Читать книгу No Win Race. A Story of Belonging, Britishness and Sport онлайн

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For my father, his childhood had been full of little ventures to earn money. He would go ‘crabbing’ at night, hoping that a little rain would entice the crabs to emerge from their burrows. Without a torch, my father made a light by filling a bottle three-quarters full of kerosene oil. He then wrapped a sardine tin lid round an eight-inch string of crocus, leaving about an inch exposed. My father dipped the tin covered crocus into the bottle leaving the inch-exposed crocus hanging outside of the bottle. To prevent kerosene leakage, he covered the bottle lid in soap and lit the exposed crocus to provide enough light to view and catch the crabs.

By morning, he would sell the crabs to people in the district or to local hotels. Once he’d made enough money, he bought a small rowing boat with his friend Jack Johnson to catch more fish to sell. They made wire fish pots (holes on either side) and used stale mackerel as bait. The method worked, but the only problem had been my father’s limited tolerance for inhaling stale fish while moving back and forth on a boat. He aborted the scheme and turned to selling bananas. He would go to the port in Oracabessa to scrounge for bruised or small bananas. Then he’d load them into a wheelbarrow, wheel it four miles back to Galina and sell the fruit by the roadside.