I first heard calypso at the beginning of 1958, when I was 8 years old and emigrating from England to New Zealand. The ship called in at Trinidad. There were calypso singers near the harbour entertaining visitors like us: one of them made up a bit about my father's red beard. I'd never heard anybody make up a song on the spot like that and was entranced by it.

That sort of busking must have been a pretty marginal occupation, even then. Do they still do it?

The other things I remember from that trip were driving out to the asphalt lake through the forest, and the unbelievable amount of floating filth in Port of Spain harbour (which I think we saw close up, coming ashore in launches) - it was like boating through a gigantic blocked toilet. It would be surprising if the asphalt industry and that pollution didn't both get songs about them.