Ian on Sunday

There is nothing more valuable in man than an ability to write well. 

My heart has grown heavy in recent times as I have contemplated what seems to be the gradual fading of the dream of West Indian unity.

The saddest sight in sport is to observe a marvelous athlete not so much go into decline as suddenly burn-out before one’s eyes.

I had a vivid dream of my father. When they come in dreams my mother and my father seem very real and I reach out to them.

At eighty eight years of age one must expect to factor attendance at funerals into one’s monthly (weekly?)

Yesu Persaud was a friend for more than 50 years. He was always helpful, and thoughtful in his help and advice, to my wife and myself.

Love of sport is woven into the fabric of my life.

Joseph Brodsky, the great Russian poet who died at the sadly young age of 56, on receiving his Nobel Prize in the Grand Hall of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm in December, 1987, declared a great truth: “There is no doubt in my mind that, should we have been choosing our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programmes, there would be much less grief on earth.”

Two impulses contend in me – one is to allow chaos to take hold and the other is to keep everything tidy and in good order.

I know this is a sad and awful way to start a new year but it needs to be said.

Tradition gathers around Christmas. Pageants and homecomings and longed-for preparations repeat themselves year after year into beloved lifetime rituals.

“We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our schoolmasters, and one from the world.

There is not a day that passes that I do not read poetry.

I remember long ago saying to that intelligent human being, Winnie Gaskin, that I wasn’t really interested in politics, that I grew bored by its complexities, that I loathed its sour and unbrotherly antagonisms, that I had better things to do than get mixed up in all the unsavoury maneuverings that went into lusting after political power. 

When I worked in the sugar industry I remember once discussing a problem with a young and junior colleague.

As I get older, the attractions of foreign travel and the lures of encountering new places and fresh faces are rapidly fading. 

It is said that science and poetry do not mix. It is said that science is down to earth and poetry is up in the clouds.

It happens all the time in small, closely-knit groups – Cabinets, party executives, boards of directors, Church congregations or club committees.

In a vibrant democracy elections should be a cause for celebration, an ever welcome occasion regularly marking the successful outcome of what in any country’s history has always been a long struggle to overcome authoritarian, and often brutal, rule.

Samuel Johnson, the great 18th Century English man of letters, is the shrewdest teacher on the human condition I know.