautiful fist had perceived that his character has been unravelled over those weeks in fragments which she was endeavouring to piece together.

He says that she says in a compelling paragraph that she finds an aura of mystique about him and his column. Her very words, he swears. Her quest for keyhole glimpses, according to the deceitful gospel of Sammy Jacks, seems a compound of unmitigated, impertinent curiosity and a kind of adoration just this side of idolatry.

Francine, he maintained, believed that Sammy Jacks - affectionately known among the fraternity as the “jackbooted jackass” - would be one of the better qualified people to hold forth on the subject of creativity.

It is true that the same reader had asked him some hard-to-measure questions about his character. They included: “Are you a bully? Do you like to drink as much as you say in your column? Have you boxed, as you also imply in your column?”

Unfortunately for SJ he fell ill soon after and requested a few of us to bash out his regular column under a pseudonym. We were reluctant at first but then decided we would charitably fill in for him, collectively pooling our own creative resources. We started off by mentioning that Sammy Jacks was ill. We magnanimously curbed the temptation to allude that besides his physical indisposition, he was terminally sick in the head as well. After much consideration, we judiciously eradicated the phrase that he was a “certified loony”.

And so the collective column read: The subject of creativity is far more complex than one would imagine. We believe that every one of us, in every walk of life, is by natural instinct creative in one way or another. Creativity is defined by most dictionaries as the ability to create.

So, if we were to go back through millennia to the oldest story in the world, we would perceive that our first parents were given the opportunity to be initially creative.

And ever since, all parents have had the opportunity to provide the world with this primeval creative instinct - the ability to create - or rather procreate - and have a jolly good time in the process.

There are, of course, various books on the subject that combine procreation with creativity. But in this day and age they are being updated with disquieting regularity allowing publishers to reap rich dividends from the acres of porn being churned out by some very innovative writers. We do not profess to be experts in this area of creativity and neither do we profess to be panjandrums in our own particular field, journalism - a profession we have been wedded to all our adult life.

So, let us say to our dear reader, Francine, that journalism is a tough business. You do not make it on luck and looks, although we concede that the latter gift is purely coincidental as far as some of us are concerned. As for luck, there are exceptions such as Sammy who has been enjoying a phenomenal streak of good fortune for far too long.

We must also mention that there is absolutely no room for theorists in the literary world. Theorists essentially behave like the American judge who said: “I cannot define pornography but I know it when I see it.” We hope that answers your first question about creativity.

Now to answer some of your other queries such as whether our esteemed colleague Sammy Jacks is a bully. Yes, he did make some attempts to browbeat a few trainee journalists, but appeared unsuccessful at every attempt.

He really had his comeuppance when a willowy, radical female cub-reporter threatened that she was “so pissed off” with him that she would “go to the toilet on his head and drown him”. Witnesses say she also gave him a painful jab in the ribs with her bony elbow. A terrified Sammy evidently did not wait to find out whether her elbow would be worse than her overflow. Besides, he had never learned to swim. He beat a hasty retreat as fast as his stubby little legs could carry him to a corner of the office where he sulked for months.

Yes, Sammy did box at school. They called him the “running slugger.”But what most people do not know is that Sammy Jacks was the only boxer who had always to be carried into the ring as well as out!

Agreed, Sammy enjoys his tipple in moderation. He confines his drinks to a modest couple following a monumental binge in which he made a proper jackass of himself. Sammy was so sloshed that he lost his bearings while seated on a barstool between a hulking bald-headed male New Zealand editor and a comely woman feature writer he fancied.

Completely disorientated, he stood tiptoe on the bar foot-rail and planted a wet, frothy smooch on the bald napper of the male editor. Which simply goes to prove that when you are off target, a miss is as good as a mister?

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