Saturday 13th April

MILTON CARAVANNING TRIP TO PARK RYNIE

My father nearly killed us three times before we made it to Park Rynie. The first near death experience happened near the airport when Dad got a bit carried away with watching a plane coming in to land. He was so busy trying to keep up with the SAA Boeing 737 that he nearly ran over three hitch-hikers standing in the emergency lane. Mom told Dad he was a ‘bloody fool’.

The second near death experience occurred under the Umgababa bridge. Dad reckons that the Umgababa bridge is a death trap because ‘the bastards’ throw bricks off the top and try and kill you. By the time we reached the dreaded bridge Dad had scared the clappers out of himself and was as highly strung as Wombat in a bank queue. In a high-pitched voice he ordered me to lie flat on the back seat and place the fishing tackle box on my head. As we approached the bridge, Dad swung the car wildly from the left to the right to try and out-fool any possible brick throwers. Unfortunately, Dad was so worried about the trouble from above that he didn’t notice the gigantic sugar truck bearing down on us from the fast lane of oncoming traffic. As Dad turned around to give me a high five, Mom screamed and pulled wildly on the steering wheel. The station wagon slid back across to the left. The caravan tried its best to jackknife but Dad was too quick and he straightened us up again. Dad shook his head and told us the country was becoming more dangerous by the day. Mom stared out at the passing banana plantations without saying a word.

The third balls-up happened right near Park Rynie. Dad was so eager to see the surf conditions and check which direction the wind was blowing that he didn’t stop at a railway crossing and nearly had us written off by a train. After Dad had finished swearing at the train driver he winked at me and said, ‘Light north-easter… Johnny, let’s go catch ourselves a hundred pounder!’

I took a stroll around the campsite. In site 18 across the road there was a bunch of surfers and their girlfriends sitting in deckchairs drinking Lion Lager. One of the girls was rather delicious. She smiled at me as I walked by. I tried to smile back but my mouth wouldn’t open, so instead I ignored her and slipped into the ablution block. I sat down on a closed toilet seat and thought about my possible options. Then I realized that if I took too long the girl would think I was releasing a prisoner. Simon says beautiful girls never fart or release prisoners, so just in case she was wondering what I was up to in the toilets, I scuttled out and strolled back past campsite 18 looking as cool as a cat. This time the girl was facing away from the road and a surfer with long blonde hair had his arms around her and was kissing her neck. I’m beginning to develop a deep hatred for blonde surfers! When I got back to our caravan, Dad was waiting for me in his fishing kit. He clapped his hands like a loon and shouted, ‘Come come come come…’ as if I had been wasting his time. He then announced that the shad were running amok in the bay, thrust a fishing rod into my hands and marched off towards the beach.

We staggered across rocks and jumped over rock pools for about a kilometre before Dad pointed at a gully and said, ‘X marks the spot.’ We set about rigging up our tackle. Suddenly Dad gave a loud agonised scream and hurled down his pyramid sinker. He had left the bait in the caravan freezer. He then sat down on a rock and stared out at the sea like a psychopath considering murder. Then he said, ‘I bloody give up, I just bloody give up! Everything a Milton does is a bloody balls-up. I mean what’s the bloody point?’ I wasn’t sure if Dad was becoming suicidal so I told him I’d just seen a huge fish jump out of the water in the gully in front of us. I turned back to my father but he was already halfway back to the caravan park, jumping from rock to rock like a klipspringer.

To say the shad were running amok in the bay wasn’t quite true. By five o’clock we hadn’t had a bite. Dad was looking edgy and kept trying different baits but without any luck. He then told me that SAPPI, the nearby paper factory, was to blame for the poor fishing. He took a sip of seawater and told me it tasted oily. Suddenly my line went completely slack. Dad’s eyes lit up and he started shouting, ‘It’s a shad! It’s a shad! Reel! Reel! REEL!’ I reeled like a maniac and then the line went tight. Dad shouted, ‘Hit the guts out of it!’ I jerked the rod back violently and the fight was on.

17:04 I landed my biggest shad ever! Dad reckoned it was two and a half pounds. I took the hook out of its mouth as Dad sprinted back to our bags to get his camera. I took some time to get a good grip on my slippery fish and then I held it up with a big grin. But my father didn’t take a photograph. Instead he stuck a hook through the top of the shad’s head and another just below the dorsal fin and said, ‘Live bait, Johnny!’

Dad lobbed my beautiful fish into the bay, handed me his rod with a wink and said, ‘Now catch a garrick!’ After my initial disappointment at my record fish being relegated to bait status, I began imagining a tussle with the finest sport fish in Natal. Dad cracked a beer and burped loudly before kicking into a raucous version of I’m On Top Of The World. Thankfully there weren’t any bystanders.

After about twenty minutes of holding Dad’s huge rod and staring out at the horizon and feeling manly, there was a sharp knock on the line. Dad stood behind me and whispered in a weird voice, ‘Stay calm, boy. He’s just checking it out. Give him time to swallow. Nice and easy…’

Unfortunately, the knock was all I got and when I reeled up I discovered that all that was left of my beautiful shad was its head and a few bloody tendrils of guts and gore. Dad studied the shad head, took a swig of his beer and said, ‘Shark.’

My blood ran cold – I had just been messing with Jaws! We got fishing again and soon Dad pulled in two shad, which he said were both just less than two and a half pounds. He rigged up our rods with wire trace and cast out the shad for us. There we stood like two warriors waiting for a deadly battle against the most feared beast on earth. Dad gave me a few swigs of beer saying it would put hair on my chest. I’m not greedy. Personally, I’d settle for a couple more ball hairs. (Total ball hair count sixteen as of lunchtime.)

Then suddenly Dad’s rod tip shook violently from side to side. He passed me his beer and crouched into a striking pose. His eyes bulged with anticipation and he started talking to himself. The shark screamed off like a wounded Ferrari. Dad whooped loudly and began staggering across the rocks towards the bay so that he could fight the shark from the beach. I reeled up my live bait and left the fish in a rock pool before running across to catch up with Dad on the beach. He reckoned the shark had already stripped off more than 200 metres of line and was nearing Madagascar. Since it was getting dark I ran back to where our bags were on the rocks and brought them back to the beach. I gave the live bait its freedom because I felt sorry for it gulping away in its green and slimy rock pool.

Back at the beach Dad was starting to lose hope. His back was causing him trouble and the nylon had cut through the skin on his left palm. It was like the old man and the sea, although Dad didn’t seem too impressed when I told him so. Unfortunately, the shark pulled a sneaky move and began moving parallel to the beach towards the left. Dad tried his best to stop him but his line was burnt off around the reef. My father didn’t seem too upset, perhaps because the shark had already worn him out or maybe like his son he was secretly terrified of what he might just pull out of the water.

Back at camp I had to make the fire because Dad was too busy marching around from campsite to campsite telling stories of the big one that got away. He told the guy next door that it was well over five hundred pounds and probably a ragged-tooth. Our neighbour looked a little worried and said that he would advise his family to keep out of the water. After striking fear into the entire Park Rynie caravan park, Dad happily settled into his deckchair and ordered me to write a full account of his shark fight in my diary.

22:00 Dad just went and shat on the surfers for playing their music too loudly. They were quite rude to him and called him a ‘ballie’ once his back was turned.

Sunday 14th April

Great day suntanning. No fish or sharks.

Monday 15th April

Five days until my birthday! Fifteen definitely sounds a lot older than fourteen. The Miltons took a drive down the coast and had lunch at a pub called The Orange Octopus. They were playing fishing videos on a TV in the corner and Mom had to keep telling Dad to stop watching and listen to her stories. But Dad already had that wild fisherman glint in his eye and ate his burger so quickly that we had to stop at a pharmacy on the way home for a bottle of Enos.

I caught two more shad in the afternoon but this time there were no sharks around. Dad filleted one of my fish and we cooked it on the braai along with boerewors, lamb chops, chicken sosaties and last night’s reheated rump steak. After dinner everyone was so stuffed that we all went to bed before eight o’clock.

21:00 I lay awake listening to Dad snoring and Mom grinding her teeth. After a while I slipped out of the caravan trailing my sleeping bag behind me. I closed the door, tiptoed up to the fire and threw some more wood on the coals. The smaller pieces caught fire and I settled down for a night beside the campfire. By the looks of things the surfers were setting up for an evening’s party and soon music was booming from the blonde surfer’s car stereo. They were playing Out of Time, REM’s latest album. I’ve heard it coming out of Death Breath’s room every afternoon since half term. I lay down next to the flames and looked up at the stars and listened to the sound of the waves breaking and sliding up the beach. I thought how magical it would be if Mermaid was lying here with me. She also loves perfect moments like these. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth because I could feel a lump in my throat.

That’s me in the corner.

That’s me in the spotlight

Losing my religion.

Tuesday 16th April

Four days until D-Day!

The moment we were home I told the folks that I was off for a cycle. I tore down the street and made it to Mermaid’s house. Everything was locked up. They must be away on holiday.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 569