ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A disposable office serf who dreamed of being on the Galle Fort wall, girt by ice-cold Lion Lager cans, watching Test cricket with two packets of duty-free smokes resting on his backpack, has a new dream. As the days are set to grow shorter and colder, he’s returned to that dream world. This time, in the Caribbean.
He’s in Barbados. It’s June. He’s sweating through his linen shirt, the crotch of his shorts. He’s taken his shoes off. He doesn’t care. Kensington Oval is heaving. The air this thick. The locals are up and about, banging drums and dancing, willing the West Indies to take the fight to the tourists. The sounds of conch shells, steel drums, and the occasional whack of a short ball being dispatched over the leg-side boundary fill the air. He is sitting in direct sunlight but only until about 3pm, when the sun sets behind a grandstand. He is feeling every ray.
He takes a sip of something dark and deadly. A cup of locally sanctioned petrol masquerading as rum punch. It burns. It’s glorious. He’s had 10 of them already. No ice, though. The hotel manager told him not to drink anything with ice in it. Or drink any water for that fact from any tap, lest he risk a disease so exotic, his decadent Western insides fail to rise to the challenge of defeating it. “Drink beer or rum, water only here,” he remembers him saying. He decided to leave the ice in this one, though. Fuck it. It’s too damn hot for warm coke.
To his right, a new mate pulls out a fresh pack of Gold Leaf smokes and offers him one. He accepts. It pairs beautifully with the heat, the humidity, and the gentle, all-encompassing sense of not having to be anywhere else.
The Tourists are 3/90, struggling to find their rhythm. A group of local blokes behind him provide some unsolicited commentary. “That man Travis [Head], he tired already?” They all laugh. He laughs with them.
He glances at the scoreboard. Plenty of cricket left. Plenty of rum left. A his new mate nudges him. “Reckon we find a bloke who knows a bloke?”
He nods and rocks back on the wooden bleachers. A genuine smile comes over his face. The dream has manumitted his soul, even for a short moment.
Then his eyes flicker open. His phone is ringing.
More to come.
