Spent the last few days in Trinidad, to be part of my pardner TC’s band-launching as president of the republic; it was a real test of friendship, sweating in a suit on a hard stadium seat for four hours, but his inaugural speech made it worthwhile. A couple of intellectual friends have already emailed me to diss it as pedestrian and it makes me wonder

So, this time tomorrow night, my old friend will be the new president of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago; helluva thing, as Mr Biswas would have said. Which of us, back at Cave Hill, could have predicted that one of us would occupy the highest office in our little country? (It was always a safe bet thought, that, if that did indeed happen, it wouldn’t be me!)

 I’m not completely sure it

My email programme went crazy this morning - may have something to do with yet another flurry of interruptions in service from my IS-non-P - and resent a whole heap of emails I sent in January and February, which provoked a whole heap of puzzled responses from friends and colleagues. One resent email of mine, e.g., consisted only of one word, “Please”, which, back in January, I’d sent to a friend as a supplement to an email in which  I’d asked a favour, but neglected to end with the polite word; she replied to the one-word email resent this morning by asking, “What you begging for?” Other people’s responses ranged from slightly cross - “Didn’t I give you all of this information last month? Anyway, here it is again!” - to genuinely

Last day, I’d mentioned some clues I’d enjoyed recently in the Telegraph cryptic crossword, which appears in the Trinidad Guardian, and which included, two days ago, a contender for Fiendish Clue of the Year.  The clues I liked weren’t particularly difficult to solve, except for the last one, but they did provoke some chuckles. They were:

Central character taking combination of drugs (7); the solution, formed from

The Telegraph cryptic crossword, which appears in the Trinidad Guardian - the only Caribbean newspaper to offer a cryptic crossword at all, as far as I have been able to discern - served up a few chuckles over the last few days, as well as a contender for Fiendish Clue of the Year (though no challenge to the Most Fiendish Clue of All Time, my Tobgo pardner Simon’s “Bocatots (4,2,4)” that made the blog last year). The last few days have