Blog entries

Lighting up Bim Lit Fest

BCPires — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:01:01 +0100

Went to the launch of the first Bim Literary Festival and Book Fair at the Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination last evening. What a trip it was, to be in the same room as George Lamming and Derek Walcott (who arrived late after a 17-hour non-stop journey, which I overheard, because he was hustled to a chair

on the side, right in front of me), as well as the next phalanx, as represented by Earl Lovelace, Austin Clarke and several others.

The keynote speech by...

Jack in the (Penalty?) Box

BCPires — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:31:41 +0100

The Trinidad & Tobago Transparency Institute and Fixin’ T&T have both condemned the appointment of Small Works Minister, Austin “Jack” Warner to act as prime minister while Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar is off on one of her jaunts. I have immense respect for both groups, whose style of dress might well be sackcloth-and-ashes instead of jacket-and-tie - it would at least match the way they are both officially treated in Trinidad. Further, I would personally vo...

Scatter Brains, Hope....

BCPires — Sun, 13 May 2012 13:20:45 +0100

Three weeks ago, I bought English guitar great Jeff Beck's Live at Ronnie Scott's DVD.I’d actually given it to a friend a year before, in the hope he might lend it to me, but, after a year, I reckoned I should get my own. One of the strongest arguments for getting it was that it contains a live version of one of my favourite pieces of music, a tune called “Scatterbrain” from

the Blow by Blow album on which my friend Richard Bailey played all the drums. ...

The Law is an Association

BCPires — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:06:04 +0100

It would be a mistake to think that the statement issued by the Law Association last week that reveals its sorry financial, ethical and organisational state reflects new developments. When I was called to the bar in ’84, the profession was just as bad as it is now, except that the law schools were not graduating 100 lawyers a year every year, so the brouhahas were less frequent and less noticeable. The rubbish has been going on for as long as anyone alive can remember.
One leading senio...

SEA of Whoa

BCPires — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:58:15 +0100

Spare a thought, as you go about your own grownup day, for the little ones of Barbados and Trinidad who, today and tomorrow, endure the 11-Plus and the Secondary Schools Entrance Assessment examinations, respectively. In less time than it takes to watch a half-decent movie, the futures of these 11-year-old children will

be decided. Is it prestige school or piper future for the great hopes of Richmond Street Boys or Wesley Hall Primary?

Unless you’ve gone throug...

Crime of Murder

BCPires — Thu, 03 May 2012 21:56:11 +0100

You know you’re talking about Trinidad when you find yourself feeling a little relieved to discover that a brutal murder may not have been purely impersonal. Last week, a particularly ugly killing took place that shook Trinidad in general and an old law school colleague of mine in particular. I won’t add to the wounds by describing the matter or naming anyone concerned, but you could hardly ask for more convincing proof of the absence of a caring, omnipotent god. No parent should
...

May Not Day

BCPires — Tue, 01 May 2012 21:48:36 +0100

On a May Day that, from direct reports from New York, London and Ottawa, is fairly damp and miserable the world over, you start to wonder why “working-class” didn’t become an international cussword. In my days of extended unemployment in London, I never missed the May Day rally in Clapham Common, because it always cheered me up, watching people trying to pretend they’d rather be in solidarity with one another than in a blanket in front of the fire on their own, eating ...

Star Crossword Lovers

BCPires — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:31:32 +0100

It’s another shrinking club I’m in, the people who love English broadsheet-style cryptic crossword puzzles. I do the Daily Telegraph puzzle any day I’m at home in Barbados or on holiday anywhere in the world. Trinidad trips are usually too hectic to allow the indulgence of

a couple of cups of coffee and a cryptic crossword. I know the Times’ is the best, and the London & Manchester Guardian’s the most fiendish, but the Telegraph has appeared in...

Suburban Home Well Blues

BCPires — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:39:20 +0100

Though I didn’t disclose it – not for fear of spranger zaboca tree invasion, but because getting online was difficult – I returned home from a long road trip late last night, and find myself with an odd case of the suburban home well blues. I don’t know if it’s the rushed greeting with my kids, who both have school today, or the disappointing second Digicel test in

Port of Spain, or the likely-to-be-even-more-disappointing third one that may ...

Academic Feeding Frenzy

BCPires — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:32:03 +0100

A startling story in the Trinidad Guardian yesterday (or day before) recounts what the paper called, "a multimillion dollar-feeding frenzy" among the staff and students of the University of Trinidad and Tobago. The university, set up, I want to believe, by Professor Ken Julien, has been running at a loss, according to a forensic audit

conducted by direction of current AG, Anand Ramlogan, and titbits of info include the $40K-a-month staff member who has drawn his salary faithful...

I Had a Baaaa-aaad Dream

BCPires — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:20:05 +0100

With the West Indies starting the fourth day of the second Digicel Test 55 runs behind the Australian first innings score, and with nine wickets down, the first innings Windies lead that seemed so probable before the rain yesterday afternoon seems all but impossible this morning – even if the eternal West Indian optimist in me keeps reminding me that Fidel

Edwards has scored 30 in a Test match and that, if he can stay not out long enough, Carlton Baugh may get us within s...

Calypso Cricketers Pelt Waist, Wickets

BCPires — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 22:16:55 +0100

West Indies captain Darren Sammy’s plan to achieve the “perfect” result of one-all in the Test series hit a bit of a stumbling block on the third day of the second Digicel Test against Australia today when, after losing only one wicket in the first session and none at all in the second, five West Indies batsmen – which is what we must call them, for want of an obscene word – conspired to throw their wickets away for a handful of runs. We went from 230 for four to...

A Perfect Plan

BCPires — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:04:36 +0100

Not having been enough of a Good Friday bobolee a week ago (by staying home instead of going to the beach because two uncles who died ten years before I was born did so by drowning on said Good/Bad Friday), I became a Mediocre Wednesday bobolee yesterday by putting off work, putting on my musty West Indies shirt and heading down to Kensington Oval to hope that my own concentrating on our plight, from the stands, might encourage the boys on the field to do the same.

It didn’t work...

Ray of Guess

BCPires — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:27:05 +0100

The West Indies enter the fourth day of a Test match today against Australia as the bookie’s favoured winners, and it’s been a long time since anyone could set that down as simply a matter of fact. Before the start of the current series, most West Indians could be forgiven for worrying that the team might not be able to even carry a Test past the third day. Indeed, had we chosen to bat on day-one on Saturday and been bowling before lunch on Sunday, we might all have been disgruntl...

The Will to Win

BCPires — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 16:35:34 +0100

The fifth game of my son’s football club’s league was played this morning, Pro Shottas taking on Empire. Pro Shottas went in with a three-and-one record but this morning’s match was a shambles for the first half, just wild kicking with only one player really looking settled on the Shottas team. (No prizes if you guess it was my son.) In the second half, it looked like there were two new teams: good football, with Shottas dominating completely, until a free kick on the edge o...

Good Friday Bobolee

BCPires — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:31:17 +0100

Good Friday and all of Barbados and half of Trinidad will be at Accra Beach. My own family will be at Miami Beach (the real name, “Enterprise”, has never caught on with locals, much to the chagrin of the Barbados Tourism Authority).

But I won’t be there.

About 70 years ago, my two uncles drowned on Good Friday, ten years

or more before I was born. Until I was in my 20s, my mother never told us why she didn’t want us swimming on Easte...

No Cricket, Crumpet

BCPires — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 22:32:21 +0100

Well, it seems like today is the first day in the last few months that West Indies and Australia haven’t played some kind of cricket and tied something or the other; which should naturally lead to tying one on, for me, but, good Catholic boy that I am, I’ve stopped drinking for Lent; so, on this cricket-less day, it looks like tea & crumpet only for me; maybe even no tea.

I raced home yesterday to

watch the Twenty20 game on TV, totally forgetting that, in...

Talk, Nah (If You Can)

BCPires — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:01:34 +0100

Went to Trinidad Monday morning, for Monday night, really, to film tomorrow night’s episode of “Talk, Nah”, the chat show streamed on the Internet by Carnival TV. What seemed likely to be demanding turned out to be rewarding, including finally picking up my Buddy Guy, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown & Bobby Parker Live at Montreux blu-ray, and some tasty, if expensive, pepper squid and shrimp.

But the best part – and the worst part – of th...

Two Borat in One Hole

BCPires — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 15:55:44 +0100

West Indies are doing very well in the final ODI in St Lucia as I type. The Aussies are on 171 for two in the 33rd over but what has me impressed is how solidly the boys are trying – even if Dwayne Bravo just bowled a no-ball to start his fifth over.

But an international story sent to me by a Brooklyn pardner has me wondering: if and when we do win, will

the DJ get confused and play the wrong song? The BBC reported on Friday that the Sacha Baron Cohen – aka B...

Tie Tongue

BCPires — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:35:17 +0100

These West Indies will kill me with disappointment, yes, but yesterday’s tied ODI against Australia was probably the best result we could get, as a team: maybe, just maybe, the throwing away of victory in a mad dash for a suicidal run – when

there were two more balls still to come, either of which could have allowed us to score the one run needed for the outright win – just might make us think about thinking.

Three times the captain, whom I like a great...