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