Ian on Sunday

Lately I made a visit up the great Essequibo to rest the body, refresh the mind and remind the soul of the beauty in this world.

Local government elections are coming later this year, possibly as early as April.

In my home, a step down off the dining room, overlooking the beautiful garden my wife has created, I have my studiolo. 

In a recent column I remembered my old friend HL ‘Bertie’ Taitt, one of a group of us who regularly met for rum, curry lunch and unending talk more than forty years ago.

There is an entry in my father’s diary which moved me deeply when I read it after he died.

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

In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize recently, President Barack Obama gave a magnificent speech justifying just wars.

Surely I am not the only one to have noticed that not long before India’s Test team rose to No.

Christmas is a time of joyful preparation. Over the centuries this has tended to become the shining-up and decoration of homes, the stocking up of food and drink for family and friends, joining in the merry round of parties.

I remember long ago saying to that warm and intelligent human being, Winnie Gaskin, Minister in the PNC government at the time, that I wasn’t interested in politics, that I grew bored by its petty complexities, that I loathed its sour and unbrotherly antagonisms, that I had better things to do than get mixed up in all the unsavoury manoeuverings that went into lusting after political power. 

History often saddles people with reputations that are undeserved. Take Florence Nightingale.

for what else is there but books, books and the sea, verandahs and the pages of the sea to write of the wind and the memory of wind whipped hair in the sun, the colour of fire.

You gave me gifts, God-Enchanter. I give you thanks for good and ill.

It is a blessing that the rush to the precipice halted just in time to save West Indies cricket.

Not many Guyanese, I am sure, think about it but we have a National Trust whose high and shining objective is to preserve the national heritage.

Ian On Sunday Whenever you hear that a Committee has been set up, reach for your worry beads.

If you can, every now and then it is good to escape the reality which you have settled into.

Ian On Sunday In any given situation we assume that people, including ourselves, will act sensibly.

Ian On Sunday Towards the end of life – and when you are seventy-six and counting you are not very distant from the end – you become more reflective.

Think of libraries! There are all kinds and degrees from the smallest village library to the great libraries of the world.