Bryan Islip's Blog, page 15

A fisher-boy's life - seventh and final part

 ‘A fisher-boy’s life’ - seventh and final part.
At fourteen years and nine long months,I said goodbye with the smallest sighto school and Abingdon, town and gown, daddy unable (unwilling?) to spend more on his angst-tied dreamer of an only sonand I can’t blame him for this or that, orfor my shy head filled with fishing lorein spite of those surprisingly high marksand a certainty for Oxford, said the Headto father - of course after I had been shed.
I remember not much of what came next(‘til Boots then the air force in fifty one),but one frosty morning out on my bikerod to the crossbar, tackle bag bumpingmy back, excited, cycling flatland lanesover miles of fenland to try for a pike,double-treble hook, live dace for bait … float steady mid-canal I wait and I waityet still I'm surprised by the run, so I snatch the strike, back up the bank,nervous of what was unseen on the line,dangerous, matching its power to mine.I can’t believe what I haul from the water- lethal weapon of piscatorial slaughter,dappled green, lean, with underslung jawbait half gorged deep down the pink mawwhite rows of raked-back razor teeth!with shaking hands my knife I unsheathe.
I hang him, dead, from my handlebars, for twenty odd miles I cycle him homeand once I fell and saw plenty of starswhen he got into the front wheel spokes and my bloody elbows were no jokeand why oh why was I the only one who thought he was a thing of wonderso little moved were they, that day and‘Take it away, I'm not cooking that,’she said; ‘Another of Bryan’s for the cat.’
Bryan IslipSeventh and final part of  ‘A fisher-boy’s life’ : June 2014
P.S. These are, as I remember, the first lines of a hymn (or song?) that we used to sing in Abingdon (Roysses’s) School chapel at Sunday Evensong …
When to the days of our childhood returning, Backwards our footsteps will wander afar;Strong be our love and long be our yearning, When we remember the days that are gone
… and now finally … (1 Corinthians 13:11) When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became a man, I gave up childish things.     …   (Bryan’s addendum: Except fishing )

A fisher-boy's life - part six

A fisher-boy’s life (part six)
They moved in the Spring of forty sevento Newmarket town from London city,my father, new ‘mother’ - and big sister Shirley (whilst on holiday, as was I,)walking and watching the horses ride byand that young girl at the swimming pool,oh the churning, choking, wishing - for something much stronger than fishing;back in Hastings that summer with Jenny,my cousin, our games in Bottle Alleywatching fishermen at the long pier endcasting bait, lead weight far into the sea‘til one day grandfather gave me the keyto his locker in the Sea Angling Club: sixpence for lug worms, well wrapped upin last week’s newspaper, salt fish snack long, fat, slow moving, shiny jet black. .That locker, some kind of Pandora’s Boxreel of hardwood, brass, a flaxen line,heavy cane rod fit to lift a great codfrom waters that rose and fell far below surging in foam round the legs of the pier;the cod of my dreams I never did catchjust silvery whiting or flip-flopping plaice- and really that was no way a disgrace,bringing them home on the prom for tea- I recall grandpa’s epic tale of the seatowed in a dinghy for miles and no wonder,he’d hooked a forty or fifty pound conger!
The man on the pier had no time for a boyand his over-run casting, his tangles andtroubles: ‘Piss off, you're in my place,’he grunted, though he had no special base.You are not heard nor noticed, even seen,when men are men and you thirteen;but you can grow and listen, learn to fish and maybe catch your fishy wishand, leaning on the pier rail looking down, can find comfort in the salt sea’s surgeand that sweet stink, grandfather’s locker,and satisfy once more  your fishy urge.

Bryan IslipPart six of  ‘A fisher-boy’s life’ : June 2014

A fisher-boy's life - part five

A fisher-boy’s life (part five)
Old Abingdon School is now my home,prefects and masters and neat, bare dormunbending rules, grey granite stone; you’re clever? then sit at front of the form, at the back if you are a dreamer like medreaming of birds eggs and fishing the seaor that wierpool, a Thames tributarywith shiny new reel and split cane rodtwelfth birthday present from grandpa -‘Islip, pay attention!’ My master speaks;(small interest then in Latin and Greek.)Where the pools are bright and deepWhere the grey trout lies asleepUp the river and over the leaThat’s the way for Billy and me (James Hogg, 1770-1835: A Boy’s Song)Where the pool lies, bubbling clearwhere green weed grows down the weirBy the Thames and over the leathat’s the way for Harris and me -(only surnames at Abingdon School -did my fisher friend have a forename?)
Our free time, we go with our tacklefree as the stream from Abingdon’s shackle to snag with bare hook some whispy weed - with tiny mites on which fishes feed -whilst crouched behind the fringing reedthen holding breath await the bite, oh!how those chub would fight and fight! and once a handsome two pound roach I caught; and I can see those fins ceriseand flank, as bright as a sixpenny pieceon green green grass where she lay that day;and I can feel the hunter-gatherer’s joy,a golden moment for a motherless boy.
‘So, to be or not to be, then’, joked Harris‘You could have it stuffed, Islip, you knowor perhaps you might simply let the fish go.’I kissed her, my lips to her slippery nose, and still hear the drone of that long gone Mayand catch the scent of the wild that aroseas I watched my love swim slowly away.
Bryan IslipPart five of  ‘A fisher-boy’s life’ : 1st June 2014

A fisher-boy's life - part four

A fisher-boy’s life (part four)
So many questions, that year forty fiveworld war two ending, my mother gonewith someone else, me a boy all alonecrying in secret in bed on ‘holiday’ exile; ‘Get him out the way,’ he’d heard her say,blonde stranger to daddy that mixed-up day,‘Send him down there to your ma and pa  on Hastings front, he loves his fishingand very soon he’ll stop his wishingfor mummy Marie to come back ‘ere;  she can’t make up for leaving ‘im - or you for that man, my Eddy, my dear.’ And thus the small boy learned to fear,that grown up thing without a name, (the lives it wrecks), learned hate, the stateof soon to be except the purely magic sea;unchanging, moody, salty sea, its mystery,the life that swims down deep, so free - by the window the boy sits watchingdreaming of the fish he’ll be catching.
‘Why don’t you go across to the beach for some prawns?’, my grandfather asks ‘It’s low tide now so take this drop-net.’ He ruffles my hair, shows how it is set: ‘You prise limpets off the rocks for baitskewer them in the mesh, lower it deep,deep down in a rock pool out of sight,leave good time for them to get inthen hook it out quick with this stick; quick! 'fore they flick out over the rim!’Grandfather! So well I remember him,and remember those juicy fat beauties transparent, black pin eyed, jumping, flip-flopping the bottom of the bag-netand boys gathered around me to seethe how and the what my secret might be,the scrambling to shore as the tide arose,and falling, knee bleeding over my clothesGrandma says it’s all right, Bryan, see,we’ve got your prawns for our special tea.’ I see them plated, smell their sweet scent,contentment arriving as passion is spent.
Bryan IslipPart four of  ‘A fisher-boy’s life’ : May 2014

A fisher-boy's life - part three

A fisher-boy’s life (part three)
There is in Wales a place called Laugharne(say it like larn as in barn like the boathousefor there lived Dylan Thomas, once), whenceI was sent to holiday in forty fourwith my married cousin and my ‘uncle’).I helped fetch water from the village pumplater stood by the muddy shore, gazing over a vast estuary of river, mother seafirst knowing a small boy’s salt affinity,rushed ‘home’ to steal a fishing hook (one of uncle’s brightest sea-trout flies) and a ball of twine from down in the shedand with jam jar of garden worms ran back again to bait, stone-weight my line, throw to the brackish tide, far as I could:what would my writhing worm then bring?Waiting in slow rain with bated breath,alive, imagining, always imagining a fish, a catch, a game of life and death And so it was, first fishing time alone.I felt that twitch, a drag, a steady pull strong enough to move my weight, then line cutting drum-tight to and fro; butI was not going to let my captive go.
What kind of flatfish, this, my prize?mud-brown on top, (the side of its eyes),cream-dirty white below, fan tail flipping, edge fins waving, pale gills pulsating;beautiful, though, in a special kind of wayand still I feel its thrilling, slimy cold in my hands, this slippery muscled solid fish of toasty tea plate type and size and still I see its look of mild surpriseand still I smell that same sour fishy scentas, fast as I could run, back home I went.‘What’s that?’ my cousin Eileen said.‘It stinks the place. What kind of fish is that?'‘A flounder,’ uncle said, ‘Well done, my son’. ‘Close the door,’ she said, ‘It's for the cat. Whatever from you next, you are a one.’Thus my pride sinks flatter than that flat.
Bryan IslipPart three of  ‘A fisher-boy’s life’ : May 2014

A fisher-boy's life - part two

A fisher-boy’s life (part two)
‘Come inside and listen to the radio, son,’my father said, that long ago fateful day but war seemed good, gun versus gunexciting enough to this five year old;(not as exciting as the fishing, but still …)Soon we were driving north, father and Iin his Morgan sports, to Walton-le-dale,to his new job, escaping Chigwell bombs,mother, sisters (now three) coming up by trainSeventy five years later I remember thatjourney and other things that children do -but this - this is fishing, nineteen forty two.
Lancashire pond, shiveringly deeprush and weed fringed, overhanging willows,dark skies, menacing, black mirror calm,whatever could be alive down there?I remember my father handing me the rod, the tiny shiny bobble cork, red and white, with quill upright out there in the middle. still; ‘Watch it, now, pay attention’,he instructed, (as if I needed to be told),and yet I missed the strike when,disbelieving, I could no longer see the float,just that plop central to those circles,gone. Too late, Bryan, father said,and still I feel his disappointment in me,for me in spite of all my good intentand in myself for passion spent..
He watched me reeling in the silken line,trembling hands transfixing another wormMy fingers tight upon its hopeless writhing a painful death to make another death(but worms can feel no pain, he’d said)yet such a thrill it seemed to try to kill some wild, some wondrous living thingin watery depths eating my living baitand this time, yes! I feel the line tighten,the quiver and bounce of the split cane rod in my clenched fists, heart thuddingfather issuing unheard instructionsuntil with a final heave, airborne was my fishfive inch silver-flashing red-fin landing flicking and gasping at my feet, looking -yes, looking at me: ‘pick him up, son’, father said; ‘a roach, is he not beautiful?’.Oh yes! In my hands he was so beautiful I smell today the fresh-sour smell of himas for that first time I knew the hunter’s love; strong love enough to never dim.
Bryan IslipPart two of  ‘A fisher-boy’s life’ : May 2014

A fisher-boy's life: part one

My father fishing
The other week, fast-driven northof London, just south of Epping Forestold trees flying by, new-green-gowned,I remembered that boy-enchanted dayas sharp and good and clean and clearas that pebble bottomed river-stream that must still be in there, somewhere, just as it was in nineteen thirty ninefor those two fishers, father and I -a five years old and so excited self. (Mother and sisters might have been there too, certainly, although them,as hard as I have tried and still do try I can’t recall on that remembered day.)
But I remembered the live finger-feelof warm, hot earth, uprooted turfthat we hand-dug out in search of bait from the soft bank, the wriggly worms,excited, I, and yet for them so sad I felt and still can feel the sleepy weight of summer’s heat through sun-shaft foliageoverhead; green, golden, shifting, and still I see the moving water glisten, hear the quiet ruckle of it, slow running, shallow swirling, cold to my bare feet, and the insect drone of many tiny wings amidst the waxy drowse of that forest.
Most of all I remember my fatherand the dry-mouthed thrill of watchingmy father setting up to try to catch a fish,to cast a line and hook and catch a fish!with tackle from his canvas bag -ah, the smell: the warm, sweet, rotten, rusty, cat gut, dead fish smell of that bag.I remembered it all as I was driven byEpping Forest, though now I’m old:And there! I see the red and yellow quilltrip-dancing down the current, me waiting, waiting, for the sudden tip and dipthat never came on that enchanted day,catching nothing but having so much, my father and I, (Inot me, he’d say),of embrionic fishing love, and such.
Bryan IslipPart one of  ‘A fishing life’ : May 2014

My father fishing

My father fishing
The other week, fast-driven northof London, just south of Epping Forestold trees flying by, new-green-gowned,I remembered that boy-enchanted dayas sharp and good and clean and clearas that pebble bottomed river-stream that must still be in there, somewhere, just as it was in nineteen thirty ninefor those two fishers, father and I -a five years old and so excited self. (Mother and sisters might have been there too, certainly, although them,as hard as I have tried and still do try I can’t recall on that remembered day.)
But I remembered the live finger-feelof warm, hot earth, uprooted turfthat we hand-dug out in search of bait from the soft bank, the wriggly worms,excited, I, and yet for them so sad I felt and still can feel the sleepy weight of summer’s heat through sun-shaft foliageoverhead; green, golden, shifting, and still I see the moving water glisten, hear the quiet ruckle of it, slow running, shallow swirling, cold to my bare feet, and the insect drone of many tiny wings amidst the waxy drowse of that forest.
Most of all I remember my fatherand the dry-mouthed thrill of watchingmy father setting up to try to catch a fish,to cast a line and hook and catch a fish!with tackle from his canvas bag -ah, the smell: the warm, sweet, rotten, rusty, cat gut, dead fish smell of that bag.I remembered it all as I was driven byEpping Forest, though now I’m old:And there! I see the red and yellow quilltrip-dancing down the current, me waiting, waiting, for the sudden tip and dipthat never came on that enchanted day,catching nothing but having so much, my father and I, (Inot me, he’d say),of embrionic fishing love, and such.
Bryan IslipPart one of  ‘A fishing life’ : May 2014

Living but not forever

Two years ago my meeting with a doctor went something like this ...

Doc: Your blood pressure is higher than it should be. 150 over 90. I'm going to prescribe these pills. (Busy writing scrip)
Me: For how long do I need to take them?
Doc: The rest of your life
Me: Yes? And how much will that cost?
Doc: Nothing. National Health Service
Me: Please! Nothing costs nothing, doctor. I'm sure the NHS has better things to do with my money and that of the other millions of taxpayers. Anyway I won't be taking them. I have anecdotal evidence of their side effects.
Doc: (Appalled by such an argument from a mere patient but obviously not entirely unfamiliar with such anecdotal evidence) You could have a stroke, you know.
Me: I'm going on 78, doctor. I've no ambition to live forever..
Doc: If you have a stroke think of your carers, your family!
Me: I'll do my best not to be a bloody nuisance to anyone - even myself.

I'm now almost 80 and still breathing, last time I checked. 5 months back my wife passed away having suffered a lymphomatic cancer, diagnosed for an awful year, undiagnosed in spite of her terrible pain throughout the year before that. Since her death I've kept house moderately well, I think, learned to cook, done my best to carry on within the social life of our Highlands village, written and designed cards and calendars etc, toured the 'remote' Highlands shops trying with some success to sell them (1500 miles this last fortnight), toured my extended family down south and over in Iberia (6 beds in 20 days lat month), written and published a booklet. Not exactly any quiet life! Poor old heart.

Of course I'm tempting fate. Tomorrow really is another day. But today I have some use. Today I'm as happy as it is, for me, possible to be without Delia. Today I need no bloody statins, thank you (I do mean the thank you. Others may take comfort in them at whatever cost to them or to the nation's finances, and good luck.)

Applecross recalled

The other day I undertook my biannual excursion to Applecross, winding my way southwards around the great sea-lochs of Scotland's west coast. The Applecross Walled Garden Restaurant buys and sells my cards and calendars. I always look forward to a chat with Elaine after driving what is quite possibly Scotland's most scenic, almost traffic free route.

However many times you may have made it, the ascent up Bealach Na Ba ('the pass of the cattle') is especially breathtaking, not to say daunting.  I always think about my family's first holiday in Scotland. No amount of poring over maps prepared us for the sight of that tiny, (at that time unbarracaded) thread of a road snaking its steep way up what appeared to we Hampshire flatlanders an impossibly dangerous mountain. In fact our two boys, not noted for timidity, were all for getting out and walking. I was driving a Ford Zodiak, towing an eighteen foot, clinker built, lugsailed fishing boat. How we made it around those scary hairpins I'll never know, but we did, and that holiday on Applecross's campsite was marvellous in so many ways. Plus it was my own introduction to these incredibly beautiful Scottish Highlands.

All that fortnight we fished the bay in our boat, the launching of which aided and abetted by old Donald, a tough, 90 year old local crofter with all the kindliness and gaelic humour though little English. Donald seemed able to jump about like a spring chicken and had the wiry strength of the highlander born and bred. In the long, light evenings we sat around a camp fire talking with with our fellow campers, wafting the smoke around to avoid the worst of the midges. One evening I was out strolling in an adjacent wooded area with the boys when a great stag bolted from right in front of us, clearing a high fence in one majestic leap. Never to be forgotten.

Anyway, a few years ago I painted this view over Applecross Bay ... and with it composed my thoughts in verse ...


a'Chromraich (Applecross)
Breathtaking, truly, when you climb the twisting heightsof Belach na Ba(Pass of the Cattle)first see the drop down into Applecrosslook over the sea to Raasay, Skyeand think of Saint Maelrubha, Irish monk, coming here by oar and sailthirteen hundred turning years agowith holy messages for Pict and Gael
'a'Chromraich' the Gaels called this place'The Sanctuary' to me and youand that is what it is, Applecross,this lovely shelter from the storm, from life's hard race a race from where to where who knows?who knows of where went St Maelrubha's grace?