IF I HAD what lawyers call, “an insurable interest” in the Trinidadian Minister of Works, I’d take out a term policy on his life. This rainy season could prove both his own guava season and proximate cause of death. Nothing can be done to stop the rain Trinidadians have, for generations, done everything possible to increase the likelihood, frequency and intensity of floods. Not even God can turn back a century of bad decisions. Read more

After more than two decades of writing columns for newspapers, I finally persuaded them to reprint earlier, well-received columns and give me a paid holiday in September. I think they gave in, not because of the need for a creative break I outlined, but because they knew that newspaper sales are then the lowest for the year, with people saving every penny for back-to-school costs). In any event, in my most extended newspaper holiday, ever, I’m taking my September holiday. This column first appeared on Friday 10 July 2013.

My wife bought me these excellent memory-improvement tablets; of course I keep forgetting to take them, indeed, have actually taken to throwing them away (making up in deviousness whatever I’m losing in recollection) so she won’t notice that the level of pills is not being depleted. One way or the other, though, the bottle and the game will soon be up; but I do have what I think would be a foolproof excuse: I forgot.By a tangentially linked process—I wouldn’t say I remembered them—the memory pills did get me thinking about those prescription drug TV ads that run in the most expensive primetime advertising slots. (Pharmaceutical companies can afford them; they’ve forgotten more about profits than Donald Trump will ever learn.)

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After more than two decades of writing columns for newspapers, I finally persuaded them to reprint earlier, well-received columns and give me a paid holiday in September. I think they gave in, not because of the need for a creative break I outlined, but because they knew that newspaper sales are then the lowest for the year, with people saving every penny for back-to-school costs). In any event, in my most extended newspaper holiday, ever, I’m taking my September holiday. This column first appeared on Friday 20 July 2012.

IT’S ONE OF my abiding disappointments that I have to wash my hair every week. You’d think something so obviously negligible could be safely permanently ignored, like people who act on principle and not out of self-interest in Trinidad, but, no, that smattering of growth that still struggles to emanate from a small and ever-shrinking portion of my follicular endowment requires depressingly regular attention. Washing my hair every Saturday is like mowing the lawn every week in dry season: you can do it, but why would you go to all that trouble for so little effect? It’s like a fat person drinking Diet Coke: dude, you’re not fooling anybody.

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Today’s Number One Film:

A Clockwork Orange, BEST FILM OF THE DAY 12.42 midday HBO Plus. Watch this if you liked Blade Runner, American History X or Children of Men. Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s novel has the same ending as the US version of the book – and few cinefiles would argue against that last, strangely loving shot of Malcom McDowell’s face contorted dreadfully as he imagines evil actions.

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I’m so in love with this girl called Paradise/ I’m so sorry I lost my true love/ Somebody told me I should take some of the blame/ When I put the facts together, I hang my head in shame/ – The rock-and-roll band jointpop, from the song, “Who Shot Paradise?”

TRINIDAD IS dead. After hanging on for a few decades by a few slim threads – a Minshall King of Carnival here, a World Cup Finals qualification there – the last bit of Trinidad you could love had its throat slit for no good reason in Claire Broadbridge’s bedroom in Fondes Amandes last week.

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