The three Dafereras brothers can’t remember how they learned to throw stones. Niko, Harry and Ross are all annual competitors in the World Stone Skimming Championship on Easdale Island in Argyll, Scotland. ‘I reckon I just picked one up and started throwing,’ says Harry. But Niko reckons they had help. ‘Dad taught us to throw. On Paros, looking at Antiparos.’ We are by a bonfire in the rain on the eve of the championship. It is dark and stormy without a star in the sky, and I can barely see their faces for wood smoke. Different conditions, then, to summer on the Aegean. I ask Niko if he ever hit Antiparos. ‘You can’t hit Antiparos,’ he says seriously.
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Niko is a fisherman and razor-clam diver who spends most of his time on fishing boats around the Hebrides. When on land, he lives in a caravan in coastal Argyll where people have come from far and wide to camp out before the championship. I have never seen so many pick-up trucks in one field. Dolly Parton’s a week gone and whisky’s being passed around to the strains of Wild Flowers. By midnight, the hopeful champions have turned in.
