it isn’t very hard to do”, go the lyrics of a famous song from ages past. I could go on, and sing the whole song for you, the Lord knows, I have sung it, many times, but folks, it was much easier to “pretend” in the good old days. Back in the ancient past, when I was a boy, in the “Ceylon” that I knew, there were certain days of the week set aside just for “pretending”. I am sure that I wasn’t the only one to do this, but, on these days, from morning to night, wherever I went, whatever I did, I used to pretend that I was “acting” the role.

Because I wanted to be an entertainer, from a very early age, including the time I was “on-stage”, around 1945/6, singing “kunuharapa-baila”, I had picked up at the age of around ten, I pretended/acted, that I knew what I was doing, when I really did not know what the hell I was singing about.

My audiences were NOT pretending. They were having a ball, laughing their heads off, that’s all that really mattered to me.

     In this day & age, to make a long story short, I still am attracted to pretending, but this is certainly not “Pretence on my Part”anymore.One only has to just look around to see “Politicians” pretending to be for the “People”, when all they really want to do is to line their own “Pockets”, to see “Millionaires”  pretend to maximize “Trusts”, in order to minimize TAXES (that they  hardly have to pay, today, anyway), to see so-called “Musicians” pretend that it IS “Music”, not “Mayhem”(they’re now deaf in one ear & can’t hear with the other), to hear “Singers”, who pretend to sing by “Slurring” their lyrics, to pretend that China only wants to take-over the Southern “Hemisphere” and does not, now own “Hambanthota”, to do this & that & pretend it is really that & this, (& I could go on all day, but let me now simply say), please listen to this song which is the ultimate pretence of two great Artistes of Country music, Leona Williams & Merle Haggard.