Spring Offensive : Leave Cancelled

ja

tragic luck that, in dry dock with thames pox. angler's curse, pepys' revenge, and falling at season's end is a court case under sod's law. may the scales and scabs fall from your eyes and the spume of cess ridden weirpools glance off your shield. sipping claret in a punt as your herrings bob along the weirs sills does strike me as reaper's charter if the thames really is flux with 21st century pox, unless it's angler's menopause and the estrogens and all the other hermaphrodite's jetsam got into your claret and you're actually mutating into a barbel. next time you walk into an indian restaurant you'll end up on the menu: bangers and masheer.
while you've been doing your walking freak show, i've been chained to the desk, the dancing editor, refilling the coffers after a spend-up on the rods of necessity, a month of sundries. and it all sat grinning in its wrapping as i ghost-wrote for the aged, sleep-walked for those with the writing pox in search of diagnosis. outside the wind shunted my stove pipe sideways and turned my greenhouse inside out like an umbrella on the fens, the plastic in shreds, the spinach swelling into thick fronds like a crowd of waving mittens. the fields turned nitrogeon green, the rivers of tea and all the spring yellows buttered the bread of the land. after five days and nights of tempest, imagining the waves in the town pit bay, and all those old creaking carp sheltering like wrecks on the bottom, i busted the ghost-writing, rigged up the new rods, piled into the truck and headed for the pox line.



i fished the tail-end of the recent storms, settled to a blue-sky billow, the ramrod steam-rolling half-retired, but it was still an x-ray westerly which all the fleece in china can't keep out. just baiting up, the rods blew out of my hands and the unhooking mat flattened itself against my face like burst bubblegum. by 4pm both rigs were down at 20 foot, water temp 9°, air temp 10° in the wind, baits at 25 yards. stephane turned up at 5.30 having blagged his pupils about some staff meeting, sneaking out the firedoors where the gear was hidden in his car. he's got two clocks ticking away now too - the one on the classroom wall and the biological one in his girlfriend's belly. after september the only runs he'll be getting in the night will be in his kid's nappies, so he's squeezing in every snatched minute behind the rods he can.
it was gloaming on a dropped wind just as i'd fallen back to the gravel path to shake a bit of warmth into myself when i saw the left buzzer light come on. i couldn't hear a thing because i'd plugged the speaker hole with a rubber swivel sleeve. the hanger was jammed against it and the rod tip was bent down underwater. i played this one down the margins for a couple of minutes. the other buzzer light caught my eye and the right hand rod took off like a dragster, the reel crashing into the buzzer head before upending like the death of donald campbell in bluebird and hitting the water in a deathly spray. it was like those last minute goalmouth scrambles in the mud: you're 30 secs off getting into the village cup final when a bad clearence ricochet's off your own striker's legs and loops towards the top left hand corner. the fucking striker shouldn't have been back there anyway. it looks impossible, the spinning ball is a ref's whistle away from the net but the goalie, who'll end his life doing a milk round anyway, grows wings for the only time in his career. the next thing i knew i was airbourne with a bent rod in hand and landing head first into the water. in my right hand the last six inches of the cork butt. the other rod was now under me with my full weight upon it. i began playing two fish on my back in nappy-mud, the right hand fish taking off on its first run. stephane rescued the left hand rod once i regained two feet and he played the fish into my net as i tried to get control of the rod thief. before stephane could come back with a second net mine came off close in, a good upper 20. the smaller common was spawned up and built like a nile steamer from the omdurman campaign:



i topped the swim up and swung the lead close in, ringing the water from my sodden clothes. there were fish crashing now. lorries on the ring road canvas flapping, double decker trains bringing insurance clerks home from paris and herons cackling, ducks in a night-time panic and pheasants bickering over roosts. the blue light on the right hand rod comes on. one muted bleep and all holds tight so i hit it. this time the fish takes off like the rod had. it's a tale of revenge. just scraped 30 with half a pound to spare:



spring offensive battle-map pinned to the birdtable

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Half A Guinea A Look

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whilst you were running round in the blackout trying to plug into the sun i was taken by the victorian weir rash. the same one that g had three years ago. it came up on my return from wimbledon, i thought it was a flea pit infestation caught from the car boot car park and then maybe the dungeness shingles but they were both ruled out by the ridley road 'designer handbag change your life' quack who told me i had a water borne virus, probably from the thames, that would cover my whole body with scars and scabs within weeks and stay until april. threatened me with the smallpox hulk but then she arranged for me to be pickled in a large jar for private display in the museum of curios on whitfield street but i gave the velvet caped baliffs the slip and went feral. look like the fucking leopard man only my eyes without sores and scabs. calming down a bit now after a rub down with a tench but still look like a floater in the margins. it's put the ki-bosh on my end of season plans as i have a fear of water that borders on the rabid and i can't get the sores infected otherwise it's curtains. emptied an indian restaurant in two seconds when i took my coat off the other night and mr rose broke into his new favourite song 'leprosy, i have bits falling off of me'. surviving on a diet of vegetable roots, ox's liver, ale thistle and the rosary.

merrick on the birdtable



ja

Dynamo Kev

ja

sorry for the delay... lines were down after a nuclear strike from the electric company, a well aimed million volt power surge knocked out the 8 houses in my hamlet, smoke pouring from electrical goods two fridays back just as we were all plugging in our toasters and downloading the morning post. my modem in ashes, so too the radio caught mid-humphries, freezer with bait the fish got prematurely, eco-light bulbs and everything with a wire attached. heavy losses. this is the great EDF luftwaffe who are going to build britain's nuclear toasters. go solar is my advice. i have recieved not the least apology nor any admission of liability. some metal head pulled the wrong switch at hq, dynamo kev himself shakey after a night stealing cars probably. my insurance company are sending inspector cluebucket who has yet to be seen. i'm having to connect to blog on with a tin can, some fish-paste and a length of copper wire slung up the telegraph pole.
in the meantime, whille you were on the football special rattling over points, i was fitting out the icebreaker for imminent service, minus 1 at sunset all that week and plunging. one night i couldn't sleep so i watched the pond freeze over in moonlight you could've played extra time in if EDF had done the floodlights. days are garden duty now, the crusade against creeping buttercup, the original green fundamentalists, suicide weeds that evade your most efficient security. dig one out and make ten more of the raging, clustering parasites. i've had to move my entire herb garden to a secure zone. risky when half the garden's an iceburg till midday, but the herbs are well trained so can take it. a pair of fox euro-warriors with full cork handles arrived in the middle of this skirmish to hasten forward my next leave behind the lines.
i did manage a scrape-through double a week back. remember those stuttery half-seven bleeps i was getting? stephane got them too apparently but it was too cold to sit it out another 2 hours in case they were line bites. i did 3 blanks, then a bit of on-site rig-tweaking, dump the pop-up, short hook-links, anti-waterlog 12" stringers, leave the stutters and sit tight, fucking freezing, till nine o'clock then hit a good run as the herons fly past in the night croaking like cut-throats, camera flash bouncing off the mist:



next day a parcel to fetch from a cafe 3 villages off, a post-house, fag shop and flat screen, heinekin optics and a five quid menu dinnertimes. it was four pm and the gear was still in the land rover half frozen and wet from the night before. the parcel was a new fleece duvet i was going to flop the evening away on with the wood stove boiling fumes and the wine chilling on the porch. but the gear was with me and 300 yards from the cafe is the scuffiest gravel pit, a scum dump for petrol-heads whose only mission in life is smashing bottles on the benches. i've fished it once, last june, three hours dusk till dark in the pissing rain, but even that didn't deter the pillocks sliding through mud on their peugeot 50s. i was on that point in the photo, putting out a pva bag into a big hole 30 yards off. as the rain lashed and the gits road round and round with bottles in their gobs i got a run and lost a big 30 at the net. i had the fucking thing over the rim 5 times too, but the bottles were flying and the pests were circling... something, i thought, must put them off, keep them indoors. maybe the freezing cold. so by 5 i'd set up in a chilly corner with the hole outfront, pit levels up at least a yard . zander dandy fishing off the point which meant i had poor rights of way; a bouy on the left and tree roots to the right. off the point you're in the clear. the fish actually came off on a sand bar close in.



well, nothing came by except a pheasant to roost in the tree beside me and squirk till i packed in. since then the leaves have sprung on the willows, three muskrats have set up an underground station beside my pond and a calf was born in the field opposite:


solar panel where the bird table was

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You'll Never Make The Station

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the last of the few marched from the birdtable via redan hill and sebastopol road to the east bank aldershot with a pint of bull's blood from the crimea fresh in our throats. to stand in a february fog in tailored red coats with brass buttons, led by a drummer boy who took the king's shilling out the back of the bus station in '82 and has never looked back. suedeheads and old songs. a richardson linocut come to life entitled, 'everywhere we go, people always ask'.

the five fifteen out of waterloo took us there out along the thames past bob's catfish swim at battersea power station, along the side of the pike cut at staines to the basingstoke canal at brookwood and the pits at ash vale, stopping just short of badshot lea pits where i hooked my first ever pike by the caravans. a night time tour of the paid up permitted waters that i have failed to fish for a full calendar year. all too soon. rather than the empty bank and the lonely moon i needed the camaraderie of the crowd, old familiar schoolyard faces and the blinding white light of the floodlights. a glimpse of heaven. just enough to know that it might exist.

last train out of here on the birdtable

ja

Fish-Fingered

ja

thanks for that buchaneering tale, nabbing a duke's pike under flush winter sky from a punt, clapping butler and cooing maids. there should be tapestries and painted ceilings of stag party pike inside the dutchess's boudoir. you know the old song of course, "pull out the stopper & lets have a whopper/get me to the bob church on time..." was the butler singing that?
pit fishing was just flushing lead down a hole last week. minus 7 sunday night, water tanks frozen even in sun. i put two baits out at 3 monday afternoon but by 4 the temperature was zero. sky streaked like a german raid on the docks at sunset. a fin nudged its reflection 30 yds off. numb toed, minus 2 before the blackbirds put their songsheets away.

i packed up as church bells rung up the start of the archers. chair frozen into the ground, pulled the skin away with it. line frozen in the rings, making the reel gears clunk. wednesday was identicle in blue:



this time an itchy run after dark, four stuttering bleeps. i struck ice. put the same bait in the same place as fish started rolling in the mist. my boots froze into the ground as i stood like a red guard outside the kremlin, brushing frost off my sleeve. cat ice forming on my teeth, findus written on the rucksack. yesterday it was back to mud and just raw. a bream hooked in the back, two bleeps in the only ten minutes of sun at 4 o clock. listened to the archers driving home. wednesday's forecast is belting sun and 13 degrees. the wind is whipping the margins to froth in the bay as i speak, a wind in its twenty-fourth hour. wednesday's carp is full of bait, they say. they'll be butlers clapping, and rods a-looping, sure as g's pike...

last of the few on the birdtable

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The Last Supper

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whilst you were gorging on your winter harvest of fat monks me and g were punted up on blenheim for the last supper, the final cast before g tied the blood knot and got married. lost count of the false casts and pulled hooks that had led to this day but there we were the anticipation greater than ever. as best man it was my job not to forget the bait. the day was breezy, a westerly rolling in from ireland bringing scudding clouds and the threat of showers, a hint of spring but nothing more. the floods had brought the level of the lake up by over two feet, some feat when you consider its vast size. occasionally in winter the boathouse there is full of fry penned in by perch and jacks but today the water was clear of souls and we rowed out to the slope. we put the baits into eighteen feet of water and waited for marlborough's blast on the bugle and for the fish to come over the hill. at lunch there was a shooting party on the horizon birds dropping into the water but it wasn't until dusk that the music started. g's float vanished and his rod looped round. it was a good fish from the off staying deep and diving for the anchor rope. after a fight of ten, maybe even fifteen minutes it was the net. what god has created let no run cast asunder. shoulders like a horse jaws clamped shut. a stout eighteen pounds. the hooks were out without a struggle and the net was thrown over the side of the punt for the staff of the house to see the evidence. centuries of them from the butler to the cook standing on the lawn with the lights from the house in the background applauding as g climbed the path away from the boathouse smiling and laughing because he knew it was meant to be.

bells ringing out on the bird table




ja

The Navy Lark

ja

osterley. even the name sounds like catacombs of doomsday pike, bones piled and sifted in their field of honour at the foot of that dam wall. and maybe when the wind snuffs out the parallel world, the sound of the M4 becomes a ghostly perlon whistling through the ceramic rings of bill keal's pike rod, lady osterley herself, half-jack half-gill, gliding through the laurels with the sprat.
down bleak pit the carp were history too. for monday dinnertime, the meteo forecast sun and ten degrees. i ate my baguette and camembert in gloves as a filthy spit glanced in on a wayward south westerly. stephane came over from his swim upwind, bringing a bottle of nouveau apple juice, crushed by village rovers, two real glasses in his pocket. we hunched it down, this fermenting pre-cider thick with the tang of apple mound and barbed wire fences trampled down by cows on heat and we didn't give a sou for our chances of a carp. at 2 a black dog walked between me and the rods. i suggested a dual which was stopped in its tracks by a puff of white spume as a pirate showed on the starboard rod. but stephane's lookout gave first shout. a whaler played him along the plimpsol line. it was bullion at three:




i missed a fidgety run in the dark. the sou we'd bet on a blank was worthless. i should have stayed on but the rain came down like a poll tax riot. truncheons and bricks and waves swept silver by a full moon, orange highlights off a street lamp half a mile away, putting a streak across the whole pit. while packing away i glanced up the streak just in time to see a coaster roll over and go down. stephane heard the lifeboat splash but didn't see it. it was off his bows.
wednesday i went back whistling a wrecker's shanty. swung the lead with a pop up and a pva stocking, a leg of pellet, sat back swatting gnats in a breeze mild as a french curry, hatless and overfleeced. the gravel washer on full blast the other side of a bank of dirty ballast and drying sludge. the townie's were out strolling, dogs and dames, men in hatshop hats and mothball coats. three o'clock came and went like a cancelled train. points failure, wrong kind of pop-up, leaves on the bottom. it turned cold so i took the temperatures and the water was up one degree from monday, a healthy 8°c. the wind blew off the gravel path; everyone got the same perfume for christmas. till the strollers thinned i was pulling the rollneck up over my nose. what is this perfume? old coats. channel number twos. it's what you spray in the toilet after your aunt's had a dump. but at 5 the wind dropped and i could only smell myself. cold and pikey, and orange bung at 20 yards would've looked nice. cold still water, and a carp bobbed instead of a bung. an hour of carp bobbing, like summer, so it had to come, one beep in the dusk, the tip twitching as the blackbirds sang like divas. i hit a mirror which looked white in the water, fought like a brick with fins because it had swallowed a brick.



up anchors as they started shelling the margins. then yesterday, last manouvres before shore leave and stephane sunk the graf spey in a wet north westerly, under the bows at dusk, pride of the fleet battled on his 7ft stalking rod, 37lbs of winter fruit:



boatswain whistling on the bird table

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