We live, then we die. Our heart beats millions of times, then suddenly stops. We are either alive, or dead. There is nothing in between. One life, live it!
Sitting outside the church this glorious summer day, I wait for my daughter to come out of Sunday school. These young children slowly file out of the church hall, all tender and naïve, with their lives ahead of them. I wonder which path each will take. A tribute to Gary Moore plays on the radio. I listen to his voice in an interview, followed by Parisienne Walkway. Most people do not know the meaning behind the words of this song. Philip Parris Lynott was born in Birmingham in 1949, the illegitimate son of an Irish Catholic teenager. He grew up in Manchester and Dublin, and seems to have constructed an elaborate mythology about the father he never knew, and after whom he was named, Cecil Parris. In January 1976, an up and coming pre-Moore Thin Lizzy was featured in the weekly Titbits magazine. The story came to the attention of Cecil Parris, and led to the two meeting for the first time, but if Parris was pleased to find he had a rock star son, to Lynott his newfound father was a bitter disappointment. "Parisienne Walkways" was an attempt to reconstruct the lost romance of the enigmatic figure he never knew.
Thoughts of my own father flashed though my mind. Being quite an eccentric man, he had always encouraged me to do the most adventurous and often outrageous things, for which I am eternally grateful. Way back then, he knew that one day you would only regret the things that you never did. So, with that philosophy, we tried everything and absolutely anything that seemed of interest and out of the ordinary.
It feels like yesterday that I was a young choir boy, spending many fun filled days running around the cathedral grounds after morning mass. Days and long hours would be spent practicing at perfecting our young voices, other days spent sitting at the mammoth pipe organ that was such a thrill and privilege to play. This monster had four manuals, a two and a half octave radial concave pedal board, dozens of stops and presets, and breathed from an enormous blower below the church. The routine of starting up this giant before mass was always exciting. To any young boy, all of this resembled a flight deck from some ancient Da Vinci contraption, or something out of a Jules Verne storybook. At the slightest touch of our fingers we could bring the entire cathedral to shake from floor to rooftop and bell tower. Rehearsals of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue, Baroque era pieces such as Jeremiah Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary would while away the time, always played with gusto and the enthusiasm of a young heart. Often these recitals in the empty cathedral would get totally out of control, with the priest running in from the rectory with arms waving in the air to quiet it down.
There were the holidays at a small coastal fishing village of Port Alfred, where we lived in an old mill house right on the rivers’ edge. The house had been there for centuries. Originally sailing ships on route from the east would tie up alongside the millhouse and offload their supplies for the settlers along the Eastern Cape of Southern Africa. Beneath the house was a cellar, with a tunnel under the road leading through the hill to an old castle above. The tunnel had caved in years before, but as young children we easily imagined the ghosts of sailors in the dungeon below. Year after year I would go paddling down the river in my canoe. Soon it was proudly replaced by a small wooden dingy, powered by a two horsepower Seagull petrol engine. This little two stroke engine would scream away on the transom, making any kind of conversation with a friend impossible, and waking up the old retired locals as they took their afternoon nap. It would move the boat at a snail’s pace of perhaps two miles an hour. Hearing us from far down the river, my mom would have an hour’s warning to prepare supper before we even arrived at the jetty. At the end of each day, salty and suntanned brown, we would unbolt the engine, and haul it up the steep wooden jetty to the garage beneath the house where it would be rinsed down and oiled. The boat was often laden with crabs crawling around at our feet, with the few fish that we had caught which would be grilled on the outside fire.
It was on one of these summer days that a huge fish appeared swimming along the river surface past the house. But, fish usually do not swim on top of the water! In an instant I was in the canoe, paddling frantically in pursuit of this strange fish. Finally, exhausted and about to give up, I reached it. The poor fish also looked rather tired, and for the next ten minutes or so I grappled in an attempt to get this fish the size of a child on board. Eventually it was safely at my feet, and with the canoe just about ready to sink, with tired aching arms I paddled back home. The fish survived, and after resting a couple of days in an enclosure next to the jetty, it was released, this time happily disappearing below the surface. We assumed that it must have been washed in through the raging river mouth half a mile away from the Old Mill house. The nights would be spent watching the river mouth from upstairs, where fishing boats would battle their way in through its treacherous waters, waves and strong currents crashing against the two rocky piers that stretched out into the Indian Ocean. Violent storms and lightning would illuminate the mouth at night. Inside the house hung old pictures of sailing ships that had made it through and tied up alongside the Mill House, and then there were the hundreds of wrecks strewn along the coast. This house had seen so many characters and events in all the time it had stood here, it seemed to have the souls of a hundred sailors and pirates within its walls, or so it felt to a young boy.
From that day onward, I had come to realize the joy of saving any living creature in order for it to live longer. That river went on to provide us with an endless variety of animals to rescue, from seals, penguins, dolphins and just about anything the sea would wash up each day. To this day, I carry with me a burning desire for conservation of any living creature
During my early years, I had already developed symptoms of a mysterious illness with frequent spells of pain and blindness. At fourteen years of age I was on all types of treatment. Despite this, I was determined to one day pass the physical test to join the Airforce.
At that time, I was already familiar with the South African Airforce motto….which I would always hold on to.
“Per Aspera Ad Astra”
“Through Adversity to the Stars”
Sean
I enjoy reading your story... truly is beautiful.
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