Many years ago a distant relative was in town from Australia. A distant cousin, thrice removed or whatever.
He and his wife were over here to catch up with their more immediate family in Auckland, but bowled down to see some of the eastern sights and looked in on my mother.
She called me, because this distant and previously unknown relative was a motorcycle racer ... albeit retired.
And his son had also taken up the art of seeing how fast you can send cow hide down the track before the gravel rash bites through.
We had a good chat and swapped gnarly old bike tales.
"You put a Suzuki through a caravan?" distant cousin thrice removed said with a shake of the head.
"I didn't have time to go around it," I explained.
"Fair enough," he concluded.
And then we talked about families.
How they morph off into branches all over the land, and all over the world.
"Like us," he said.
"And we'll probably never get to meet up again."
I nodded.
"Funny old life."
Then he mentioned how his wife had been nailing together a family history over the past few years - the dear old family tree.
"So we're originally Irish of course," I ventured, to which he nodded.
I then suggested that being Irish our forefathers would have set out for a new homeland and duly arrived on these southern Pacific shores.
"Dis doesn't look loik Barbados," one would have said.
"Oi tink you're right ... we've taken a wrong turn somewhere ... we should have brought a navigator."
Which would have caused Nev O'Gator to pipe up and rather testily point out that he had answered their ad ... that he had done the best he could, despite being a simple poultry farmer from Cork who had never seen the ocean until the day he sailed.
I can make jokes about the Irish, ok?
My forefathers were Irish so that makes it acceptable ... although it should be noted they were all well into their 20s before they finally twigged they weren't Welsh. And so we chortled at our own ancestral expense and talked about distant family, and he revealed how in our great family tree there were a few branches which, while not broken, were certainly suspect. Such as the pirates.
It had something to do with some branch of the distant clan being sent packing out of Ireland.
Hell's teeth ... that's as bad as being thrown out of a pub.
What did they do to get the red card? I asked. My distant cousin wasn't sure but from what his wife had managed to glean it appeared to involve religion and women. We sat and thought about that for a while.
"And the drink?" I suggested.
"Not at that stage ... that came later."
Then it sort of came to pass that the outcasts from the green isles of Val Doonicanland settled on the coast of Cornwall ... a popular spot by all accounts for Spanish seafaring ne'er-do-wells to put ashore and seek the latter two subjects of the family's downfall, rather than the religion.
So, there was a fusion between Spanish pirates and Irish asylum-seekers and voila ... it was potato paella for tea.
I was fascinated. Pirates.
Since I was a kid, and having grown up beside the sea, I had always been fascinated by the likes of Blackbeard and Henry Morgan, and the remarkable Bartholomew Roberts, who by all accounts took more than 450 ships.
If he were alive today he'd surely be appointed the King of Somalia.
But those sea-dogs off the Gulf of Aden are not real pirates ... they're just ratbag kidnappers and thugs who'll take anything and kill anyone.
If I ran NATO or the US Navy I'd shell the ports they launch their raiding boats from ... but these days you need health and safety permission as well as environmental approval and resource consents to simply pass wind let alone a 120kg explosive shell.
The seven seas belong to no one. They belong to King Neptune and all those who ply them should respect that and sail upon their whitecaps in peace and harmony ... unless you're a real pirate with a terrible squint and a gleaming cutlass, of course.
Like my great, great, great, great, great-grandfather Manuel Ol'e Moroney ... scourge of the bars of Newquay and plunderer of cider from the vats of the rural lands.
He didn't raise the skull and crossbones ... he simply raised a glass.
Late in his life he always said there was no point in going back to sea.
For he would simply argue "to see what?"
The Irish influence had clearly emerged.
Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.
Many years ago a distant relative was in town from Australia. A distant cousin, thrice removed or whatever.
He and his wife were over here to catch up with their more immediate family in Auckland, but bowled down to see some of the eastern sights and looked in on my mother.
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