Swimming is a sport that looks deceptively easy; it employs hitherto lazy muscles to labour and the water tricks the joints into acrobatics that is impossible other wise. I find moving underwater the most fun and I stay under as long as possible but I come up for air because I don’t belong there. I am a creature whose primary domain is land. I walk and swimming is but a break form walking.

Lately social media has woven its technological claws into the tapestry of everyday life. I am not much for conversations; especially on a phone, I find that I follow updates on messenger applications to see how my friends and family are faring.

The paths we take in life are often not of our choosing and sometimes we reach destinations we never set out to. Vanguard has been a staple of my world for what will shortly be a decade come December and it’s been interesting.

My favourite genre of entertainment is comedy; I like to laugh; I like funny people and I am sometimes considered very silly by those very close to me. It is always surprising to hear people describe me as very serious and even austere. I think life for the most part is serious; reality is a mixed bag of events that will either reduce you to tears or have you double up in laughter.

Language is the best tool of communication and it comes in many diverse tongues. In the world we now live in, English is the language most widely spoken and if all the manuals and language set ups of most gadgets are to be believed, there are quite a few versions; some a lot more different than that spoken by the Queen of England who is the confirmed custodian of the english language. I love the inflections and accents of the other latin languages in English.

Our respective cups will never be full when it comes to finding meaning to our sometimes black and white existence. Sometimes coming into contact with a truth that challenges status quo can be a bit of a burden especially when your life is a journey of growth.

There are so many issues one has to grapple with daily, some more important than others. By issues I refer to the difficulties, problems and even challenges we all have to contend with. They affect our health, finances and general outlook and this past week my mind has been on just one issue that I consider the biggest of all.

The past has nothing to say that can condemn my present; What is done is done; time to do new and better things. I do agree with the saying that those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it but I go a step further to make an assertion of my own.

There have been many doomsday prophesies over the course of my life and I am sure there were many before I was born. Inevitably there will be many more, long after I am gone. There seems to be some collective awareness that the world will end; the differentials are the ways it could.

Going down a flight of stairs in a familiar place, filled with friends and family, sharing pleasantries and exchanging greetings is pretty normal for a Sunday. It’s the equivalent of the sentiments expressed in the the theme song of the eighties sitcom “Cheers”. It’s a simple song, with simple words we all can relate to and I thought I’d use it to illustrate my theme for the week.

What if there is no heaven, what if this is all there is?”. A friend of mine asked me this question a while back and once in a while I find myself mulling it over. I genuinely believe in heaven, the bible, good and evil and eternity. The life style choices I have made over the course of my life are greatly influenced by my beliefs and I am sure the person asking expected some level of outraged response.

The cynics will tell you that the most beautiful one has been born, the greatest letter has been written, the nicest song has been sung. It is a jaded view that there is nothing new under the sun; the universe is in a constant state of evolution, recycling life in a gamut of forms.

A long time ago, I attended a concert for peace in Africa. International and local artistes were billed to perform. If memory serves me correctly, a lot of the American ones didn’t show up but quite a lot of the African ones did. My assessment of the concert was that it was abysmal; the arrangements were at best poor and the cheapest seats turned out to be the best as the VIP section was so far removed from the stage. One needed hearing aids and binoculars to hear the music or see the artistes. It started out late and most of us were understandably upset that the superstars we were promised didn’t come.

Exercise is a necessity to keep our bodies in good shape; my yoga coach is quick to remind me that the body is a rogue that can only be controlled with discipline and constant training. In a perfect world; I would be able to eat anything and everything at anytime without gaining weight but I know for a fact that it is not a perfect world as my ever growing population of cellulite will attest.

Political correctness has done a lot to straighten language and remove the many offences that can be taken when words and manners are used to segregate, discriminate and offensively identify. Now I am a person of colour or Afro Caribbean, a century ago, I would have been racially and offensively identified as a nigger. That particular hate word evolved into Negro before my race became classed as people of colour and of an Afro-Caribbean descent.

A very long time ago, I discovered the game of double dutch; jumping rope. We would gather together in groups during the lunch break and get two long pieces of rope, one person would hold on to one end of each rope in either hand while another participant would hold the other two ends on the opposite end. …

A prison can come in many shapes and forms. There are the physical prisons that people get sent to as a punishment for breaking the law. They are made of bricks and mortars; meant to trap people in confinement. Those prisons are institutions and infrastructures of dread; no normal person wants to end up there.

A life goes through many phases, we grow from the time we are born and pass through many things. Through the course of our life’s journey we evolve with the passage of time becoming different things to different people.

A life goes through many phases, we grow from the time we are born and pass through many things. Through the course of our life’s journey we evolve with the passage of time becoming different things to different people. Our personalities change from time to time and we adapt as a direct result of our experiences to whatever reality confronts us.

The past two columns opened a flood gate of emotions in quite a number of people and it says how much we all need support. These days I get a lot of counselling requests and I wish I had more time and even wisdom to really deal with them one at a time extensively.

Blackmail is widely understood to be a crime where one is coerced to part with something of value, to act under duress or even give up a position to someone who has a leverage of some sort. The person is either in possession of a truth,secret or some information we don’t want shared or may be holding something of some value to coerce us into a compromising position.

One of the stories that I find most educational in the Bible is that of Lot’s wife. It is not a long tale but the wisdom in it is swift and sure. Their old life, home and even friends were doomed and they were given an opportunity to escape death.

There are two tragedies in life, one is not getting what you want, the other is actually getting it” George Bernard Shaw. Its a quote that is rife with cynicism and presupposes that no attainment or level of success will ever bring complete happiness or fulfilment.

Time seems to have an agenda and we zip through the decades, all the while changing and evolving. I was never attracted to the fifties but my fondness for the sixties remains.

Times are never the same, it seems the universe is in a constant state of perpetual motion. The result is an evolution of man and humanity and different worlds emerge as time passes. I have always doubted my place in this generation; I don’t always fit in with the ideas of my contemporaries and my sense of not belonging is re enforced by my choices that are not always the expected or approved.