13. A Cro Magnon Preparation

STEPPING BACK IN TIME PART 13

Parties were rare in Owongo’s Cro Magnon community, except at the end of what they might have called the year, but didn’t. It was then that everyone celebrated the ending of a season and prayed to whatever god they believed in that there would be another season just as good in the future, and seasons being what they are there often was. The days had become shorter and the nights correspondingly longer, like it had always been, and such a regular beat of the great drum of change by the deities in charge of time needed to be acknowledged by the humble cave people.

It needed celebration. It needed what they would have called wine, but didn’t because it just wasn’t good enough to be called anything but a toxic brew that numbed the brain and sent weary folk to sleep. And it was during that celebration that those who brewed the liquid they called booze found their stocks depleted except, maybe, for tiny quantities for personal use kept by those who could actually tolerate the stuff.

I have seen the records kept on the cave wall where Owongo lived and although interpretation of semi-erased squiggles might seem to be a hit and miss affair, I am convinced of the broad strokes of what the young fellow did.

Hw made an announcement. Without such organs as national or even local press and their endless personal columns in which such announcements as births, marriages and deaths are regularly made so that everyone knows what’s going on, he had to use word of mouth. And that is what he did.

He popped into the cave next door to his own where Willyscab’s eldest son Squinteye was in charge of brewing toxic liquids in the absence of his father. He wasn’t bad at it and many of the neighbours actually suggested that his booze was superior to that of his father. But Sqinteye enjoyed the task because it meant that he wasn’t expected to go out into the wilds in hunting parties searching, often for days at the time, for the sort of prey that would feed as many families as there were hunters.

“You there, Squinteye?” called Owongo from the cave entrance, and the cross-eyed brewer replied cheerily that he was and that Owongo was welcome to join him over his stone cauldron, though he didn’t call it a cauldron, of course. Things like that weren’t given names. If it was thought anything, the giving of grunts to such objects was looked on as a waste of an emerging language and the only important thing was the stuff they produced, like booze in copious quantities.

“Me having home with Mirumda,” he told the brewer’s son.

“You young, Owongo,” observed Squinteye, and then he eyed Owongo’s loincloth, which was freshly laundered and showed green stains of verdigris from the stones by the stream, stones which, in future years when men got fed up with weaponising stones and invented bronze, would be called copper. “But maybe Owongo man enough,” he added thoughtfully, nodding.

Like many men down many ages Owongo was flattered when the proportions of his genitalia were praised, and he blushed accordingly.

“Mirumda think so,” he murmured. “Anyway, we want party. We want booze. We want laughter and song.”

“Better see Rosie Lee,” advised Squinteye, “she sing beautiful songs. Romantic ballads about all manner of manly things. And womanly. She know saucy songs about t*****s!” and he grinned as he remembered some of the lyrics that Rosie Lee cast around her as she slaved away doing her father’s filthy washing at the stream.

“Then I see Rosie Lee,” agreed Owongo, “I learn mucky songs!”

Squinteye slapped him on the back. “Good for Owongo!” he laughed, and all this serves to demonstrate how long before opera or even hymns were invented, early man had a penchant for more personal musical renditions, their lyrics often of a dubious nature.

Owongo proceeded to do a round of those villagers who were not out hunting, and amongst them was actually Rosie Lee of smutty sing-song fame.

“You come to Owongo party?” he asked.

“What’s party?” asked Rosie Lee curiously.

“Party songs and booze, like winter feast, but not winter,” explained Owongo, “Owongo and Mirumda set up cave together. Be loving, have nippers. Need party so everyone knows Owongo has Mirumda and Mirumda has Owongo. Rosie Lee sing mucky songs, make people laugh!”

“What good idea!”exclaimed the young singer in a fine contralto, “me sing songs of lust and body parts! Of foul winds and fouler dirt!”

“And drink booze,” smiled Owongo.

Now, I don’t want to be criticised for recreating a conversation that may not have been precisely as I have recorded it, but well over thirty thousand years is long enough for the exact nature of a verbal debate to be lost to the ravages of time. Or something like that. But it’s almost certain that some words were passed between various people and I’ve been obliged to simplify things because I’m ignorant of exact details. Owongo’s squiggles were never that detailed.

After ensuring that Rosie Lee would, indeed regale his guests with merriment in song, Owongo went round the rest of the community, inviting many but ignoring some. For instance, he had no time for the self-appointed medicine man cum witch doctor, Goboloff for fear that he might make all his guests ill with his actual presence. And there were others he didn’t like or that Mirumda suggested she wouldn’t want anywhere near them at their precious moment.

The merging of Owongo and Mirumda as a couple joined by their mutual affection for each other was becoming quite the talking point of the community, and as the day he had decided should be party day grew near the attention to hygiene at the river became more intense with the thumping of hard rocks on coarsely woven fabric and matted animal skins being loud in the air from dawn to dusk.

“So this is man-woman joining party,” murmured one old gaffer to another as he tried to shift an ugly stain from an uglier loin cloth, “we not think of it before.”

“Silly us!” exclaimed his pal. Both old gaffers were in their thirties and their regrets were clear to see. So many wasted years, so much time to be caught up...

And as the day for Owongo and Mirumda’s cave-joining day came closer the excitement in the community became tangible.

© Peter Rogerson 03.03.22

...