He is large. Every aspect of him. Unnaturally so. Hands hairy like hams each larger than a quarter pound of the butcher’s choicest. A mountain of a chest atop which sits a pebble of a head. In which, I suspect there is a pea of a brain. His arms in stark contrast are disproportionately thin, like the spindly branches of a Baobab sticking out from its massive trunk. I have never seen his legs, which are always shrouded in the mysterious lungi but his feet which peep out from beneath the folds of his regal robes truly defy imagination. They would almost certainly have bagged several ribbons at any of the garden shows, coming in far ahead of the more commonplace marrows, melons and pumpkins.
So doesn’t so much move as roll, a mode of locomotion somewhere in between the kite fish and the amoeba. And when he sits, its an elaborate symphony of joint and muscular co-ordination accompanied by surprisingly audible exhalations. In seated mode, his visage is not unlike that of an egg. Small rotund head, leading on to that flowing quadruple chin which cascades over this chest till it meets the large placid lake of his stomach, under which the rest of him resides. A laugh begins as a small tremor of the facial muscles, gradually spreads across his face till it engulfs his entire body, transfiguring it into a gently quivering mass. Utter even a syllable that is of interest to him and the pebble does a 360. From somewhere within the folds of the baobab trunk a spindly branch emerges and a short stubby finger pushes his glasses back from the tip of this nose. And speech is always accompanied by action, notable for considerable economy of movement. The spindly branches, if being frequently used to accent his diatribe, are restrained from retreating into the folds of the baobab trunk. Rather that remain perched at the confluence of the cascading chin and the stomach, wiggling this way and that according to the point being made.
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