Blog entries

Rainy Day

BCPires — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:34:49 +0100

The satellite pictures tell a plain story of about nine months of rain, it looks like. It’s yellow and red all the way from Martinique to the edge of Brazil; miserable day for anything but I’m hoping at least the thunder and lightning are up around St Kitts or higher when I get on the plane this evening. I know that those Dash-8s are the best planes to fly through storms in, if

you have to fly through a storm – my aeronautical engineer father-in-law has stress...

Budget Day Blah-Blah-Blah

BCPires — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:14:23 +0100

Budget Day in Trinidad & Tobago and you can slice the boredom with a knife. Consider the number of national contractual commitments already made before the new government came into office, which are unalterable without paying almost as much or more in stipulated agreed damages. Add the sharp reduction in income – a substantial-enough shortfall for the ancien regime/modern PNM to

try to make it up in property tax – and you don’t need a corner office in a sk...

Hope Sprangs Eternal

BCPires — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:37:35 +0100

Caught Dennis “Sprangalang” Hall on the radio yesterday, all that’s left of wit on Radio Power 102’s ‘Power Drive’ afternoon show, now that Anil “Spalk” Roberts has put on his jacket-and-tie to captain the Ministry of Sport full time.

Sprang, who began his media career as the character ‘Draxi’ bringing ‘another dub of cultural sprangalang’ to the early TV magazine show, Gayelle, from which

the modern...

Hanging with Raff

BCPires — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 19:32:00 +0100

Pleasant Sunday morning and several people have already emailed me pointing out my colleague, Raffique Shah, had me to hang, as it were, in his column in the Sunday Express today; nice to be of assistance to a pardner, of course, but, when you read it – click on the link below, if you like, and it may take you there, but, since

I’m the one pasting it in and the Internet voodoo always seems to work against me, you can’t be sure

http://www.trinidadexpress...

Giving No Quarter

BCPires — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:21:20 +0100

Several people pounced on my arithmetic yesterday, when I calculated that we had, on 1 September, entered the last quarter of the year. It is, of course, the last third of the year. One friend – an investment mogul, no less, who is actually paid by the quarter “several months behind the wife’s spending” –– emailed me

hoping I hadn’t passed on my mathematical ability or lack thereof to my children, imagining them, I suppose, being duped ...

Do You Remember? Da-da-da-da, September!

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:43:38 +0100

September already. Wow. Seems like only yesterday it was August.

All jokes aside, wasn’t it this very morning we woke up wondering what the new year, the year ten, would bring? And here we are in the last quarter! And now

I think that it’s a reflection that I think about Caribbean unity too much because, based on the European Community and standardization between countries there, and Olde England adopting the metric system, I just wondered if, instead of sayi...

Sex & Drugs & Cryptic Crosswords

BCPires — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:49:04 +0100

Hurricane Earl bypassed Barbados, thankfully – no doubt because God is a Bajan and heard our prayers – but has left in his wake an airless, hot space; you sweat just sitting down. Hard to think at all within those parameters. But here are the crossword clue solutions I know you’ve lost sleep over, over the weekend.

Chap leaves fruit (7).

Mangoes – man goes.

River trade essay dismissed (5). Indus – the river, from industry (trade) minu...

Thursday's Crossword Child

BCPires — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 19:33:16 +0100

The Thursday Telegraph cryptic crossword maintains its dominance of the week, tossing up two nice clues in

Chap leaves fruit (7); and

River trade essay dismissed (5).

Friday’s puzzle did offer the T&T esoterically pleasing

To talk about old part of the Caribbean (6)

And Monday’s did have

Unnecessary to goad Hitler’s bodyguard (8); and

Aphrodite’s emaciated form (9).

But Thursday remains t...

Another Working Day

BCPires — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:03:59 +0100

Working from home is a great idea – until school’s out. From day one of the long vacation, it’s been a process of child-appeasement. Every morning, I feel like WWII British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who returned from Munich on 30 September 1938, waving the agreement that secured, “Peace with honour” –until the German invasion of Poland less than a year later.

In my view, the long vacation is for going outside and getting stung b...

Bone Trinis, 'Bagonians

BCPires — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 22:42:13 +0100

Since yesterday, as only a few people have seemed to realise, the feature I’m have been doing since July for the Monday Guardian in Trinidad, ‘Trini to D’ Bone’, will be appearing in its own dedicated space here at BC Raw. I’m glad to say I can put pix up in the new, purpose-created space. Pictures were a hit-or-miss thing when I was posting the feature in the blog space; sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn’t, like a love affair; or me.

In t...

Love Hate Mail

BCPires — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 16:17:13 +0100

WHILE I’M ALWAYS appreciative of support, and am grateful people took the time after yesterday’s blog to post comments showing they consider my feelings – mostly, when I’m paid close attention, there’s a long-distance scope and crosshairs involved – it’s been a long, long time since I was bothered by hate mail.

When I got my first fan mail in 1988 –

back when it was still actually letters in envelopes with stamps on, delive...

Hate Mail

BCPires — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 16:12:34 +0100

PEOPLE IN MY game know better than to take on hate mail. No matter who or how good you are, once there is a public aspect of your life, you’ll draw comments from what the hip hop people call, ‘the haters’. It’s worth going to the Guardian website on a Friday to see the venom I manage to bring out with Thank God It’s Friday. From some of their comments, you can tell several people have been hating me closely for a long time. Sadly, they all seem to be latent homos...

Mow Better Blues

BCPires — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:39:15 +0100

IT TOOK THREE hours, 15 minutes to mow the first 11,000 sq ft of land I referred to in this space on Sunday. The last time I’d mowed it – which was the first time it was done by an idiot with a hand mower, not a day-jobber on a riding mower – was during the first week of the World Cup. I’d brought it down flat – chipping many a notch in the mower blades, I’m sure, as I unearthed stones, old mufflers, half-bricks kindly left behind by others.

But in t...

'Bago to D' Bone

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:19:00 +0100

Here is the full version of yesterday's Trini to D' Bone, which appeared in the Guardian. I had hoped to be able to post it under the new 'Trini to D' Bone' logo, above, which was designed and handed over to the webmaster two weeks ago; but the best laid plans of mice & men.... Perhaps, by next week, what seems a simple change of the "Cre Ole" logo & 'button' above might be achieved.... In any event, herrrrrrrrre's Girla:

My name is Girla Macmillan and I’m an attend...

Mow the Firetrucker

BCPires — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 15:53:55 +0100

WITH THE SUN baking down already at 7.30am, I’m setting about the task of mowing almost 2,000 square feet of ground today. I can’t say ‘lawn’ or even ‘grass’ because fully 1,100 square feet of that is more bush and razor grass than anything else – but, at least I removed, last day, most of the shrapnel-producing bits of old muffler and half-bricks, which I found (using my ankles,

which caught all the shrapnel the mower blades shot out f...

Telegraph Plus Gregors

BCPires — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 22:18:10 +0100

THURSDAYS SEEM to be good days for the Telegraph cryptic crosswords. Today’s issue has tossed up another pair of chuckles, one of them one of the best silly/clever clues I’ve ever lit upon, so to speak, and even includes the word 'silly'. They are:

How movie ends is silly (5); and

Work willingly with others in activity ahead of dance (4,4).

Answers, as usual, next day.

As lanyap, my ever-watchful pardner Gregors, who was the ...

And Now for Something Completely the Same

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 21:14:12 +0100

THIS INTERNET makes me feel I’m in the opening montage of the second season of the Sixties/Seventies English comedy TV show Monty Python’s Flying Circus, except that it’s me sitting at my desk, not John Cleese, and instead of his, “And now for something completely different”, I’m saying, “And now for something completely the same”.

Over the last two days, our Internet just stopped working – well, not stopped entirely, but

...

It's Only Rock 'n' Roll

BCPires — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:37:37 +0100

Here is the full version of the Trini to D' Bone that appeared in today's Trinidad Guardian.

My name is Damon Homer and I am the lead guitarist of a rock-and-roll band.

I was born in La Puerta. Diego Martin, Amicus [Maternity Hospital]. I was in Petit Valley until I was two, then moved to Blue Range until I was 14. Then my parents split up and I was in and out of Victoria Gardens, Westmoorings, Fairways. Always the West though.

West is best in Trinidad. I live in Santa Cr...

Crossword Solutions

BCPires — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 17:51:34 +0100

THURSDAY’S TELEGRAPH cryptic crossword was a contender for best of the year. It gave rise, on my first pass at it, to three great, chuckle-inducing clues, which became the subject of ‘last day’s’ blog. (By the time I made my second pass, it gave rise to another: Spies a toilet (6) – solution: agents; a gents.

Anyway, for those who

didn’t get them, here are the solutions that made me grin last day.

Little Sarah given talking to f...

Crossword Chuckles

BCPires — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:12:58 +0100

TODAY’S TELEGRAPH cryptic crossword tossed up three good clues in my first pass; since I’ve solved only half the puzzle, more may emerge, but these made me chuckle aloud, almost one after the other (17, 21 and 27 across). I’ll add in a couple from ‘last day’ and give answers ‘next day’ and hope a grin or a laugh is lying in wait for you, too.

Little Sarah given talking to for sauce (5,8)

French newspaper’s disregarding of Fre...