Through the eyes of a child

This is a non fiction piece of my childhood written as a child would write. I think there is a term for this but am unsure as to what it is.

New Zeal and Retrospection 1973

In the late summer 1973 I was fly fishing in this amazing deep blue coloured river just outside of Dunedin in New Zealand. Terry from the church was showing me how to do it properly. I had my own rod and reel for fly-fishing, but always got my reel line tangled up in a birds nest when I was practicing the casting. I really loved fishing - specially fly-fishing. Terry was my new hero. He was a really good fisherman - he knew everthing as well actually. He always caught lots of trout on his fly rod. I would only sometimes catch one myself after using my spinning rod for ages, which made my arms really sore. Spinning means casting out a metal spinner  from a normal kind of reel on a small rod and then winding it back in again hoping that a fish is crazy enough to bite it thinking it’s a real fish.

 

On a fly rod you use a different kind of reel and it makes a screeching noise when you pull the line off it.

Ten - two, ten - two, ten to two - that sound always rings in my ears from Terry telling me it over and over again. 

      ‘Right then Alaster.’ Terry started to show me. ‘The position of the rod should begin at 10 o’clock and end at two o’clock. So, when you begin the flick of the line �" like this, start with a little of the weighty fillament pulled off the reel behind you. Slowly, you must begin to take up the slack of the line by raising the rod behind you and when you get it to roughly the ten o’clock position �" imagine the position of the hands on your watch - you use a whipping wrist action to flick the line, and follow it through to the two o’clock position in front - like that. Then, you must reverse the action, A? �" ok?’

        ‘I think so, yes, I think I get it Terry.’ I would have said.

‘That’s it Elister �" you’ve got it now, A? Well done.’

         ‘ I still haven’t had a bite though.’

         ‘A rise.’

          ‘Pardon?’

         ‘A rise, - we call it a rise not a bite, A?’ Terry had a really calm sort of voice. He never shouted but he always said �" A -  on the end of of his sayings. He was sort of telling you something but then afterwards it sounded like he was asking you a question - I got used to it.

          ‘Oh sorry, a rise then.’ I remember feeling silly.

          ‘How long you been fly fishing then Terry?’ I ased.

          ‘I reckon about twenty five years - since about your age �" A?’ He said.           “Come over here and try casting those breaks.’

 I could see Terry pointing to some small rapids flowing down from underneath the bridge.

          ‘The trout like it in those places �" fast running, cold water. Try dropping the fly on the front of that rough water and just let it float down �" naturally  - we’re trying to fool that trout A?’ He demonstrated with his own rod.

     ‘ Be careful not to slip on those boulders - A?’

       I was so excited. I was really sure I was going to catch a big one today.

‘No, I won’t, don’t worry.’       

I was stood with bare feet on this large rounded boulder nearly upto my knees in the cold water. Ten �" two - ten �" two……

           ‘You need to pull some line off the reel each time you back cast Elista’. (Alaster)

         ‘Ok.’

         ‘That’s it, that’s it, well done’.

I was looking down at my feet which I could just about still see. Below that, the river became a really scary blackness. I thought a huge eel might come up from deep down under the boulder and bite one of my toes off but I didn’t say anything to Terry that I was scared. The eel never came up though, Terry caught this massive trout in some rapids and I thought I had this bite  too�" I mean rise, but the fish didn’t catch the hook in it’s mouth so it got away. 

 

Terry was a friend of my mum and new dad, Big Rick. He was at the same church we started going to. His brother Bill, who was really only his friend, played the drums up in the attic at the top of the church. It wasn’t a real church but they called it the church. Really it was somebody’s old house but anyway, they called it that for some reason. Bill had really long hair �" longer than Rick’s. Terry’s was quite long as well. All the people were very smiley and really happy all the time.

 

 Andrew and me have to call my dad, who’s the real one, Jock because he said it was supermarket to call him dad because everyone else’s father is called dad. He used to tease my brother who he nicknamed ‘Supermarket’ because Andrew liked all things like sugerpuffs that you got in the supermarket that he saw on the adverts. Sometimes, before, when jock was in the bath singing  - one of his songs was about my brother. He would sing songs at the top of his voice. The words included:

      “…Supermarket….   munchy �" wunchy - sugarpuffs…” This would get repeated or he’d make up new ones. I would laugh about it usually cause it was funny and it meant Jock was in a good mood. Andrew didn’t really like the songs very much.  

 

Mum, me, Andrew and Big Rick moved to this quite big house in Mornington which was on the hill at the back of Dunedin. My school was there and from the playground you could see the harbour where I would go fishing on Saturdays. The owner of our house was called Richard but Big Rick called him Diddle because he was always doing dodgy deals and stuff.   

 

Jock said Big Rick, who we met in the Witch’s Coven, stole mum off him. We used to go to that shop when we first moved to Dunedin. We went in to buy things like candles made out of bees wax, leather things and joss sticks. Rick’s wife was very nice but Rick didn’t like her anymore and she didn’t like my mum now either. Big Rick had to sell the Witch’s Coven cause he said it was a bad place where the devil lived, so we didn’t go there anymore. He did leatherwork. He made really good handbags and belts with dragons and snakes carved into the thick leather. He actually looked exactly like the Viking out of my schoolbook. I used to like going to the ‘Witches Coven’ before though, so I could play with little Ricky who was Big Rick’s son. Little Ricky had a sister called Sarah and a baby sister who was called Kirsten. She was quite fat. Mum said I had to say she was plump. 

 

In the Witch’s Coven, Jock and Big Rick would usually listen to meditating music and they would be out in the back room talking; all these other people would come in for a chat and make some smelly smoke. Jock is not friends with Big Rick now, cause when me, my brother and my mum went round to his new flat to get the money for going back to England again, he said Rick was a something!

 

The church was getting fuller with more people each week. Jock said all the smiley people at our church were Jesus freaks. He said that you had to be very careful or they might wash your brain. But I liked the Jesus Freaks better than when we used to go and see Jock’s new friends. His friends looked the same as Bill and Terry from the church with bushy beards and all that, but these ones always just sat there smoking and never talked to us much. Sometimes we would do some fun stuff but mainly it was boring. If we were bad, Jock said we had to meditate. That was boring too. You had to sit with your legs crossed �" put your hands on your knees and you can’t slouch and you had to use your posture properly and the hardest thing to remember, which he went mad about if you didn’t, was you breathing properly.

      ‘In through your nose �" hold - and out through your mouth �" slowly imagine…..’ He told us.

 How bad you were meant how long you had to do meditating for. At home it used to be worse.Me and Andrew had to meditate and listen to the headphones for ages at the same time - and it was music without any words. Boring! 

 

Before my Mum and Jock split up, we used to live in Arro Town which was not in Otago like Dunedin, but about a hundred and something miles away. It used to be a place for gold mining. You could still go down to the river with a shiny pan and get some gold. I used to get the blackish sand from under the rapids. I’d put some water in the pan with the sand and swill it round and round �" then, I’d stop and look very carefully. The tiny bits of gold would twinkle in the sunlight. You could get loads of specks of real gold and save it in a tiny little jar. The proper gold miners took all the nuggets away ages before. I got loads in the jar, but Andrew, who was a year and one week younger than me, nicked it. He swapped it for a boomerang from Austrailia which I broke, but it was an accident.