Cameron Duodu

I make no apologies for again acknowledging the tremendous debt I owe to West Indies cricket, which saved my social life in England in the summer of 1984.

In the early 1970s, one of the most pleasant drinking places in Accra was the terrace bar of the Continental Hotel. It was a very long terrace that overlooked, at the far end of the hotel, a bubbling mass of foamy water thrown into the air by the radiators of the cooling system.

When the news first flipped past my ears, as I lay half-awake in the early hours of the morning, I couldn't take it in.

“Ghana” mentioned in the same breath as “Guantanamo”? How possible?

When I visited China in November 1958 as the guest of the Chinese Writers Union, China was just embarking on its huge programme of industrialisation.

At around 0700 local time in Bamako, Mali, on Friday, 20 November 2015, ten armed men, some driving in a black Toyota 4 x 4 SUV, entered Bamako's poshest hotel, the Radisson Blu.

I used to hop across the road and bring her home from school.

We would have lunch together.

I enthused her so much about Ghanaian food that on the first occasion she visited Ghana and she was asked by the hotel staff what she wanted for breakfast, she replied: “Fufu and soup!”

10 November 1995 was – to mix lingos – a dies horribilis par excellence for me! (A horrible day to beat all horrible days).

It was my wife's birthday, and I had planned a nice little outing for just the two of us.

I was having a nice lunch with a grand-daughter of mine at the 'Gold Coast' restaurant in South Norwood, London. I always find something to eat there that reminds me of Ghana, whose name before independence has been adopted by the restaurant.

Some footballers are good at the game but not too intelligent as persons.

Others are intelligent human beings but not too good at the game itself.

To be an intelligent footballer is thus a very rare combination.

A lot of abuse has been heaped on the head of the South African government for allowing President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan to leave South Africa on 15 June 2015, whilst a South African court was still considering a complaint from a South African NGO requesting that Al-Bashir should be arrested in