Imagine that you could have every single thing your heart desires. No restrictions. Do you think you could envisage it all at once? I mean, do you believe that on any given day you know precisely what it would take to make you absolutely content? Unlikely, I’d say at first, …

Seeing a big picture requires a lens shaped by multiple streams of information. If you live within the confines of a cave, everything you know is defined by its walls. Not so? It follows that how you respond to events is determined by the knowledge that you have to work …

Responses to the declaration of a state of emergency have predictably been draped in political flags. As usual, everyone knows what should be done, and just as in West Indies cricket, everyone knows where the blame falls. What continues to be apparent is that it is not politically expedient to …

We associate the idea of walking away from something as an admission of failure, of quitting, and giving up. North American films are famous for having protagonists proclaim that they will never quit. Generally, the idea that’s been sold is that one must stick to the thing at all costs. …

The final visit from the trio of Christmas ghosts takes Ebenezer Scrooge to a future—his possible future if he maintains his current pattern of behaviour. While Charles Dickens depicts this particular spectre as the most dreadful of the lot, it is actually the one who really represents the most hopeful …

Comparing Christmas past with what exists nowadays is something I wanted to do as a way of measuring change. It had been partly influenced by the memory of Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol, which was first published in December 1843. I’d thought the story of the miserly, mean-spirited Ebenezer …

Everyone has their particular memory of childhood Christmas. It is one of those universally observed seasons that is inescapable. Even if you belong to a community that ignores or abhors it, the very act of spurning the commemoration leaves an impression of some sort. The month of December is probably …

Last Saturday, just before the tea break during the West Indies Test against Bangladesh, I scurried to my kitchen to prepare some herbs for the bhaji rice I was planning to cook on Sunday. It had been pouring heavily, thunder and lightning dropping a menacing feel to the afternoon. Suddenly, …

I wanted to write something about the approaching season, and found this column from five years ago. It said most of what I wanted to say so I used it as the basis for today’s offering. There’s frenzy. And stillness. ­Gaiety and brooding. The full spectrum of human emotions stretches …

Do your ears hang low? Every night, as I lay my head on my pillow, I pass my hand under my earlobe to smooth it out. It’s uncomfortable otherwise. As I do it, the words to a children’s song flash through my head, a soundtrack to the motion. You might …

In one of his final interviews, at the end of the tour of England in 1963, Frank Worrell laid out his plans for the future to Ian Wooldridge. I quoted some of it in my biography, Son of Grace, where he refers to the background of hostility he had faced. …

There’s an immediate challenge in compiling a biography of someone who was a legend during his lifetime. Inevitably, myths spring up—so that even if you can separate fact from fiction, it is almost sacrilege to bring balance to the scrutiny because people prefer to hold on to their folklores. Frank …