Tony Deyal | Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink

Last week, having chosen the great Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name ‘Mark Twain’, an American writer, humourist and essayist, people liked it so much that I was asked to continue with a second column about, “Age was an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” I had started by putting my new jokes, including one by the great Mighty Sparrow singing Age Is Just a Number, and another by Dan Lucas, who was born in Germany and came up with Age Is Just a Number in 2026, about keeping a “young spirit” and chasing dreams.

I already had a few for the new column that I thought my friends would love, including “Age is just a number. Mine happens to be unlisted.”; “They say age is just a number. Sure, but in my case, it’s a really big number that also requires a prescription, reading glasses, and orthopaedic shoes.”; “Age is just a number, mostly an alarming count of how many years it has been since I understood what teenagers are talking about.”; “Someone told me age is just a number. I agreed, then I tried to get up after sitting cross-legged on the floor and realised it’s more like a penalty fine.”; “I’m not 40. I’m 18 with 22 years of experience.”; “Age is just a number, but yours is starting to sound like a ZIP code.”; and, for me, I very quickly heard Sir Norman Wisdom and had to stop for a new and different number, “As you get older, three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can’t remember the other two.”

Fortunately, a lot of our people, especially on the phones, on television and reaching out to children at school even, to tell them to come home quickly because there would be thunderstorms and rain over the next four days in our country. Everybody, rich or poor, had to deal with it. More, they had to make sure they and their children would be safe. Worse, as several people told the rest of us, “Make sure you have plenty of water and, even so, given that it will be for four days, water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!” Imagine!

What I found in the middle of helping my mother and father, neighbours and others who needed help was that they found a way to feel a little better, to survive and laugh rather than cry, as well as work and joke instead of hiding under the bed. The jokers first started with, “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink” and they started with, “That water problem is caused by the computer after falling into the pool.” Then they told the neighbours, “What did one raindrop say to the other? Two’s company, three’s a cloud.” Another asked, “What do you call a bear in your area in the downpour? A drizzly dear.” Most of the jokes in our area went with, “All you mad or what? You trying to frighten us when things are already bad and getting much worse!” That didn’t help because one asked, “Why did Iron Man sleep out in the rain?” To get some runs. Another came up with “When does it rain money instead of bad days and maybe death even?” and told us, “When there’s a change in the weather.” Unfortunately, the weather was getting worse instead of better.

That is because we in the Caribbean are in trouble every year for up to four months or more. What is worse, according to most of us, is that it is the worst time, especially when you have no choice but to live there, especially so many of us, our family and our children. Or, interestingly, there are people coming in for enjoyment, and even family with small children, coming to spend some time. The experts make it clear that the worst time to visit the Caribbean is from mid-August through October, which is the peak of the region’s hurricane season. The official hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, but the highest concentration of severe storms and hurricanes happens between mid-August and late October.

According to a March 2025 study from Goethe University Frankfurt, climate change and increasing sea surface temperatures will cause extreme weather events in the region to become more frequent in the coming years, a trend that will continue to impact the travel industry. In other words, just to be sure, please tell me what exactly is the worst time to visit the Caribbean islands? You need to know that hurricane season in the Caribbean is longer than many people realise. The Barbados-based Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) and The University of the West Indies Climate Studies Group Mona (UWI CSGM) are urging governments, businesses, farmers and households across the region to brace for potentially severe climate extremes as El Niño conditions continue to strengthen. The agencies warn that the intensifying El Niño is expected to exacerbate the hot and dry conditions already affecting many Caribbean territories, increasing the risk of drought, extreme heat, wildfires and marine heatwaves. El Niño, a climate phenomenon characterised by above-average sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, is known to influence weather patterns worldwide, often triggering droughts, heatwaves and flooding in tropical regions.

Yet, wherever I go or read, whether it is El Niño or just old talk in the road, there are jokes to make them feel “better” in the worst days. For instance, I hear that “Gully-washer” is a sudden, heavy downpour that fills up street gutters fast, “Frog-stranger” is an intense storm where there is just too much water everywhere, and “Bucketing down” is used when the sky opens completely. There are also funny and colourful regional names for rain, including “frog-strangers”, “gully-mashers,” and “goose-browsers”. Other people see it differently, like “Light Rain”, where it sounds good. Imagine it is a “sprinkle” with a very light, scattered fall of rainwater. We ran outside and jumped around with the others. “Drizzle” was light rain that falls in tiny, fine drops. No problem. We all went out in the rain and jumped around. Then there was still a light rain but it was “Spitting”, with tiny drops of rain that just started to fall. Time to run home before Mom shouting that, if we didn’t come in we would have a few “lips” from her. Then it gets to “shower” and, worse, “rain”, where water drops falling from the sky do so steadily. As we say, “dark like bush”. And finally, from “downpour” to “cloudburst”. In other words, from a lot of heavy rain falling in a short time and we’re okay and may even run out to play.

However, when “pouring” with heavy rain, fast and strong and then “torrential” rain that was heavy and going for what we think would be days and years, with “deluge” that could go on for days, like now, we go to Mom and ask, “Ma, what will happen? We go drown Ma?” Even then, our friends added, “Why did the cloud stay home from work? It was under the weather.”

Tony Deyal said one of his friends, while the rain was sheeting down, told a joke and it cracked! Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com