As a youngster growing up in Guyana and going to Saints, my friend Stanley Greaves (yes, the painter) had introduced me to (I hope I have the name right) the British Council Library in Georgetown. I remember the adventure stories – Horatio Hornblower – the writing of Aime Cesaire and CLR James, among others, and also being struck by a single sentence in a piece on Abraham Lincoln in which he said that it was his practice when a controversial matter was pending to write about it but to then put the finished reaction away and come back to it a few days later. It allowed him the time to calm down and evaluate whether his opinion still held. It seemed such a measured approach, and while I admit that sometimes I did the immediate thing and sent off things in anger I ended up regretting, there have been several occasions where Lincoln’s tactic proved useful for me.
One of them involves my time in the 1950s working at BG Airways at Atkinson Field while I was living in Vreed-en-Hoop. I was delighted with the job, and enjoyed living with my sister Theresa and her husband Joe Gonsalves who was the Fire Chief at the Base, but one of the drawbacks getting home on my days off was the tight window of travel across the Demerara River in the evening. With no water taxis, and the last
