Ian on Sunday

Ian On Sunday At thirteen, I think it was, I was reading love poetry.

Ian On Sunday Having retired a couple of years ago after 52 years in the sugar industry, including working closely with governments and regional institutions along the way, if there is one thing I have learned it is the extreme frailty of all grand plans.

Ian On sunday In 2007 as many as 20,000 politicians, officials, international functionaries, journalists and activists attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, better known as the Bali Conference.

Ian on Sunday I cannot escape the terrible feeling that such pitiless cruelty goes beyond brutality and mad violence.

Ian On Sunday A man is murdered, a woman beaten and raped, a child horribly abused, a business robbed, a home terrifyingly invaded.

Ian on Sunday What distinguishes human beings more than anything is their use of language.

Ian On Sunday Love of sport is woven into the fabric of my life.

Ian On Sunday Modern man has miraculous powers. He flies to the moon and soars beyond the sun.

The extraordinary value in everythingAll my life I have had an urge to preserve the extraordinary value of everything that I experience.

Ian on Sunday Why this glaring discrepancy between prowess in the short versions and generally abject failure in Test cricket?

Meteors How is a great poem created? It is a mystery.

Ian On Sunday Education is important not simply for the implantation of specific information about specific subjects but, perhaps more importantly, for the passing on of a whole ‘culture’ of learning, attitudes, and behaviour – a variety of distinct ‘languages’ of understanding including self-understanding.

Inconsolable loss Of all the expressions of inconsolable loss I have read concerning the death of anyone greatly loved, the following lament by Henry James, the novelist, when his older brother, William James, the scientist and philosopher, died is one of  the most heartfelt: “I sit heavily stricken and in darkness – for from far aback in dimmest childhood  he had been my Elder Brother; and I still, through all the years, saw in him, even as a small timorous boy yet, my protector, my backer, my authority and my pride. 

Ian on Sunday Experience comes to us not just through our lives but as much, perhaps more as we grow old, through reading.

Ian on Sunday Why should flesh and blood men and women, with feet of clay like anyone else, presume to think for us and act for us and push us around and mollycoddle us and punish and reward us as if they were inherently superior beings?

‘No ill or wrong will overmaster this’ There are some things that keep out the darkness that continually threatens in anyone’s life.

The addiction of competition And here is fascinating thought. Medical studies suggest that in situations of great stress, great danger, in a battle, for instance, with death a fraction away, the body is able to generate something akin to heroin.

A blessingPerhaps my oldest memory, I must have been two or three, is of my mother hugging me at night when she put me into bed and holding the palms of my hands together while she said a simple prayer which I soon learned by heart.

Ian on Sunday Running anything – whether it is a national government, vast state industry, world-circling multi-national, small family business, or private club – involves making choices.

The view from seventy-six With shocking quickness, another year has gone by in a blur and I am suddenly seventy-six.