This wet weather always reminds me of our Walvis Bay days, back in my childhood years. Whenever my dad and his mates went out fishing, my two brothers and I went with them. Our skipper was a dour old Dutchman called Van Urk, and I will always remember how he used to lean out from the wheelhouse at that shabby old wooden quay and tell all those Windhoek pen pushers (ink pots, my dad used to call them) “If you start to feel hair in your throat, stop kotsing…”

I can still feel the throb of those crusty old diesels under the deckplanks as the Etosha kicked away from the rotten wooden poles. My favourite spot was the crow’s nest. I used to love riding the waves up and down, and sideways, in that rickety old rustbucket up there. If the smell of the Atlantic Ocean had settled in your outer epidermis, it stays there, and it creates havoc. You just get that whiff of a taste in the air, and you are back on the Etosha. The smell of salt, however fleetingly, the flavour of that salty snoek at the fish counter, the smell of Kiwi boot polish and the furtive stab of a memory places me back in the lines at 2SAI Battalion Group in Binnebasis, Walvis Bay. You cannot prevent this, and you cannot save new memories over these ones. They are all PDF files, not erasable.

The thrill of a huge, floating sunfish, blinking its liquid eye at us as it slowly drifts underneath the boat. The Etosha was not a ship…!!!!  I was always fascinated by the gambolling seals and the slim, streaking porpoises that flashed by like some miniature submarine. The guys then got together on the aft quarter, and very soon the snoek lines were going overboard. You do not let the line go in too far, and then you recover it with slow, pull-and-release movements. That is, until that monster fish takes a bite at it out there in the cold deep. That snoek line very suddenly went as taut as Henry the V’s bowstring at Agincourt, and then the fun began.

When you have finally battled that jaw-snapping, teeth-flashing fish over the side, you need to get him under your armpit and snap its neck before you can let it go. That wildly thrashing toothy countenance had taken a firm bite out of many a calf or leg muscle befoe it got subdued, and those swarthy old sea dogs took very unkindly to a wee sprite that could not control his catch. There was no way in any kind of Hell you can perceive that I was going to put that thing under my armpit, so I devised a club with a piece of wood and some lead plating. I usually crushed my catch’s head before I could make it lie still in the gun whale bucket, but that was that. I was not going to get bitten by that evil fish. Under no confluence of circumstances.

I remember how we ended up three memorable days at sea with a quick netting of some errant herring at Pelican Point. The delightful sight of those “silwer rands” thrashing about in the spidery confines of that very heavy dragnet (Hey, I was only 15 years old, okay…?) soon heralded the smell of herring frying in an open pan on the fo’csle. You sneaked a quick sip of icy cold Windhoek Lager with that piping hot, ultra-delicious nugget of fish before my dad could see us, and then you sneaked around for second and third helpings.

You ended the day by washing off the deck grime in the shallow waters of Pelican Point’s lighthouse. When the skipper set a course for harbour you settled down in your spot in the bow and was usually fast asleep until we docked.

The pleasures of my misspent youth……..

It’s raining again. There is a slight cold breeze sniffing around my bare ankles, and I want to go home.