Noth­ing like the rim-bend­ing, tyre-slash­ing, sus­pen­sion re-ar­rang­ing, ra­dio sta­tion chang­ing thud of wheel in pot­hole to re­mind you that while big things are in train, some of the small­er things can suck you in­to re­al­i­ty more ur­gent­ly than the stuff of com­pelling news­pa­per head­lines.

Your coun­try can be stum­bling mind­less­ly in­to a vi­o­lent, seem­ing­ly bot­tom­less, geo-po­lit­i­cal pit, but all that con­cerns you at that pre­cise mo­ment is the trench of deeply ex­ca­vat­ed as­phalt that took mas­ter­ly aim at rolling rub­ber.

Up to a few months ago, we nick­named such ras­cals “Sin­ny” or “Row Hand,” but to­day we en­counter “John­ny” or “Jew­el Een”—in all their best-per­form­ing om­nipres­ence.

There is one—a “John­ny”—along the East­ern Main Road at the traf­fic lights in Champs Fleurs that wins first prize. It re­cent­ly claimed my left front tyre and rim, and the ra­dio skipped chan­nels from BBC World to the end­less chat­ter of a lo­cal talk show dis­cussing raisins and pastelles.

There is an­oth­er beau­ty near T&TEC in Curepe. Near­by stands a strate­gi­cal­ly po­si­tioned tyre shop and three places of wor­ship walk­ing dis­tance away. Beat that!

I in­vite read­ers to en­ter their own ex­am­ples in the award for most out­ra­geous neigh­bour­hood or work lo­ca­tion pot­hole. Give it a name.

You can al­so have the most en­er­getic de­bates on the abil­i­ty of guns to si­lence guns and the val­ue of elim­i­nat­ing both­er­some ju­di­cial time—both at your home or out at sea—and not match a cloudy night un­der an eter­nal­ly ex­pired street­light—par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in dan­ger­ous range of a “John­ny.”

True, T&TEC has come a long way since the black­out years, but faulty street­lights now more reg­u­lar­ly join with crim­i­nals, pot­holes, and un­even pave­ments to make life just that more un­com­fort­able.

There can be so­phis­ti­cat­ed dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing world eco­nom­ic out­look and in­vest­ment-grade na­tion­al rank­ings. Who or what is to be blamed or cred­it­ed? What caused all of this? Where in the dy­nam­ics of macro-eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stance re­side small, brit­tle states.

Yet, un­cut grass in the neigh­bour­hood and un­at­tend­ed drains can pro­duce a soli­tary mos­qui­to equipped with ar­bovirus­es to make you se­ri­ous­ly ill or kill you. Dengue, my friends, can blunt dra­mat­ic news on world com­mod­i­ty mar­kets and ren­der ir­rel­e­vant the neg­a­tive in­ter­face be­tween do­mes­tic mis­man­age­ment and glob­al fi­nan­cial cred­i­bil­i­ty.

It can end ca­reers and pre­ma­ture­ly ter­mi­nate elab­o­rate crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions. It can de­fy ge­og­ra­phy, ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy, and clever sleuthing via mi­cro­scop­ic pro­boscis­es.

There is one the­o­log­i­cal view that mos­qui­toes were cre­at­ed as veg­e­tar­i­ans but be­cause of “The Fall of Man,” be­gan suck­ing the blood of an­i­mals and hu­mans. That’s pret­ty big, im­por­tant stuff—suf­fi­cient to si­lence Sun­day pul­pits on the ques­tion of mod­ern-day geno­cide.

For now, Mos­qui­toes 2.0 is all that mat­ters. An au­dit prob­a­bly needs to be con­duct­ed to cal­cu­late the num­bers.

Just one small fac­tor against the back­drop of ma­jor things … such as cli­mate change.

Fresh from the fail­ures of COP30 and the both­er of cli­mate sci­ence scep­ti­cism, emerge con­cerns about things such as “cli­mate jus­tice” and the “just tran­si­tion” to a more lim­it­ed fos­sil-free fu­ture.

Yes, T&T’s fi­nal ver­sion of our Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs) un­der the Paris Agree­ment—hi­fa­lutin stuff!—is mov­ing us in the di­rec­tion of bio­fu­els and the re­new­ables. Big things these.

Yet, WASA must move much faster to achieve “Wa­ter for All by 2000” (it’s not a ty­po, check your files). Much, much faster. Not for the neigh­bour to use more for “hos­ing down” the yard or for sweet men to wash their cars every sin­gle day of their lives.

But for the sim­ple things like flush­ing the toi­let, hav­ing a show­er, cook­ing food, do­ing the dish­es, wash­ing clothes, and hav­ing a cold glass of wa­ter while sit­ting back tuned in­to a sport chan­nel on ca­ble …

Now, about ca­ble tele­vi­sion and In­ter­net … At one time, mod­ern-day “out­ages” were re­ferred to as “black­outs.” To­day, we have posh “out­ages” for “planned main­te­nance” and In­ter­net “out­ages” checked and dou­ble-checked in neigh­bour­hood What­sApp groups.

Don’t start on “noise pol­lu­tion”, please. Not as in Gaza or Su­dan or Ukraine.

But as in every sin­gle night in some ar­eas where there are no fire­works, but lots and lots of, well, harm­ful noise pol­lu­tion. This is “Si­lence for All in 2025,” done “Wa­ter for All” style.

Oh. Mean­while, Brent crude oil fu­tures hov­ered around $61.10 per bar­rel on Mon­day, near the low­est lev­el in al­most two months amid per­sis­tent con­cerns about over­sup­ply, while in­vestors mon­i­tored de­vel­op­ments sur­round­ing a new round of Ukraine peace ne­go­ti­a­tions.