My daughter, not quite yet 15, sits her first O’level in the morning, and her second on Wednesday. At her school, everyone sits English in form four. The thinking is that good English students will get their grade one and be done with English for good, and fair to poor students will get a chance to improve their grade next year, if they don’t do well tomorrow.

She sits her maths CXC the next day since she is one of the 20-best maths students in her year and the school reckons that exceptionally good maths students will

Yesterday’s blog, incited as much as excited by my good pardner Raymond Ramchaitar’s Wednesday Guardian column about the upcoming NGC Bocas Literary Festival in Port of Spain (24-28 April) has provoked exactly the kind of response I’d hoped for, in an email from Nicholas Laughlin, editor of Caribbean Beat, Caribbean Review of Books, director of the Alice Yard art space and one of the key organisers of the lit fest. It is reprinted here with his permission, and the caveat that it was dashed off hastily (and making you wonder what he’d said, given time....)

In my blog yesterday, I’d said that Raymond had developed his column in a way that, had it been a university essay, might have earned him an A at Cambridge and a fail at UWI.  

Here, then, is Nicholas’ reply, offered as a PS

Sometimes you don’t where to turn with Trinis because is like they only spin around; and, even then, it’s often only like top in mud. On Wednesday, my good pardner Raymond Ramchaitar’s Guardian column was inspired by the upcoming NGC Bocas Literary Festival in Port of Spain (24-28 April - I’ll be chatting with Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh on the 26th, for those who are interested).

Raymond made a point that was difficult to assail: that Bocas, like most modern literary festivals,

On Easter Sunday just gone, the Guardian published the letter below under the rubric, "Shame on BC".

Dear Sir
The article by BC Pires that appeared in your Good Friday edition was a poor attempt to lampoon the holiest event in the Christian calendar - the passion death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This self confessed agnostic is entitled to his views but it is unnecessary for him to denigrate this Christian celebration. Thankfully for him in keeping with Christian teaching

The Easter weekend is shaping up to be hot, windy and dry - just the way the multitudes arriving from cold, wet England like it. From the window near my desk, if I crane my head, I can occasionally see jumbo jets beginning their descent, even if, way in the distance they look more like Dash-8s. The Immigration lines at Grantley Adams Airport can sometimes look more like queues at Harrods.

But go to Accra Beach tomorrow and you’re more likely to bounce up someone from Lange than Regent’s Park, from Bayshore than from Balham, from