IT’S STILL DARK, when I wake up before the sun and, in the darkness, I stare past the bedpost, at Philip Larkin lingering there, and realise I’m a whole day closer to him now. I sigh, softly, so as not to wake the little woman at my side or the little cat draped across both ankles, keeping my feet warm on a Bajan winter night.

I LOVE this job. It's probably not fair to call it a job at all. Jobs are like work and this is like fun. There is nothing I'd rather do (full-time) than write. If I could do only one or the other for the rest of my life, I'd probably rather write than have sex (except on weekends, at nights and in the mornings.)

TO WRITE a startlingly original newspaper column, you’ve got to copy others unashamedly and, in 1999, I stole a great idea from the Miami Herald’s Robert Steinback who, every January, wrote a column making predictions for the coming year and assessing the accuracy of his predictions from the year before.

Robert’s seer-man-ing was serious, because he lived in what was the world’s leading liberal democracy until President Soprano tried to turn it into a criminal enterprise. But I live here. Some of my predictions, then, are meant to make you laugh, while others would make anyone with any sense weep, the eternal Trinidadian conundrum being distinguishing the comic from the tragic.

TO WRITE a startlingly original newspaper column, you’ve got to copy others unashamedly and, in 1999, I stole a great idea from the Miami Herald’s Robert Steinback who, every January, wrote a column making predictions for the coming year and assessing the accuracy of his predictions from the year before.

Robert’s seer-man-ing was serious, because he lived in what was the world’s leading liberal democracy until President Soprano tried to turn it into a criminal enterprise. But I live here. Some of my predictions, then, are meant to make you laugh, while others would make anyone with any sense weep, the eternal Trinidadian conundrum being distinguishing the comic from the tragic.

NEW YEAR’S DAY and Y’Boy there by he one, watching out over the cane fields. Y’Boy wish he could be there in the cane, sweating up he favourite hill.

But Y’Boy could barely make it from the bed to the bathroom sometimes. Y’Boy whole life now come down to the TV and what he could find on it to distance himself from the roughest part of he life, ever. In the last three-four weeks, Y’Boy come to understand that major surgery might be life-saving in the long run but it is far from life-enhancing in the short. Y’Boy chuckling to heself, understanding that the NEW YEAR’S DAY and Y’Boy there by he one, watching out over the cane fields. Y’Boy wish he could be there in the cane, sweating up he parts of his body that aching him so hard with pain is exactly the parts that woulda kill him if they wasn’t removed.