I went and accosted Mauro in the car park at Millers after his obligatory daily lunch time surf. Super stoked with his new board, but not too chuffed with the rubbish conditions - weak east swell at about 1-2ft and 6 others peeps floating around in the line-up.

My folks are both from south of Milan in Italy. They moved out to South Africa after WWII looking for work, and ended up in PE as there were opportunities here. My dad opened La Fontaine. It was in Rink Street and was the smartest restuarant in PE. The waiters wore tuxedo's! (Ed.- For all the lighties out there, Rink Street used to be one of the streets in PE - you wouldn't say that looking at it today!)

We lived over the road from Pipe, and my mate's Mikey Meyer and Jo Da Silva were surfing so I joined in. I was probably about 12. We looked up to the older crew of John Davies and Mark Reed. My first board was one of those garage specials made by Jo's brother Dennis. We made these trolleys for behind our bikes using pram wheels, then we used to load up our boards and ride to wherever we were going to surf. Just left the bikes on the beach (Ed. Try that today....bike'll be "vanished" promptly).

Mikey used to wake me up at 4h30 in the mornings to go for a dawnie before school. Although I must say I wasn't exactly a regular at school - if there were waves, we surfed. Actually bumped into an old teacher a while back and asked her if she remembered me  - she said "You weren't at school very often were you!"

Yah, my mates and I used to sit on the beach at Millers in front of what's now known as Chomp Rock, and we were always eating Cadbury's Chomps - you know - the one's with the hippo on the wrapper. Well, one of the guys, I can't remember who, decided we should call the spot Chomp, and I guess it stuck!

We used to surf all the same spots as today. Maybe Millers actually had a bit more reef, less sand then than it does now. Fence definitely used to break much better and more often. We used to drive our VW bugs down the beach - there was like a sandy road - right down to the corner where you surf. There wasn't the pier in those days, so there used to be the odd wave that broke where the pier is now and down towards Baked Beans.

As a lightie I was surfing at Clubhouse and the lifesavers were out on one of those rowing boats they used to race - an oversized dingy with a bunch of guys with oars - anyway, they came right through the break on a wave and went straight over me, breaking my board in half! They were quite a hectic crew back in those days, always keen for a fight, and they just laughed at me. Even when my dad went to confront them about the incident they just laughed it off.

Another funny story is about 3 years back I saw Bobby Martinez sitting in the dunes at JBay, so I went up to ask him for an autograph as he's my favourite surfer. I was scratching around in my car trying to find a piece of paper for him to sign and couldn't find anything. All I had was my cheque book - so I asked him to him to sign a cheque! He thought it was classic!

I was working in the Free State as a regional operations manager for a large retail chain. I got a promotion to JHB, and thought bugger that, I'm not going there, so I moved back to PE and bought the cafe. This was about 10 years back. I've surfed just about every day since then. When my wife comes into the store at around 11h00 I bail a bit later to go look for waves, usually surfing between 1-2pm. (Ed - At this point Mauro earns major brownie points by mentioning he has a great wife, Jess, who's a spunky blonde! Good to see a guy who still appreciates his wife!)

Well, I speak, read and write Italian. I also managed to do pretty well out of the World Cup. I opened up the World Cup Cafe right opposite the stadium about 2-3 years ago in preparation for 2010. We did really well during the games. I sold it off straight after the tournament finished.

At this stage Mauro has managed to get himself out of his wetsuit, and is dressed and ready to head back to work to deal with the after school rush. I forgot to mention he had to unlock his car with his key still attached to the keyloop down by his calf - so this entailed some rather entertaining contorsionist work of lifting his leg up into the air (and the Chevy's not a small car....and Mauro's not a young bloke) to get his key into the lock. He doesn't see so well without his glasses and couldn't get the key off the loop!