The Pink Punt

As I relate frequently elsewhere, individual life events can have a powerful and profound effect in shaping a human being’s future thought processes, life choices or character. The following story relates to just such an event although it took more than 50 years before the dots were joined in understanding the event / experience I share below.

As a little 7 year old boy, I would not have known that electro-chemical messages being transmitted to my brain via my senses would, one day, represent the bedrock of my own interpretation of some archetypical state of personal bliss or perfection … yet one fleeting image would stay with me all my life … and eventually form such an ideal, a prescribed sense of being … and a state of mind to aspire to.

I use memory, hindsight … and an ethereal sprinkling of poetic licence to tell my tale.

Kingfisher Days

It is spring. Perhaps May or June … 1963.

I am in the company of my Nan (Daisy) and my Aunty Jean and we are doing what the three of us had done all my young life …

We were on a ‘day out’ together.

While we all hailed from nearby Yeovil, 19 miles North of Bridport town, both Nan and Aunty Jean owned caravans in the locale and, on this occasion, I was walking out to the end of East pier, happy to be scuffing my shoes making shapes in the shingle thrown up following some recent storm.

Back then, the twin piers jutting out from Bridport harbour were parallel structures about 40 feet apart and it was often a challenge for boats to navigate the swell and turbulent currents as they headed out to sea or returned to port.

Not this day though.

Today, the water’s character was benign and gentle, possibly the sign of a full, high tide just on the turn.

And it was against that soothing, hypnotic, coastal backdrop that I first noticed a little pink boat slowly exiting the piers … right beneath my feet.

I watched, intrigued, as a fisherman in his seventies dressed in a stained and grubby, full length, overcoat, threw out an anchor and brought the pink punt to a halt offshore less than 25 yards from my own vantage point.

Then, in awe, I witnessed something unforgettable.

The elderly, unkempt, fisherman stood upright in the flat bottomed boat, (an extra-ordinary sight in itself), and began hauling in a long line … and, moments later, I watched, spellbound, as he hauled, what looked to me like, glittering Christmas tree decorations straight out of the sea!

Of course I wasn’t really seeing Christmas tree decorations. Rather, I was witnessing a shimmering bounty of plaice, dab and similar flatfish being harvested from the ocean … right before my eyes … the flashes of light being sunlight reflecting off the glistening white plaice as they were brought aboard the boat.

What did I, a 7 year old child, make of such a spectacle?

Well, before adding or layering my current, contemporary thoughts to this story, I must share the particular, unique thought I held in that moment … at that time.

I thought … “How amazing. How brilliant. How wonderful” … aware that, while my Father or Uncle Jack would be working in a factory inland at Yeovil, this old man was working under blue skies on a shimmering ocean … pulling fish from the sea.

Seconds later, any tangible real-time feedback of that mesmerizing moment would have popped like a fairground balloon, likely when my Nan or my Aunty Jean would have shouted “Christopher. Come on, love” and the three of us would have ventured back around the harbour or walked home for a cup of tea and strawberry and cream sandwiches back at “Bon Terra”, the aforementioned caravan owned by my Nan at the far end of Road 4 on the West Bay campsite.

In that moment, any thoughts or experience relating to that unique moment, would have been dissipated and then been replaced by ‘the here and the now’ of continuing my day and, likely, I would not have given the moment any further thought in my little life.

But, me being me, my little brain would have already processed, marked, stamped and stored the moment in my psyche for future use or posterity.

And over the years, decade by decade, I would have continued to squeeze and mould my own being into the shape and spirit of that old man in the pink punt.

And today, I hope other people see that same spirit in me.