‘Once as a little boy of about eight or 10, I was taken rather foolishly by my father on a little fishing trip on to the Bay. This was in the days before life-jackets and so on were compulsory. It was with a group of four or five other males, meat-workers, because my father was a meat-worker, he worked in an abattoir. And we set off in this little boat with an inboard diesel motor, and the weather was not looking very good.’
‘They were very happy. They were brimming with happiness. And there was a few bottles of beer and you couldn’t have seen a happier more contented bunch of blokes. But we get out on the Bay somewhere quite far out, far from land and a storm blows up. A massive storm. They try to start the motor. They can’t start the motor. The waves get darker and bigger and start crashing. It was absolutely horrifying.’
‘It was the first time I’d ever seen a grown man cry and start praying out loud beside me. And I was looking on in astonishment and fear.’
‘Eventually—it could have been an hour, or an hour and a half, a couple of hours of this terror and people vomiting and the blackness of the sky—they got the motor going and we were able to turn the boat around and head back. And just as we approached the jetty getting back in, you’ve never seen a happier bunch of men. Absolute euphoria.’
‘So this is the path to happiness: you set out happily, you go through hell and then they come back humbler and happier people.’
‘What a funny cycle that was, and how like life that was.’