Gone Fishin'

The first time I went fishing was when I was twelve years old. My uncle was a crusty old seafarer who skippered an ancient rust bucket out of Duncannon on Ireland’s sunny south east coast. Back in the days when Ireland had long hot summers my parents used to rent a caravan there every July. The kids were piled into the car and we’d join the long procession south, towards our Mediterranean.

In hindsight, I think my parents only went there for the free fish that my uncle brought round each evening. But to us kids, it was an adventure playground. The old fort that was built by the British to defend against Napoleon was there to be broken into, the sand dunes allowed us to recreate Rommel’s North African campaign and to a child’s eye; the sea was a tempting wonderland of fishing boats and cargo ships inching their way towards Waterford Port.

I nagged my uncle for a week until he agreed to let me come for a day’s fishing on his trawler. I rose at 4am and crept out of the caravan like a cat burglar and made my way through the darkness to the little pier on the edge of town. Everything was quiet apart from the slow lapping of the in-coming tide. I stepped aboard for my first sea adventure while my uncle and his mates packed what to me looked like a mountain of food into the boat’s galley.

Soon the big dirty diesel engines were started and we were on our way. I stood up front for the first few miles as we sailed down the channel, imagining myself as a Jason leading the Argonauts to battle. Then we rounded Hook Head and entered the open sea. Everything changed and my sea legs were suddenly tested.

Within ten minutes I was consigning the cornflakes I’d hastily consumed that morning to a watery grave. I wobbled around the deck for a few hours merrily throwing up everything I’d eaten over the previous six months, right back to the egg, beans and chips that my Mother had bought me for my confirmation dinner.

My uncle thought an hour or two in the bunks downstairs might sort me out. As I descended the stairs into the sleeping quarters, my nose was suddenly filled with the pungent aroma of diesel fumes coming from one end of the boat and the whiff of dead fish coming from the other. This and the dizzying motion did nothing for my delicate stomach. So I wandered back upstairs and found to my amazement that when you don’t have anything left to throw up, you finally find your feet.

The only problem was my uncle doubled as chef on the boat and insisted on feeding me boiled bacon and potatoes every hour or so. Trawling is incredibly hard work and fishermen eat more than trailer park Americans. They kept telling me that I’d get used to it and to be honest by the end of the day I could hold down food for up to twenty minutes.

When I was delivered back to the safety of the campsite, my dad kindly laid me on the best bunk and gently mocked my predicament. In my head, the caravan didn’t stop swaying for the next three days.

Needless to say I’ve been reluctant to head to sea since, so it was with some trepidation that I accepted an offer over Christmas to go on a little fishing trip into the lovely bay of Pauanui on New Zealand’s Coromandel Coast. I needn’t have worried however as the sea was as flat as a supermodel’s chest and we skipped across the surf with a barely a wobble. Ross was in charge and he showed delicate consideration for my naivety. I was excused responsibility for attaching the disgusting bait to the fishing lines or for washing the blood from previous kills from the boat’s deck. Ross even cast my line into the glistening sea which meant all I had to do was sit there and hold a fishing rod until something in the murky depths was foolish enough to have a nibble.

Thankfully this didn’t happen too often as I like eating animals a lot more than killing them. I dabbled with Vegetarianism for a couple of years but went back to being a carnivore when I had a Paulian revelation one night over a lentil curry. God spoke to me and said “If I didn’t want you to eat animals, why did I make them out of meat?”

Nevertheless, I have kept a slight squeamishness when it comes to seeing my upcoming meal in a live state. I like to think of fish for example as being rectangular shaped and covered in batter. Not with sad eyes staring at you and a gaping mouth that seems to be saying “I only wanted a bloody nibble”.

It soon became evident however, that there is a skill to fishing which had totally bypassed me. While I stood impotently dangling my rod into the deep dark sea, my colleagues were hauling fish into the boat with the industry of a Japanese whaling fleet. Snapper, Leatherbacks and scary looking eels were caught, measured and thrown back in if they didn’t meet the lofty standards of the skipper.

Finally I bored some fish into submission and was able to land a couple of small Snapper for my portfolio. One was thrown back and the other was smacked on the head (a process I averted my eyes for) and added to the trophy bucket. Alas I later found out that he had made his way into a curry we ate, which thwarted my plans to have him mounted on a plaque.

We made it back to land by the light of a shimmering moon. We did all the manly things about getting the boat out of the water and onto the trailer (at this stage I was a seasoned sea-farer) and arrived home like knights returning from the crusades.

I insisted on having a picture taken of me holding the 7 kilo snapper that Ross had caught. Fishing is meditative, companion making, relaxing and somewhat spiritual. But the best part is the chance to have your photo taken with big dead fish.

The Christmas Barbie - New Zealand Style

Opinions differ on when God came to New Zealand. Perhaps he created it and then stood back and thought that he couldn't improve on perfection and retired to heaven for an extended builders holiday.

Some say he was here before the Maori arrived ministering to that secret race of people that nobody in New Zealand likes to talk about. It doesn't seem to suit the national psyche to suggest that the oppressed Maori people might one day have been oppressors themselves.

He was certainly here for the last one thousand years when the Maori arrived with a whole canoe load of Gods including Maui who apparently fished New Zealand from the clear waters of the Pacific.

The white man, of course, brought Christianity to the Southern shores and has been responsible for many atrocities ever since, such as large Tongans wearing outrageous shirts while murdering hymns on Sunday mornings.

Christ comes in as many flavours as Tip-Top ice-cream and the early settlers here would have come from the full cross section of Victorian life. Presbyterians from Scotland, Anglicans from England, Catholics from Ireland and Baptists and Methodists from up their own arses. It's a small place though and it doesn't make sense to have separate churches for each faith in every small town.

So the Kiwis have taken to sharing their places of worship. This also happens in Australia under the smörgåsbord of the Uniting Church. But this is only for Protestant faiths. Aussie Catholics like to think that they're a bit snobbier than that and they'll meet in a bicycle shed rather than share a space with Proddies.

New Zealand Catholics appear to be less squeamish and they have thrown their lot in with their fellow Christians to build community churches. I went to one in Pauanui for Christmas Midnight Mass. As it's a timeshare arrangement, similar to a villa in Spain, we had to be out before the Baptist Carol service at 9pm. This made it the earliest Midnight Mass I've ever been to, although having said that, I've never been to a Midnight Mass that started at midnight. Which makes me think that the Church should be prosecuted under the Trades Descriptions Act.

Community Churches by their nature are built around the lowest common denominator. The committee that builds them is tasked with being sensitive to the needs of each faith. So there could be no statues or stations of the cross less the dour Presbyterians be offended by false idolatry and no Union Jacks draped from the walls to remind third generation Irish Catholics of their shameful colonial past.

As I sat in the second row on Christmas Eve (no kneeler's less they hurt the tender knees of the Methodists) I looked around the little church to see who's influence was most at hand. The overhead projector that sat center stage on the altar seemed an incongruous addition and must have belonged to the Methodists as they see God in the ordinariness of daily life. The Anglicans had clearly added the ornate 19th Century hymn board and I'd like to think that the Catholics provided the light and colour.

The crib however was obviously Baptist as it screamed hallelujah and was more over the top than a Mardi Gras parade. For a moment I feared the heavy hand of commercial sponsorship as Barbie's owners seemed to have done a deal with the Baptists on merchandising rights and had supplied a job lot of the Barbie “Angel” series which displays the doll in all its feminine glory without any hint of Ken to upset the virginal balance.

The local clothing boutique had clearly been raided to provide the models for Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the three wise men as they stared out at the congregation with the dead eyes of shop window mannequins. Political correctness has obviously not come to Pauanui however as Baby Jesus and his parents were resolutely white while the three Kings of the Orient ranged from a Barack Obama look a like to a Possum bearded African Prince.

The animals in the crib suggested that Jesus was born on a commercial farm in Central Otago. The sheep were healthy and the chickens looked free range. The stuffed deer was a cute addition with his eyes capturing the moment when he realised he'd been shot.

I didn't expect much from the Sermon and I'm pleased to say that I wasn't disappointed. It did however cause me to ponder on what life was like back in zero BC. Judea seemed much more commercial than say Ireland or New Zealand back then. I'm guessing that we were focussed on spear improvement in those days in order to improve our chances of catching passing boars or to chuck at interlopers from the next village. The Judeans on the other hand were sufficiently developed to require a Census and commercial enough to need Inns, even if I suspect these did not come with mini bars and three to a room specials.

I guess the Romans were responsible for most of this development, as the Judean Popular Front were apt to point out in “The Life of Brian”. But it does highlight how some places were more developed than others two millennium ago. If Jesus had been born in Ireland for example, it's unlikely that any of the locals would have bothered to ask him how much his Dad charged for a kitchen installation. His miracle of turning water into wine however would have marked him down as a local hero and saved him from any risk of crucification.

Ireland today is a nation of carpenters intent on covering the whole country with decking while Government subsidised Hotels and Inns are more abundant than Churches. In Judea however, they are still chucking the modern equivalent of spears at each other. I wonder which country needs wise men now.