THE WORLD looked on in awe for months as Donald Trump slouched towards Washington to be president, borne on the backs of Muslims and Mexicans, but only Trinidad responded in kind last week and offered up a man who could trump Trump: Inter-Religious Organisation president, Brother Harrypersad Maharaj, like the Donald, had the cojones to buck the firetrucking establishment and stand up for child marriage, the only thing that will make Trinidad great again.

IN THE LAST month, Trinidad divided itself into two camps, each clamouring for either of two gymnasts contesting one Olympics spot, each of whose careers might be devastated if the other went to Rio, and nobody could stop talking about it – but, every year, around this time, thousands of small children have their lives shattered in a single morning, that of the Secondary Assessment Exam – and no one says, “Boo!” Last Thursday, a few thousand kids won places at a “prestige” school and a chance of a real career, but everyone else got sent – or sentenced – to a five-year holding cell until they graduate to either McDonalds small fry guy or prison big bad John; for the bulk of our secondary schools, the uniform might as well be orange overalls.

It’s the ultimate firetruckery for every one of us, and most of us will be lucky not to have to face it for a long time yet, but it came this morning for the most important man in West Indies cricket history who never raised his bat or sent down an over. What the now late Tony Cozier sent down, instead, were millions of words, every one of them up in the block hole, about our cricket. West Indies cricket would be in a good place now, had we listened to TC,

The sixth Bocas NGC Literary Festival enters its ninth day and windup weekend today, with the main attraction, 2015 Man Booker Prizewinner Marlon James, taking the Old Fire Station stage tomorrow at 2pm to talk about his magnificent novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, and post-Prize life. Tomorrow’s a big day, from 10am, with sitting Chief Justice Ivor Archie sitting down with marijuana activist Nazma Muller,

TWO YEARS ago, end of the third school term, I found myself arbitrarily relating to my own children my father’s strongest memory of World War II: at his secondary school, any time they heard the drone of a heavy aircraft, all pens, including the teacher’s, stopped in the air above exercise book pages and then went flying, as everyone rushed outside, those on the ground floor spilling out the windows: why waste time on corridors when there might be Spitfires and B-52s in the skies of British Guiana?

But why had that story jumped out of my mouth?