THE WHOLE world fervently followed yesterday’s referendum that decided whether Britain left or remained in the European Union, because Brexit has truly global ramifications; but, of all seven billion of us, it will potentially hit me hardest since I’ve decided that, if Britain left Europe yesterday, I’m leaving the English-speaking Caribbean today. (Don’t get your hopes up, politicians and pastors, BC-Exit won’t be by suicide, but by cutting every firetrucking body else off.)

THE AMERICAN right was in a quandary last Friday, after the murder of 49 people in the LGBT nightclub, Pulse, in Florida: yes, it was numerically the worst slaughter yet in God-fearing, gun-loving America – but, then, only one heterosexual was killed, the murderer himself (possibly: his frequenting of Pulse prior to his crimes suggests he might have preferred to come out shooting than of the closet)

ALL WEEKEND, powerful memories of watching television as a child – on Trinidad & Tobago Television, the one TV station we had until 1991 – came to me unbidden and, at first, I suspected a French connection, specifically, the tennis at Roland Garros.

We saw nothing live on TTT when I was a boy in the Sixties and Seventies, not even major sports: the FA Cup Final might screen on TTT in September, the winter and summer Olympics practically switched time slots and Cassius Clay was still boxing on channels 2 & 13 when Muhammud Ali was doing five years for refusing to fight in Vietnam.

YESTERDAY WAS my birthday and what the firetruck have I got after 58 years of ongoing setup in life’s cosmic joke? Receding hairline, expanding waistline, infrequent byline, recurring punch line: seven times before (i.e., last year, in 2014, 2013 and at five-year intervals before), in birthday columns respectively headlined, 57, 56, 55, 50, 40 and 35 with a Bullet, I’ve repeated the same hairline/ waistline/ byline joke I first made in this column when I was 30 with a Bullet.

After turning 30 “in the papers” in 1988, the year I left the law and took up with the pen, I decided to limit birthday columns to five-year intervals and “significant” birthdays. In 2013, it struck me that every firetrucking birthday had now become significant: I can’t ever be sure I’ll be here for the next one (but that’s all right for a man who, from the age of 19, has only ever wanted to make it to the weekend).