Ian McDonald

Sheik Sadeek died at the end of January 1986 in the U.S.A.

Let me write now as the spirit moves me, and as memories crowd the mind, about a good man through and through, and a citizen of incomparable quality.

Reading prevents your life ever narrowing down to the humdrum, the routine or the boring.

In my last column I remembered my old friend H.L. `Bertie’ Taitt, one of a group of us who regularly met for rum, curry lunch and unending talk more than 60 years ago.

Every moment in our lives is embedded in the extraordinary architecture of our minds.

Cheerful, bespectacled with thin gold rims, chubby-fat, cherubic Arthur Goodland, kindness in the very soul of him, lover of beauty in nature, art and woman-kind – one would not automatically at all see in him the extremely well-trained chemical engineer and hard-driving top executive in a highly successful company and industry. 

I interrupt my series on Extraordinary People to reflect on the concept of excellence which is involved, one way or another, with any life which is exceptional or exemplary.

There was a time when I tried not to know Mahadai Das.

Sparks from the central fire – I was lucky to be near enough to feel the blaze these men ignited in the world.

For a short while one summer day out of nowhere in my life she flashed like a comet across my sky.

Such men as these walk onto a field of play, or enter a room, and their life-force brings everyone to silence and attention – these were two men who in their very different ways set my mind alight.

Rex Nettleford I found people liked to recall the royalty of his name and nature but thought that King was too high and mighty so they named him a prince of men and that somehow seemed right.

Hardly a month or even a week went by in my working life without one or the other or both of these men appearing in the world’s headlines.

Two of my Uncles were extraordinary men. Here are a few sparks from the fire of their lives.

In a long life I have read the books and been taught the deeds and studied the scholarship and seen the art of the famous in many great countries of the world.

Looking back long and far, I count and find I have known, some casually and some well, perhaps a score of geniuses in my life so far.

In a long life I have been lucky to  encounter many exceptional people who have added greatly to the flavour of living and  the range of one’s experience of this marvelous world.

A large part of what is needed in Guyana is to embed in the body politic the habit of civility.

Any practical person in charge of anything periodically asks the question: “How do we get things done most effectively?”

It seems not a day, and certainly not a week, passes without our stomachs being turned by appalling news of women cruelly abused, beaten and, often enough, murdered in headline-hot, red blood.