BILL COTTON/REFORM

Jun 01, 2011 Bill Cotton/Reform, Features / Columnists

Bill can get personal. Very personal with some people. Bad and Good. Bill was gobsmacked on reading the Guyanese Honours list to find his personal friend Charles ‘Bonnie’ Ramson, the Attorney General, had been given an Order of Roraima – the second highest national award. Well deserved too.
Bill will declare an interest and take you back to September 1955 and two young boys in short trousers arriving in ‘Little ABC’ in Sacred Heart School in Main Street. One was white and came on an estate bus, the other brown and walked from Camp Street. The former was yours truly, the latter a young ‘Bonnie’ Ramson.
We sat besides each other then and for the next five years as we jumped years in that then hothouse of a school. Little ABC- Big ABC – 2nd – 4th and 6th Standard in quick order.
We were bright (time has taken its toll) and competed like mad, especially under the tutelage of the excellent Mr Arokium. He stretched your brain and if not, your hand, if you were naughty. It was a stirring time to be alive in the dying days of the British Colony. Bill does not remember going home to the Ramson cake and rum shop in Middle and Camp, but he does plenty of visits to Ferragh’s next door.
We had an inside track–Albert was in our class too and competing for the top prize. We got discounts. Oh, that peanut punch!
The Big Day of Common Entrance came and we all sat down to write it. Bill came top of the whole country and got a scholarship to QC. Bonnie to Saint Stanislaus (he had been an altar boy at Main Street – imagine!). But Bill’s parents took him to new climes in England, whilst Ramson stayed behind through thick, thin and Burnham and did law.
We did not meet for another 30 plus years when Bill came back, post LFSB, and found Bonnie in his then watering hole – The Everest Cricket Club.
Since we have been firm friends again with ups and downs, Bonnie is always there when you need him, especially as a cambio.
Others can testify as to his professional worth as a jurist. Bill ain’t qualified to do that. As a friend, he and his family have passed with flying colours.
Ramson was an acquired taste at five. He still is at 62. Bill pleads guilty to acquiring it. Well done ‘Bonnie’. Them detractors is wrong. You is an asset to Guyana.
See, Bill can be very positive…
Pip!Pip

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