Ian McDonald

One might have thought that as time passes the heart might harden as arteries harden and the sense of loss grow less acute as the five familiar senses most certainly tend to do.

In Guyana reciprocated animosity has not even come close to plumbing the awful depths which exist in so many other countries and, God willing, such hideous animosity never will prevail.

Intermittently through the year, and especially during memorable times up the immense and soul-redeeming Essequibo, I like to read Shelley – as we all should do from time to time since he is pre-eminently the poet of hope.

Too many of my good friends are overwhelmed with work which prevents them living more peaceful, varied, interesting and fulfilled lives.

When you are long retired from the hurly-burly, you become more reflective.

I do not think the young, intelligent and opened-minded Minister of Education will mind me delivering again a little, well-meant lecture to her.

If ever a country needed more civility in the discourse conducted between its political and other leaders it is Guyana now.

One must be thankful that there are things to read other than the blood-filled and vitriol-laced pages of the daily newspapers.

This too shall pass. The utter shambles into which the administration of Guyana’s cricket has fallen will one day end.

Bill Shankley, manager of Liverpool Football Club in the English Premier League, was once asked whether a game his team was about to play was a matter of life and death.

More than normally, our politicians seem to be tearing at each other’s throats.

Currently cuss-down and buse-up are of a very low standard. We need new and more imaginative swear words.

When you get to my age you are in overtime and a penalty shoot-out looms which you know you cannot win.

Do you remember one of the world’s great exercises in futility?

It is astonishing to me that a third of the year is over.

I think there must be a majority of Guyanese deeply worried that the festering animosity between the political parties and the incessant jockeying for position and narrow-spirited search for partisan advantage is greatly harming Guyana’s progress as a nation.

A few weeks, it seems, since the last one, a new birthday has come along – the 81st no less, hardly believable when one thinks how not so long ago one could joyfully spring up stairs three at a time if the occasion demanded it or party until dawn (very possibly celebrating another West Indies victory as No.

The fatal flaw in the Duckworth/Lewis formula for deciding unfinished cricket matches is that it makes no allowance for genius, flair and sheer, joyous inspiration.

Democracies came to be based on a balanced view of human nature; people are by nature selfish but self-government is possible because we are wise enough to restrain and control that selfishness.

I was in Toronto with my wife to attend the wedding of a favourite niece.