So much begins with parents. So much continues in the training grounds. The teachers who taught and inspired us. In my case at Queens Royal College in Port-of-Spain when I was a boy there were Pilgrim, Mitchell, Daunt, Farrell, Mastelloni, Hodge, Gocking. Being less than excellent was not an option. Mitchell, Pilgrim and Gocking separately told us, when Barbados was visiting for the inter-colonial cricket, that if we wanted to see something surpassingly well done, go to see Worrell batting at the Oval. “Oh, the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!” When a bold boy asked “Ghost” Farrell why he took such care in writing perfectly on the blackboard when it would so soon be erased, he was serious and intent in his reply. I used it in a poem later in my life:
“There are creatures that live half a day.
Princes of the world, do you not think
They also strive to perfect their lives?”
Such unsyllabused lessons last a lifetime.
John Hodge, peering behind thick glasses, neck rose–red with pimples, taught me to
