TASHY HEARS

ISLAND IN THE SUN

This song brings back some strange memories. In 1963 when I was away from home for the whole summer (read about that in Tashy Did) the West Indies cricket team were on a tour over in England. The BBC, in those days, had three radio stations. If memory serves they were the Light programme, the Home Service and the intelligently named Third Programme. This only broadcast in the evenings and so was the natural home for ball-by-ball cricket commentaries. During my time in isolation from my family, I listened to all tests on my little transistor radio.

Each session, I am certain, was introduced by this song and I'm sure it was a version by a steel band. At that point point I fell in love with that sound.

I like songs that paint a picture of something, in this case the Caribbean islands. The woman cutting sugar cane, the man casting nets at the surging tide, scenes that came back to me when I spent some time in Fiji and Tonga, another island group though in the Pacific Ocean, in 2007. It was all there.

Come to the West Indies with me.