Ian on Sunday

Suddenly I am 85 years old.  I find that ridiculous but chronologically  it is a fact. 

In last week’s column I wrote about a pervasive anxiety about the state of things in general which currently focuses on the seemingly unstoppable spread of criminal activity and violent crime in society.

The word angst derives from the German meaning fear, but signifying something a lot more than simple fear. 

Thomas Friedman, NY Times columnist, wrote in an interesting recent article that the world is faced with three immense “climate” changes.

The global poverty rate has been cut in half in about the last 20 years, so why not try our best to eliminate poverty in the next 20?

I love poetry. It is the quiet passion of my life.

The golden shower orchids in my wife’s garden are particularly lovely just now.

I am not at all sure how many readers understand my love of poetry, and I have a distinct feeling that the great majority are puzzled, if not bored, by my inclination to illustrate many of these columns with poems I like.

I cannot think why, but politicians take themselves very seriously indeed.

More than once I have quoted what the great historian Edward Gibbon wrote in his Decline And Fall of the Roman Empire: history, he wrote, is “little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.”

I am currently sorting old files and papers with a view to bringing some semblance of order into my chaotic personal archive and to preserve what may deserve preserving.

Sometimes, not often enough I suppose, amidst the ordinary joys and tribulations of everyday living – the problems of planning for the immediate future, keeping track of what is going on in this beautiful and hideous world, enjoying a few drinks and laughter with the boys, the abundant joys and occasional trials of family life, the harassment of daily living – the mind does occasionally set upon great questions of life and death.

Quite often I am told – reprimanded even – for writing columns seen as deeply depressing because they deal with death, its inevitability, the fact that what we enjoy in a lifetime is gone in a blink of history never to return and soon to be forgotten.

The rapidly proliferating presence of the social media in our lives is transforming how society works – and creating dangers which need to be addressed.

Having spent 52 years of my life in the sugar industry, including working closely with governments and regional institutions along the way, if there is one thing I have learned it is the extreme frailty of all grand plans.

We have to look forward to a long and terrible age of increasing and fearsome devastation. 

It makes no sense trying to measure the joy which our grandchildren Jacob and Zoey give to my wife and I.

When I was a child I had as good Christmases as any child ever had – the love of parents which anchored life, the tree with the star and the gleam of lights, the gifts in white pillow-cases found mysteriously early morning, the fat balloons flying and the decorated crèche, the spread of food and sweets and aromatic cake and even sips of wine allowed, the fragrances of Christmas, the hugs of old grands and aunts and tobaccoey uncles, the carols and immortal songs of Christmas, the sights and sounds of happiness.

Who can doubt that in Guyana in 2018 clenched fists of the past must be opened so that hands can reach out across embattled ground for the good of the nation.

Earlier this year, in May, I wrote a column entitled ‘The miniaturisation of sugar’ which commented on the planned future of the sugar industry previously announced.