Ian on Sunday

Life at 90 is full of interest but the interests are now mostly sedentary.

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

How is a great poem created? It is a mystery. It is like asking for an explanation of a square cut by Gary Sobers or a cover drive by Rohan Kanhai.

Everywhere in the world the ordinary man in the street has been brainwashed into supposing that the only thing that matters is economic success.

I once received a letter from a fifth-form student in England.

The importance of using clear, accurate language in explaining the problems that face a nation like Guyana cannot be too strongly emphasized.

A Lost Girl Speaks Do not consider that I lived in vain consider I lived a while in wonder and will now forever live for you.

I will sort out and clear up and put in immaculate order my disgracefully disordered study/storeroom downstairs where there are dusty stacks and boxes of files, papers, diaries, correspondence and books which could one day be of interest to my descendants and even perhaps some value to scholars if I can ever get around to preserving them properly.

It seems not a day, and certainly not a week, passes without our stomachs being turned by appalling news of women cruelly abused, beaten and, often enough, murdered in headline – hot, red blood.

Every moment in our lives is embedded in the extraordinary architecture of our minds.

Most jobs are done because they have to be done – to earn a living, support a family, get on in the world, secure the future.

At 90 I am in overtime and a penalty shoot-out looms which I know I cannot win.

The place I have loved the most in my life is the garden my wife has created.

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

I have loved Poetry all my long life. It is impossible for me to name an all-time favourite – though Derek Walcott’s   A LETTER FROM BROOKLYN would be a contender.

Not all that long ago, looking into the future, it would have been easy to prophesy  the situation in South Africa: the whites in their apartheid laager fighting on and on a prolonged last-ditch battle against an ANC growing increasingly militant and the whole country disintegrating into blood-soaked ruin.

On March the 8th I attended a Night of Recognition in honour of Reds Perreira at Bourda.

One ordinary morning some years ago I had an unusual experience.

My father was a gentle, calm, and wise man. “He never raised his voice except to give encouragement nor raised his hand except to greet a friend.”

The great unabridged Oxford English Dictionary contains half a million words.