Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

THERE’S a moment every summer holiday when the brain snaps off and, like Tennyson’s Lotos Eaters, leaves you isolated in “a land in which it always seems afternoon... where all things always seem the same.”

News from outside meanders slowly in on the breeze across heat-baked mountains carrying with it the scents of olive groves and wild thyme, but just beyond auditory range and meaning.

Did I hear that Wyclef Jean is planning to run for president of Haiti? What’s all that about? He couldn’t even keep The Fugees together, let alone a population of nine million.