The thief-man business.

“Oh bleddy hell, now I know why some people prefer to steal,” I grumble to meself after digging up earth and mole-ing up plants in we garden. Leg muscles scream, hands and fingers complain. Though is just seven a.m. sweat pour from me like fountain...I swear I coulda just stand there and water we Amazon-jungle garden. “Thief-man work is so much easier, all you got to do is sit in the shade and watch while other people work, then you just tiptoe in and take what you want.”

Even though I know it is true, true story that some watch while you labour in the heat, then they sneak in cool, cool and reap, somewhere at the back o’ me mind I been thinking that nobody... nooooobady... gon be that brazen enough to admit that.

Heh.

Yesterday I get straightened out on that one.

Sitting at we dining table, drinking me cuppa tea, reading the papers, I come upon a piece that make me splutter.

“Wahaha, y’all hear this, y’all hear this…” My mother is in the verandah picking chaff from masala spices, Rehana cleaning we fridge.

“A man thief three carpets from a shop and when he go to court, he holler out, Oh God, I guilty, I guilty, I is a shoplifter. And when the judge ask he why he thief, he say he got plenty chil’ren to feed and people don’t hire he because he look like a Rasta. And one time, when he been working somewhere, some people who (according to he) look like priest steal but he get accused. What a lazy bum. Why he don’t cut he hair and get work to feed he chil’ren?”

“Work, he don’t want to work,” my mother say.

Rehana say, “G, last week I read this one in the papers…a man get ketch thiefing, and when the judge ask he why he do it, he say he got plenty, plenty chil’ren to feed…and he can’t do hard work.”

Ow. I wish a bowlful o’ cherry tomatoes would just fall into me lap…which is what one thief say happen when he get ketch with a bag o’ money……