Publish and be damned
30/05/07
I'd scribbled the words
below in my notebook while I was on my way to a
meeting, whiling away the Salisbury-Cardiff line lost
in recollection and memory. I had toyed with the idea
of approaching some magazines or something to see if
I could get it published, but then I thought, hell,
I'm getting somewhere near 40,000 hits a month, I may
not be being paid, but I'm writing and it's being
read. So here it is, I guess the first attempt at a
fishy article, instead of the usual meandering,
type-as-you-think words.
Malcolm
The Journey
It’s early summer on the nettle-laden banks of the river Nadder in Wilton. I’m sat with the setting sun warming my back, rod in hand experiencing the sort of inner calm that only a day on the riverbank seems to deliver. A brisk breeze rises and sends a flurry of blossom tumbling to the waters surface where it whirls and roils it’s way, Salisbury bound on it’s journey to the English Channel. It’s the sort of experience that sends an overactive imagination like mine to faraway places; funerals in exotic lands, only experienced through dusty dog-eared copies of the National Geographic leafed through in desperation in doctors surgeries.
Watching the blossom disappear from view on it’s journey I can’t help but wonder at the choices and disasters that have led me through the last 36 years to end up sitting on a river bank watching the world go by.
If I trace my fishing career back far enough I can remember a friend of dad’s from the pub taking me off to Chard lakes for a day where I caught, if memory serves me well, nothing but Eels. None of my family fished, in fact I remember my mother trying desperately to entertain me in my early fishing career, by throwing line, float and bait gracefully at the alders on the far bank. Needless to say I didn’t take that well, and there, at the age of 13 my family and my fishing career parted ways.
A day upsetting the Eel population in Chard morphs in memory into the endless summer days of childhood, trotting worms, cheese and most of my packed lunches under trees and bushes on the River Axe, just downstream of Seaborough. My quarry had evolved into the beautiful, multi-hued, spotty wild trout that at that time seemed plentiful and of good size. Memories of the trout population of that part of the Axe are for me, ever enshrined in those glory days, before a farmer near Seaborough repeatedly polluted the river and killed off just about everything, anyway, I digress. In between terrorising the trouty population by fishing with garlic sausage and anything that came to hand I can vividly remember my fellow poacher Julian and myself peering out of our hiding places in awe at the bent old figure of the local rector, who we spied fishing from time to time. We hid in the willows, alders, reeds and other dark spots that as a child you believe confer some kind of invisibility cloak, especially to ‘honest’ poachers like ourselves. Looking back on it, this old rector undoubtedly knew we were there hiding and watching him, but with his cane rod, his creel slung over his back, wearing his black shirt and dog collar and with his methodical, almost reverent approach to the river and his feigned ignorance of our observations he changed my fishing world forever. To my eternal regret I never plucked up the courage to talk to this solitary fly-fisher but simply seeing this new way to fish planted the seed that has shaped years of my life, and god/allah/gaia/George W Bush willing, will continue to shape many more to come.
The opportunity to learn fly-fishing didn’t present itself until a couple of years later, but as luck would have it, occurred twofold. Project week at Beaminster school came round in early summer and I took the opportunity to learn to fish for a week with our Biology teacher, Mr ‘Lethal’ Letham. As deterred as I was by Mr Letham’s fearsome reputation, I couldn’t pass up the chance of learning to fly-fish. So I spent a week learning to huck a gaudy lure as far as I could across Cheddington lakes, dragging it back through the water in the hope that it would pass the nose of a curious trouty resident. Some time after this, Giles, a family friend started taking me fly-fishing with him, notably I remember fishing Knights-in-the-Bottom lakes with him learning knots, watercraft and to cast in a somewhat less erratic fashion. There’s a balance to casting a fly line between power and delicacy, most beginners err on the side of power where in reality delicacy is the aim. Trout, more often than not, aren’t on the opposite bank; they’re in the margins where the food is.
Knights-in-the-Bottom and Cheddington became days fishing Sutton Bingham Reservoir a much bigger body of water, and a much longer trip from Netherhay. Even if only as a taxi service, my family once more became embroiled in my fishing life. The pull of the small wild river Axe near the house was ever present but as a teenager my attention was drawn to the reservoir and the homecoming glory that would ensue by encountering one of it’s leviathan sounding 3lb plus fishy residents.
Girls, trouble, skateboarding, music and cider; They all played their part in taking me away from fishing for many years, although not necessarily in that order. After all fishing was hardly deemed ‘cool’ in the way that grazed knees, tattoos, bruises and missing teeth are.
I picked up a fishing rod again at the ripe old age of 22 when I found myself studying in Newton Rigg, Penrith. The remote, high Lakeland tarns and stony shores of Ullswater became my backyard and provided me with many harsh lessons in ‘wild’ trout fishing. I began to realise that fly-fishing wasn’t as un-cool as I’d initially thought, and could even be integrated into a ‘normal’ lifestyle. To this day I don’t own a tweed suit or a four-wheel drive and know many fellow members of the so-called ‘xtreme’ generation who are now avid fly-fishers.
Moving back to the South of England I quickly became more and more involved in fly-fishing, in particular fishing on Wiltshire’s crystalline veins, the chalk streams. I was lucky enough to become a member of the Salisbury & District Angling Club who provide a huge variety of fishing to members at prices that provide access to waters that would normally be out of my reach. Time moved on and I started working as a volunteer bailiff on the River Nadder, spending more and more time learning about the river environment, carrying out maintenance work and developing something of a bond with the river. I still carry on with this work on the Nadder but somehow now find myself as a committee member of the club.
The journey from small boy catching eels in Somerset through to being on the committee of one of the largest Angling Club’s in the country has been nothing short of enlightening. I have a good career, working in a fantastic field, but at night I dream of nothing more fancy than a beaten up old landrover, cutting weed by hand with a scythe and feeling the wind on my face.
When I meet Neville out on our clubs waters, an 87 year old, fishing twice a week on his own I am filled by an incredible optimism. As long as the riverbank continues to draw a diverse range of people who through their passion, commitment and energy fight for the continued health and well being of one of our most precious eco-systems, I'm sure that our rivers, fly-fishing and my own piscatorial journey will thrive. I’d encourage even the non-fishing reader to look at the work of the Wild Trout Trust for example, a truly inspirational group.
The river bank is one of life’s great levellers, I can hold work party days on the river to have people from all walks of life turn up sharing a belief and passion that I’ve never encountered anywhere else. Judge, plumber, student, banker, old or young, black or white the river really doesn’t care, it doesn’t judge and if you let it, will transport you away to another world. One where regardless of who you are, or your station in life you will be given the opportunity to be a part of something bigger and as old as time itself.
The river Axe of my youth still pulls at my mind and may well have recovered sufficiently these days for there to be a healthy trout population again. I can no longer fish with the impunity of youth however, so daren’t sneak back to have a look. I like to think that that old rector still haunts the banks and that he may encourage the sort of passion for our rivers in others that by simply turning a blind eye to my fishing transgressions he has enshrined in my own nature.
Just a few shots from a side-trip I took to the beautiful River Monnow last week. A truly magnificent, if under-rated river system.
Malcolm
The Journey
It’s early summer on the nettle-laden banks of the river Nadder in Wilton. I’m sat with the setting sun warming my back, rod in hand experiencing the sort of inner calm that only a day on the riverbank seems to deliver. A brisk breeze rises and sends a flurry of blossom tumbling to the waters surface where it whirls and roils it’s way, Salisbury bound on it’s journey to the English Channel. It’s the sort of experience that sends an overactive imagination like mine to faraway places; funerals in exotic lands, only experienced through dusty dog-eared copies of the National Geographic leafed through in desperation in doctors surgeries.
Watching the blossom disappear from view on it’s journey I can’t help but wonder at the choices and disasters that have led me through the last 36 years to end up sitting on a river bank watching the world go by.
If I trace my fishing career back far enough I can remember a friend of dad’s from the pub taking me off to Chard lakes for a day where I caught, if memory serves me well, nothing but Eels. None of my family fished, in fact I remember my mother trying desperately to entertain me in my early fishing career, by throwing line, float and bait gracefully at the alders on the far bank. Needless to say I didn’t take that well, and there, at the age of 13 my family and my fishing career parted ways.
A day upsetting the Eel population in Chard morphs in memory into the endless summer days of childhood, trotting worms, cheese and most of my packed lunches under trees and bushes on the River Axe, just downstream of Seaborough. My quarry had evolved into the beautiful, multi-hued, spotty wild trout that at that time seemed plentiful and of good size. Memories of the trout population of that part of the Axe are for me, ever enshrined in those glory days, before a farmer near Seaborough repeatedly polluted the river and killed off just about everything, anyway, I digress. In between terrorising the trouty population by fishing with garlic sausage and anything that came to hand I can vividly remember my fellow poacher Julian and myself peering out of our hiding places in awe at the bent old figure of the local rector, who we spied fishing from time to time. We hid in the willows, alders, reeds and other dark spots that as a child you believe confer some kind of invisibility cloak, especially to ‘honest’ poachers like ourselves. Looking back on it, this old rector undoubtedly knew we were there hiding and watching him, but with his cane rod, his creel slung over his back, wearing his black shirt and dog collar and with his methodical, almost reverent approach to the river and his feigned ignorance of our observations he changed my fishing world forever. To my eternal regret I never plucked up the courage to talk to this solitary fly-fisher but simply seeing this new way to fish planted the seed that has shaped years of my life, and god/allah/gaia/George W Bush willing, will continue to shape many more to come.
The opportunity to learn fly-fishing didn’t present itself until a couple of years later, but as luck would have it, occurred twofold. Project week at Beaminster school came round in early summer and I took the opportunity to learn to fish for a week with our Biology teacher, Mr ‘Lethal’ Letham. As deterred as I was by Mr Letham’s fearsome reputation, I couldn’t pass up the chance of learning to fly-fish. So I spent a week learning to huck a gaudy lure as far as I could across Cheddington lakes, dragging it back through the water in the hope that it would pass the nose of a curious trouty resident. Some time after this, Giles, a family friend started taking me fly-fishing with him, notably I remember fishing Knights-in-the-Bottom lakes with him learning knots, watercraft and to cast in a somewhat less erratic fashion. There’s a balance to casting a fly line between power and delicacy, most beginners err on the side of power where in reality delicacy is the aim. Trout, more often than not, aren’t on the opposite bank; they’re in the margins where the food is.
Knights-in-the-Bottom and Cheddington became days fishing Sutton Bingham Reservoir a much bigger body of water, and a much longer trip from Netherhay. Even if only as a taxi service, my family once more became embroiled in my fishing life. The pull of the small wild river Axe near the house was ever present but as a teenager my attention was drawn to the reservoir and the homecoming glory that would ensue by encountering one of it’s leviathan sounding 3lb plus fishy residents.
Girls, trouble, skateboarding, music and cider; They all played their part in taking me away from fishing for many years, although not necessarily in that order. After all fishing was hardly deemed ‘cool’ in the way that grazed knees, tattoos, bruises and missing teeth are.
I picked up a fishing rod again at the ripe old age of 22 when I found myself studying in Newton Rigg, Penrith. The remote, high Lakeland tarns and stony shores of Ullswater became my backyard and provided me with many harsh lessons in ‘wild’ trout fishing. I began to realise that fly-fishing wasn’t as un-cool as I’d initially thought, and could even be integrated into a ‘normal’ lifestyle. To this day I don’t own a tweed suit or a four-wheel drive and know many fellow members of the so-called ‘xtreme’ generation who are now avid fly-fishers.
Moving back to the South of England I quickly became more and more involved in fly-fishing, in particular fishing on Wiltshire’s crystalline veins, the chalk streams. I was lucky enough to become a member of the Salisbury & District Angling Club who provide a huge variety of fishing to members at prices that provide access to waters that would normally be out of my reach. Time moved on and I started working as a volunteer bailiff on the River Nadder, spending more and more time learning about the river environment, carrying out maintenance work and developing something of a bond with the river. I still carry on with this work on the Nadder but somehow now find myself as a committee member of the club.
The journey from small boy catching eels in Somerset through to being on the committee of one of the largest Angling Club’s in the country has been nothing short of enlightening. I have a good career, working in a fantastic field, but at night I dream of nothing more fancy than a beaten up old landrover, cutting weed by hand with a scythe and feeling the wind on my face.
When I meet Neville out on our clubs waters, an 87 year old, fishing twice a week on his own I am filled by an incredible optimism. As long as the riverbank continues to draw a diverse range of people who through their passion, commitment and energy fight for the continued health and well being of one of our most precious eco-systems, I'm sure that our rivers, fly-fishing and my own piscatorial journey will thrive. I’d encourage even the non-fishing reader to look at the work of the Wild Trout Trust for example, a truly inspirational group.
The river bank is one of life’s great levellers, I can hold work party days on the river to have people from all walks of life turn up sharing a belief and passion that I’ve never encountered anywhere else. Judge, plumber, student, banker, old or young, black or white the river really doesn’t care, it doesn’t judge and if you let it, will transport you away to another world. One where regardless of who you are, or your station in life you will be given the opportunity to be a part of something bigger and as old as time itself.
The river Axe of my youth still pulls at my mind and may well have recovered sufficiently these days for there to be a healthy trout population again. I can no longer fish with the impunity of youth however, so daren’t sneak back to have a look. I like to think that that old rector still haunts the banks and that he may encourage the sort of passion for our rivers in others that by simply turning a blind eye to my fishing transgressions he has enshrined in my own nature.
Just a few shots from a side-trip I took to the beautiful River Monnow last week. A truly magnificent, if under-rated river system.
Rainy Day
21/05/07
So, working too much the
last week or so, not much to report. Well not much
you'd be interested in anyways. Days in the office,
days in London for meetings. Falling asleep on
trains, bottled water, rush hour tubes and
pre-packaged sandwiches; These are a few of my
least-favourite things.
Was back in London today for a meeting but actually got there early (blame the train for not being delayed!) so had time to dawdle along the river from Waterloo and have a coffee in *$ (a cunning reference to a coffee chain, you work it out). I ought to sort out my rambled thoughts about dreary rainy London days and make an articulate story but in my spirit of tired-ness I'm going to plonk them down here in no particular order and let your imagination take them and put them into a story.
- Perfectly dressed coiffured women who then forget that it looks really really dumb to be huddling under a yellow jacket made out of bin liners supplied to them by the bus company.
- Families smiling like they feel that they SHOULD be enjoying themselves despite the weather whilst wishing that someone had warned them that rain was a possibility in London in May.
- Optimistic fathers trying to gee up the kids with encouraging sayings like "It'll be fun", "the rain won't last", "you're skins waterproof" and "tough, get over it". (Incidentally I remember holidays like that as a kid, thanks dad!)
- Armies of umbrellas marching long Westminster bridge, whirling, twirling colours looking for all the world like some kind of low budget olympic games opening ceremony.
- Dodging said umbrellas as you walk through like a martial arts training excercise, making it to Westminster with both eyes intact getting praise from the umbrella sensei 'Your skills are strong my son, ready for the next level you are. Prepare to meet australian backpackers and polish folk musicians on the northern line! Ha"
- The odd local marching through the rain, head down, feet splashing through puddles. Unconcerned by the gaze of Big Ben or the London eye. Not noticing the way the rain changes the colour of the stone or the increasing saturation of colour as the light pokes through the clouds.
- Pikeys accosting american tourists hawking some 'lucky' heather. Lucky my arse, theres probably one of their friends nicking your wallet while theyre selling you the heather.
- Teenagers in rain splashed jackets, baggy jeans dragging along the ground. Waterline rising up the back of their trousers from shoe level, a barometer of how cool it is to be unconcerned by the weather.
- Police officers sheltering under the awning of a tat stall, plastic union jacks and silly hats relecting off their wet high-vis jackets.
- The sort of stickiness that you only ever find in London. Muggy, wet, clammy but with a cold wind that just never seems enough to cool you down properly.
anyways, that's enough rambling mutterings from me. Something more riverine next time, I promise...
Was back in London today for a meeting but actually got there early (blame the train for not being delayed!) so had time to dawdle along the river from Waterloo and have a coffee in *$ (a cunning reference to a coffee chain, you work it out). I ought to sort out my rambled thoughts about dreary rainy London days and make an articulate story but in my spirit of tired-ness I'm going to plonk them down here in no particular order and let your imagination take them and put them into a story.
- Perfectly dressed coiffured women who then forget that it looks really really dumb to be huddling under a yellow jacket made out of bin liners supplied to them by the bus company.
- Families smiling like they feel that they SHOULD be enjoying themselves despite the weather whilst wishing that someone had warned them that rain was a possibility in London in May.
- Optimistic fathers trying to gee up the kids with encouraging sayings like "It'll be fun", "the rain won't last", "you're skins waterproof" and "tough, get over it". (Incidentally I remember holidays like that as a kid, thanks dad!)
- Armies of umbrellas marching long Westminster bridge, whirling, twirling colours looking for all the world like some kind of low budget olympic games opening ceremony.
- Dodging said umbrellas as you walk through like a martial arts training excercise, making it to Westminster with both eyes intact getting praise from the umbrella sensei 'Your skills are strong my son, ready for the next level you are. Prepare to meet australian backpackers and polish folk musicians on the northern line! Ha"
- The odd local marching through the rain, head down, feet splashing through puddles. Unconcerned by the gaze of Big Ben or the London eye. Not noticing the way the rain changes the colour of the stone or the increasing saturation of colour as the light pokes through the clouds.
- Pikeys accosting american tourists hawking some 'lucky' heather. Lucky my arse, theres probably one of their friends nicking your wallet while theyre selling you the heather.
- Teenagers in rain splashed jackets, baggy jeans dragging along the ground. Waterline rising up the back of their trousers from shoe level, a barometer of how cool it is to be unconcerned by the weather.
- Police officers sheltering under the awning of a tat stall, plastic union jacks and silly hats relecting off their wet high-vis jackets.
- The sort of stickiness that you only ever find in London. Muggy, wet, clammy but with a cold wind that just never seems enough to cool you down properly.
anyways, that's enough rambling mutterings from me. Something more riverine next time, I promise...
Reasons to be cheerful, part 1
01/05/07
Snoozing in the
day, a warm breeze billowing the curtains
Dappled sunlight in Bluebell woods
Blossom on car park floors
Worn out playground equipment
Dandelions
Curly ferns
Cool doors
Blister in the sun by the Violent Femmes
Opportunity knocking
Evenings fishing
Smiling
Sparkly eyes
Sand between your toes
Realising your waders aren't tall enough too late
Blue skies
Cloud watching
Tea & cake
Cottage pie
Dappled sunlight in Bluebell woods
Blossom on car park floors
Worn out playground equipment
Dandelions
Curly ferns
Cool doors
Blister in the sun by the Violent Femmes
Opportunity knocking
Evenings fishing
Smiling
Sparkly eyes
Sand between your toes
Realising your waders aren't tall enough too late
Blue skies
Cloud watching
Tea & cake
Cottage pie