One of the nicest pieces of pure blind luck I’ve had in my life is that my daughter, my first child, was born four days after my own birthday. (It was like, my ex-wife opined, my daughter was determined I would not have a child before I was 40!) She was born, fittingly, on the anniversary of D-Day, and her arrival in our lives made us much difference to us as the Allies landing in Normandy did to France.

It’s the nicest arrangement of birthday dates possible: her’s is close enough to mine

Spent the lead up to today’s big birthday - 55 and counting - in the best personal company I’ve ever had, my own family, and some of the finest artistic company I’ve ever had the good luck to cue up one-by-one. On Thursday, I stumbled on a book that’s languished unread on my shelf for years, though theoretically high on the reading list, and what a pleasant surprise it was to discover, in the first two or three pages of Snow, just why Orhan Pamuk got the Nobel Literature prize. Writing rarely gets as good as this, at once immediately approachable and intimidatingly deep; so far, it’s been like getting come hither eyes from a beautiful woman you never

Former general manager, editor-in-chief and major-bad-dog at the Trinidad Express, Owen Baptiste, turned 80 today, according to the email from his wife, Rhona, in one of the email round robins that comes to my inbox. He joins the lion, Basdeo Panday, who turned 80 in the last fortnight, I’m told, and shares a birthday with the greatest rat ever to have won the Nobel Peace prize, Henry Kissinger, who is, apparently, 90 years old today; and here’s hoping that OB lives longer than Nixon’s former right-hand man, and enjoys a decent quality of life right to the end; whatever else he may have done, Owen Baptiste was the man who hired me at the Express in January 1988, allowing me to move from the practise of law to apprenticeship in writing.

Contemplation of the above will probably form at least the start of this week’s TGIF, but, for now, let me just wish OB a happy bir’day and many more, as long as he wants ‘em to keep coming.

And let me repeat the only good thing I ever heard about Henry Kissinger: a very silly, but

The only good to have come out of the insane murder of the British soldier in south London yesterday was the universal condemnation of it by Muslim groups. It’s very small comfort in the most horrendous act the world has witnessed since 9/11 - this one striking our hearts cold because it was so intensely personal.

When the dust finally settles, the assailants involved will almost certainly turn out to be what they call in England, “educationally sub-normal”, but that won’t help, either. We will, at some stage, have to

There was a sad tinge added to the day of my daughter’s first O’level, yesterday, by my realisation that her first godmother, whom we had to fire for non-performance, was completely ignorant of everything to do with her life. It’s a column in itself, indeed, columns in themselves, the pleasant one about how West Indians bestow their children’s godparent gigs on the people they love most at the moment, as well as the separate, depressing column about changes