It is based on a line of conversation by a Jamaican fellow in Jamaica to Graham Gouldman who sang lead on this track.
An earlier visit to Barbados by another band member Eric Stewart resulted in another line from the song. He and Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues were holidaying together and thought they would have a go at parasailing.
Stewart was towed behind a speedboat at high speed. He took off and waved goodbye to Hayward. Hayward was left on the raft with three black guys, one Jamaican and two from Barbados.
The Jamaican guy told Hayward, “I like your silver chain, man, I’ll give you a dollar for it.” Hayward replied “Come on, it’s worth a lot more than that and it’s a present from my mother”.
And this guy said “If this was Jamaica, I would cut your hand off for that.” Stewart came back and asked Hayward if he wanted to have a go. He said, “No, let’s get off this raft as quick as we can, I have had some problems.” When Stewart got back to England, he relayed the story to Gouldman and they wrote a song around it.
A good digression but let’s get back to cricket.
I’m uncharacteristically writing this during daylight hours, which are usually reserved for farming, because I didn’t get it done last night.
I watched cricket instead until 2.30am so I’m also a bit slow out of the blocks, thus tapping away at the keyboard was a better option than fencing.
What a game.
Like everyone else I’d been disappointed by the Black Caps’ last three games in the round-robin of the Cricket World Cup. They were against three top sides but they just seemed to capitulate.
However, I’ve always been a great optimist.
I was telling anyone who would listen on my radio show that the team was just two wins away from winning the world cup.
Get off Kane Williamson’s and the team’s backs. They had still got us to the semi-finals. Again.
The Indian batsmen had been in such top form they were due for failure.
The Indians had a lot more to lose than us. The prospect of returning to a billion very grumpy cricket fanatics is a lot worse than coming home to a small nation that is well used to dealing with failure on the world stage.
And a miracle can happen.
And it did.
A miracle at Manchester.
Jane even stayed up with me and saw the Black Caps get those last precious runs on the second day of what was meant to be a one-day game.
She stuck it out to midnight so I was able to scream my delight at those four early wickets but had to stay muffled after that when she went to the bed.
I was so pleased for Martin Guptill when he got us into the final with that throwdown of Dhoni’s wickets as he was looking like he might actually get them over the line. Guppy has had such a miserable time with the bat. It was like watching a rerun of my own cricket career.
The only other sporting event I’ve found as nail-biting and exciting was exactly four years ago when we beat South Africa to get into the last World Cup final.
That time, Jeremy and I immediately leapt online and bought cheap flights and later match tickets to watch what was a disappointing final in Melbourne.
I won’t be going to next week’s game but lucky Jeremy happens to be in Europe anyway and we were Skyping during the game and I told him he just had to go to that final at Lords.
But I’ll be watching through the night next week.
Go the Black Caps.
