Bonjour Bob

ja

good to hear the newly oiled ratchets of arcadia, words flowing like ale down the wye, or the other 22 rivers in a certain volume of water, a bouquet of summer flowers (in the cryptic meaning) of which arcadia/arcadii are proud contributaries. a lot to catch up then; just not a lot caught.

the maypole did bend again, brief with dancing carp, springing out of winter like greyhounds down the track. these were vengeful, hyperactive fishes out on parole after winter behind the isobars. the ones who just slam into your rigs, joyriders doing handbrake turns over your bait in the gravel-bar carpark. all the finesse and carp-foolery we modern fishers adorn our lines with end up looking like your mum’s burnt curlers & costume earings. they won’t fool anyone a second time. the face-coloured gravel pit mirror carp of outer normandie know plastic when they see it. if you fish with three rods in spring, when the carp are rioting, then it’s tear-gas at midnight; knitting with a fish on, pearl one and drop one as it takes you on a crochet course and leaves you in a heap, a sketch by thelwell, three rods down as they take out all the pin-point lake bed survey, spot-baiting on a sixpence and measured casting just for some lower-fourth common to whip you to blazes. fishing three rods is a statistical fallacy. you don’t have three chances; you have one less chance for each rod, as the hooked carp is going to come off by wrapping itself round the other two.

take one night on a gusset moon, penelope pit ridgebacked in midnight wind, fox cubs hopping ditches while mum’s out chicken farming, the middle rod hit the sound barrier with the first carp of the year, an 8lb common which ploughed under the other two lines in the margins. i netted the fish along with the back-lead off the left hand rod. one second i had a routine tangle, the next a nightmare from the twilight zone. the fish, the net and the rod top all shot forward, ripped out of my hands, and disappeared in the darkness. the left hand rod was on their tail and a dive to the bottom corner pushed it round the post. saved the day with an inch of cork handle to spare. a good fish on the one functioning rod, 60 yards off, and i’m on my back and sliding into the water. in the car lights coming off the roundabout i saw a poltergeist’s picnic suspended in the air, hanging off the line the fish was on: rig, leadcore, bomb, other rod-top and the frigging landing net. how, defied understanding. the hooked carp thumped in deep water and all the hangings go back and forth, locking up in a broken tackle mart in the top rod ring. i can’t wind another inch, and the fish stays out, at bay, like a nuclear sub on red alert. it’s one of those milton jones moments, half an hour with the rod under my arm and a pair of scissors, your life flashing downstream before you in the dark. bomb disposal nerves, i’m cutting an inch away at a time, one false cut and the carp and all your mum’s earrings are gone forever. by now the carp had kited round the corner and into the bay behind me. wouldn’t have suprised me if, while i was squinting through my red light emitting diodes, the carp didn’t sneak up and fuck off in my landrover. after a winter of total void, this carp was not going back inside. it wanted probate, and lots of it. i snipped on, and cut, and contrived, till the knot was gone, the line was free, the fight was on, earrings pawned, bare knuckles, just me and the carp out back, between ourselves like, once and for all. the fish had been biding time. once i was free to gain line myself, it took all the line it wanted. went to sudden death, and i played the stubbornest match of my life. 34bs of unundefeated middleweight. call it a draw:

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Land Army Goalposts

ja

the march waggon rolls out on all four winds, jays on the gate and primroses blink open to raise their yellow hosanahs.

can’t match your river exploits this month. long fishless waits in the cold; late winter tasks which have no words, more living out of buckets than ever till hibernaton break-out, egged on by yellow riots coming from outside; forsythia, daffodils, primroses, lesser celandines, cowslips, all present and correct this year, no untimely ripping, no jumping the sun. time to fence, swat the first house flies crawling from under the planks, sweep the first ants off the food shelf. outside, every footstep has a job; plant more pond iris and block holes where the chickens might escape and scratch up the first sowings; parsley, pick & grow salad leaf, broad beans. it’s been one of those winters, global detox, first glimpse of famine. defence for food; cochet’s beasts got in the other night, hooving up the garden, stog holes punched across the whole plot. cochet’s in his fifties, lives with his mum and dad in a hovel with one of those hovel dogs who spend all day on a chain digging a pit in the dirt where they lie all day, as horney elbowed as madame cochet who stands in the bullock cart as her old man sucks his one last tooth on the tractor they got for their wedding day in 1959. their beasts have trashed my garden before, but this time i flagged down the tractor and it went to verge-side arbitration.

spring is preparation, it’s onward graft you can’t back out of. the restraint of beasts is fragile security when you sow to survive. it tips into warfare when it’s springtime for hitler, seedlings learning their drill under scratch and flack from neighbours’ chickens, dogs, sheep, heifers; friendly fire from jays and blackbirds, sparrows and doves or the careless tank tracks of roofers sent by the landlord to tap on the tiles. disputes with neighbours is the real country code. takes more than dressing like a scarecrow to scare the people off.

last month’s algae bloom is now repulsed to a thin ribbon in the margins pinned in place by half a dozen frogspawn pats. a bale of barley straw tethered in the margins did for the algae. the winds have made a clean sweep and the sun has strength to glint off the stainless steel muck shovel still abandoned after the last downpour.

the fishing front remains on pause as life plays on around it. the bait station is up and rolling supplies for the may offensive:

season tickets purchased, new waters plumbed and recconnoitered at sunset as one scout house-martin dipped with the bats:

next autumn’s faggots already on the drier:

and just to show you’re not forgotton, yesterday’s trundle through the lanes beer can spotting led me to a lost football pitch for your collection of postcards to mates in prison. you can see it’s been mown for sunday’s village cup final, goalposts salvaged off american scrap left on obama beach last d-day:

gone to penalties on the birdtable

dp

on this coming sunday (9th) andrews of arcadia takes the road south to the romsey vintage tackle fair which is held at the romsey community school, greatbridge road in romsey from 9am. you are welcome to come and visit, entry is £2. i shall be in the main hall.

if you cannot make either please be reminded that the doors to arcadia are always open at:

www.andrewsofarcadia.com

Down at the Old Bull & Boar

ja

been a long silence, half a winter long, the bobbins so still they’ve been frozen in time, bookmarks in a russian novel. the bird table gazette suspended its evening edition; if you fish black holes you get what’s coming to you. so, while your own heaths and ponds have looked like the top of a yuletide log in a rip-off winterland, northern france has drenched, frozen and blown, viciously and without mercy or sun. i finally got the message. deliverance is not nigh. last week’s tempest brought down a falling star and i saw full moon-chips hoovered off the sea of sighs and spun across the universe. sleepless as the roof clapped and anything not nailed down outside lies flattened against the trees at the bottom of the field where the old bull & boar tree keeps wooden council:

i’ve fished the winter through more like a rat gnawing on cardboard than a carp angler ahead of the game. the species is truly dormant; 4 degrees torpid. i’ve gnawed both busily and symbolically. there was christmas eve symbolic only:

new years eve symbolic:

& new years day prophetic and resolute:

i was still the first to buy a license in this region for 2009. packed in early on new years eve, did a bar crawl, not for inebriation but reasons halieutique. those dead bars in a living mist, opposite church clocks still on summer time. blondes dressed like bonny tyler now they don’t wash ashtrays anymore, telling me the new licenses weren’t in. no one fishes winter here, just some jobless die-hards on the wagon after pot-sized jack and zander. tracked the only licenses down to the bar with no name. you remember the village cafe where we ate lapin chasseur then found tussle with municiple carp the other side of the church wall? eight o clock new years eve and eric’s still open, counting lottery tickets and feeding the dogs his worn out shoes. he closed the cafe down when his wife left him a year back, but the bar remains, still sells fags and maggots and eric sets his mousetraps baited with paper round the bags of groundbait on the shelf. he palmed a wad of 2009 tickets from his biscuit tin under the counter, still in their bonds. he’d gone to pot since i last fished for his confessor’s carp, a man gone pasty without the square cafe leftovers, another depressed hunter with a gun cabinet and a cellar. i was just thinking how sad it might get when i heard clogs thumping down the stairs. she was back, then, the adulterous lice still on her. “what do you want?” he said when she starts rooting through a wooden draw beside the till. “envelope” she said. “where they always were,” he said. how much sour grape went into the lucky number on my license remains to be seen. buying your carte de peche for the new year should be fresh start, a clean slate for the joys to come, not the sullen handover, the black spot, the mark of the cormorant that i got.

i fished through january in the drifting ice, listening to water crack together after dark like they were the sheets on eric’s bed. i saw dead koypus frozen in their holes and wondered if that carte de peche wasn’t made from the recycled tickets collected at the chamber of horrors. i watched grown men encourage their sons to empty out the litterbins onto the ice; quality time with your family of dorks is skimming beer bottles across the ice at sitting ducks. the bottles lay there for weeks till with a thaw they drop to the bottom along with cans, bricks and branches. they have no shame and no one stops them. no one even seems to notice. the french don’t have words for litter. that says it all. i once saw a sign nailed to a tree: campers throw your rubbish in the river. another year beside the dead-heart pits begins.

but since our last arcadia, my pond filled up with serious run-off in a deluge, and, once the ice thawed, a rogue bloom of alien algae set up their aquadomes, breeding pods on the first martian carp fishery in france, the patrick mcgoohan memorial pond, or maybe they’re just hibernating frogs farting in their sleep during the st valentine’s day inter-crucian ping-pong race.

special branch cordon round the birdtable just in case

dp

The Ghost of Robert Graves

DP

The heath grows darker by the day heading inevitably towards the shortest day. Sunrise seems to happen at midday and dusk an hour later. The weeks follow a calendar made up of fog and frost with the occasional gale coming down the chimney with a screeching howl. Wood burns but doesn’t heat the hearth. The last of the auctions done but no chance to cast as No 1 and No 2 are frozen over, the marginal mud crisp underfoot and fat orange leathers cruising under the ice. Roach showing as the light fades as clean and silver as a Christmas Nordic hoard, almost luminescent. Walks at the same hour the order of the day to gather fallen wood for the fire in hollows revealed by the final falling of the leaves. The silouhette of Robert Graves on the hill just as the sun slips away. His velvet collar turned up and mud on the soles of his boot.

The first line of ‘Winter’ on the birdtable.

JA