Since New Year’s Day I’ve been more or less in constant discomfort, and, for all of January, in actual pain (at least several times a day). It’s not nearly as bad, now, as it was, thank Science, because I’ve been OD-ing on antiinflammatory drugs for the last three weeks. At first, I’d diagnosed myself with carpal tunnel syndrome (from all the typing) in my right wrist and left elbow, but I gave myself a second opinion when I recalled that both injuries presented their first symptoms on New Year’s morning, and might well have been sustained on Old Year’s Night, when I could have pronated my wrist in any of half-a-dozen ways, the least glamorous (and enjoyable) of which was opening a second bottle of champagne under the influence

What were the chances of the same clown supporting two losing teams in two different cities at the same time on the same night? The only consolation is that, in the current domestic Caribbean Nagico Super 50-over competition, Trinidad & Tobago, where I’m from, lost to Barbados, where I live, so it’s a case of my hometown getting a cutarse from my hometown; but what the firetruck can anyone say about the Denver Broncos’ miserable performance in the Super Bowl last night?

Now everyone in North America had cold feet last night but did the Broncos have to have a cold-start as well? What was

Finally watched Catherine “The Bad Girl de French Cinema” Breillat’s Fat Girl yesterday and am still floored by it; may never quite recover from it fully, like malaria. In a way, I’ve been trying to see it since Che Lovelace, the artist, had invited me up to the Studio Film Club’s Thursday night screening of it ages and ages ago; could be 2004 or earlier. The film itself was released in 2001 as A Ma Soeurl – which I think means, ‘To My Sister”, but, knowing the French and the whole translation thing, could well mean, “The Girl with the Tattoo Who Likes Extra Fries” – and the greatest consolation I can take is that Roxane Mesquida was 20 when

Finally got on top of work enough to watch the first game of the Australian Open I could: this morning’s final between Rafa Nadal and the old Swiss guy who people will still remember as “Not Federer”. (You know bad things are for Stan Wawrinka? Not remembering his name myself, though I watched him win not an hour ago, I just googled “Nadal plus Australia Open plus final” – and the first references that come up are to his semi-final against Roger Federer!)

Nadal was gracious in defeat on the court, as we all now expect of him, but, in the longer press conference, alone at the table, his disappointment

Just got my first chance to listen to two of David Rudder’s new songs back-to-back, two of the few bits of higher ground in a not-yet-three-week-old year already flooded with unrelenting professional demands, compounded by mechanical and electronic failures/challenges. Thank God for small mercies and “Smallie Dancing”, David’s song about Smallie, the otherwise unknown guy who never relinquishes the stage at Panorama, dancing with every steelband as