Guyanese under 30 years of age will likely have no knowledge of it, but there was a time in our country when there was a ritual, common in many of the middle class homes, that involved the process of bringing wood floors to a shine by buffing them by hand using wax. It was laborious work, carried out on hands and knees, with none of the wonderful electric polishers of today; it was muscle power and patience and copious sweating on a hot day. Furthermore, unlike the fast-drying polyurethane finishes we have now that can last for years, the wax finish dulled quickly so that the hand-rubbing exercise had to be frequently repeated – perhaps every couple months or so.
The Martins family on West Demerara was one of modest means and moved in modest circles, so the waxed floors I refer to here were not on my radar. Indeed, I was probably about 12 years old when I first saw one in a two-storey house on Lamaha Street. I don’t recall whose house it was, or why I was there, but I remember like yesterday walking through the front door and the shock of this expanse of dark-brown shining floor spread out before me. I was a raw country boy; I had never anything even close to that on any floor anywhere; I stood there and gaped. That would have been about 60 years ago.
Last week, in this newspaper, there was a fine column on Test cricket by my friend Ian McDonald in which he wrote eloquently about the game. He said: “I have no doubt that cricket is in fact the greatest game yet invented. No other sport compares with it in the number of skills displayed: batting skill; bowling skill; throwing skill; catching skill; running skill. It requires fitness, strength, delicacy of touch, superb reflexes, footwork like a cat, the eye of a
