MY good friend the Rev. Dr. Kingsley Tweed is due back in Bermuda this weekend on the first leg of what may well be the most sentimental journey of his turbulent life. And at the outset, I am undertaking to ask his compatriots of goodwill to keep him in their prayers.

Kingsley is due to arrive from London on Sunday for a lightning visit, en route by way of New York, to Santa Barbara, California. There he will re-enter the Sansum Clinic for Urological Disorders for treatment of prostate cancer.

He was there in 2004 when he underwent a radical retro-pubic prostectomy (RRP); and the prognosis from that operation was that he had three months to live. He was advised this week that he is now in most urgent need of follow-up treatment.

Stoically aware that he's 'on borrowed time', the charismatic, articulate former labour leader and hero of the 1959 Theatre Boycott, said from his home in London last night: "I am coming to see my brothers and sisters, perhaps for the last time. I want to hug and kiss them. Within two days I will go to New York, for a similar spell seeing my son, the Rev. Nicholas Tweed, his wife Phyllis and my granddaughter Lauren."

He will, of course, be seen off from London by two other UK-based sons, John and Nigel, and daughter Malawi.

Mid-week, he's due in California, where he will be met by his good friend and benefactor, Bermudian businessman and Paget resident Billy Williams and wife Laura, along with Kingsley's nurse Rachel Award.

Aged 73, Kingsley was the eighth born in a Devonshire Parish family of 13 siblings. One brother, Vincent, lives in the US; others in Bermuda are Cedric, Mildred and Ismay.

Kingsley's colourful life has been well documented in the pages of Bermuda's history, especially in the voluminous History of the Bermuda Industrial Union; and in two full-length movies by Errol Williams.

The first was When Voices Rise, focusing on the 1959 Theatre Boycott, that led to Tweed's 40-year exile from Bermuda, and in Walking on a Sea of Glass, in which Williams tracked Tweed's exploits outside the colony.

The revolutionary spirit that has sustained Kingsley from his earliest days was patent during his conversation from London last night.

"I am counting my blessings," he said. "I am still here because I am determined, strong and thankful."

Hale and hearty Earl gets a standing ovation as he's honoured in UK

THE great Earl Cameron, the Bermudian-born stage and screen actor who in international film circles is hailed unreservedly as the most successful black actor Britain has produced, has had his ears ringing during the past several days.

Much has to do with the fact that as of Tuesday a week ago he entered his 90th year as hale and hearty as ever.

But more is due in the same time-frame to the resounding, sustained, standing ovation he received when honoured by the Carib Theatre Company at The Hackney Empire in London.

It came during the company's presentation of Sweet Inspiration, billed as the most entertaining performance of words and music of the 1950s honouring the Caribbean and the West Indian 'pioneers' of that period in Britain.

The company's director, Anton Phillips, with delight, brought Cameron to the stage, as he put it, "on behalf of the many actors of colour working in the business today, and who are able to do so in part because of the doors you opened 'back then'."

Cameron's career has spanned some 50 years, involving firstly his remarkable stage appearances followed by 19 films - including his role as Pinder, head of station for the British Secret Service in Nassau, in the 1965 Bond movie Thunderball - and countless radio and television parts.

He came to the fore in the 1950s and 1970s when attitudes were unquestionably less enlightened, with racism the major element having to be contended with.

He has been saluted throughout the Diaspora for his accomplishments. At home, he was one of three persons cited in 1999 by the Bermuda Arts Council for its Lifetime Achievement Award.

We can only hope that more significant national honours await him, singularly, notwithstanding how inexorably the sands of time run out for any and all nonagenarians, at least.

It has been an honour and privilege for this journalist to have been regarded by Cameron as one of his close personal friends down through the years. We hope in subsequent articles in this medium to give a more detailed accounting of career.

The picture above, taken in Soho, shows Cameron with this journalist during our visit to London just over a year ago when the actor and his wife Barbara tirelessly endeavoured to give us 'star' billing.

The Camerons have since given up their London home, moving 120 miles away to Kenilworth in Warwickshire.