Time to Cut Sticks

Written by Richard Bendall

I struggled into the back seat of the taxi with help. The same carers hands that had washed me were as sure and able, as the taxi driver’s hands were unsure and clumsy. Everything hurts these days; skilled hands only lessen the discomfort.

Looking back at the sheltered accommodation as we drove off, I remembered houses, gardens, garages, and sheds as opposed to a studio flat with kitchenette, walk in shower & toilet. My world had shrunk.

Way back when, I had projected into the future so had an idea of what it would hold. As a cider maker I had spent a day working a windfall strewn orchard, I picked up a foot injury that didn’t really heal, in time this had stopped me hobbling more than a short distance. Old rugby injuries meant my neck and spine were stiff and sore, a mistimed tackle on a younger man when in my thirties had led to permanent damage.   Rugby had done for my right knee too; not helped by time as a hod carrier and postman.

Genetically gifted from my male lineage – prostate problems. I remembered the giggling children pointing out that, without realising, I had wet myself in public, the mix of pity, embarrassment, and disgust on their mother’s face. My trip out today would be bracketed by the capacity of my inco-pad to absorb the piss I couldn’t hold; I didn’t want my daughter changing me. The cataracts op had gone well enough, I could see. The late onset Diabetes was well enough managed.

From the taxi I looked out at a seagull atop a lamp post.  I fancied that it had glanced at me and offered a quick nod of its head before turning to face west. We passed the layby where I used to park, before, laden with gear, I would swing along the track for a night’s carping on the marsh.

In the end I used a garden wheelbarrow to carry the gear. My last session there had been the nail in the proverbial coffin for unaccompanied angling. I had worried about falling on the mud slicked track, worried about slipping and plunging into the gut. I struggled to thread the rod, I struggled to tie on the readymade rigs and baits I had sworn I would never use. I caught nothing but the tearful concern of my daughter that it was just too risky for me to go alone anymore. My grandson took me to commercial fisheries where access was easy – you make do eh?

Another bird caught my eye. A buzzard perched on a dead branch. The bird turned to face west. Did it glance at me and offer a nod of its head too?  I harrumphed to myself drawing a worried glance from the driver, ‘You all right mate?’ Past the church and its lych gate, a clattering of my favourite birds, Jackdaws, rose from its moss-shrouded roof before swarming around the car and streaming off west. ‘Odd,’ I thought. ‘Odd,’ muttered the driver.

Grandson helped me out when we arrived at my daughter’s – hands sure and confident from helping the old man so often. Greetings exchanged with all present, the pleasant routine of dining with family unfolded. Reminiscing, oft repeated stories and jokes, and an after-dinner snooze for me. I’m half-listening. ‘How does he seem to you?… Do you think it’s time we took his bank card away – he still buys fishing stuff; he’ll never go again… he left the gas cooker on twice last week…three falls in a month…perhaps he needs a nursing home now…’ Proper family latter years things to talk over.

The comforting presence of my daughter, grandsons, and partners, as they bustle around before settling into chatting, and a drink or two. I drift – those birds, all turning west? A tickle somewhere in my mind meant that I was grasping at a significance to this.

I half smile, I can smell Horse Liniment, used all those years ago as a muscle warmer before playing rugby. Now I can smell Almond, those tiny bottles used for flavouring cakes also went into the Phillips Yeast Mixture paste I made for carping at Stoneham Lakes in the seventies. I smell fish slime smeared nets – the mark of angling goals accomplished. I smell earth – its fresh spring scent, the heavy scent of its summer guise, the rich scent of decay in the autumn, and the solid smell of its dormant winter form.

I hear the rustle of a tin foil bobbin, the thrill of a bite alarm sounding. I hear the crash of a heavy fish in the night. I see a patch of bubbles on the water’s surface, glimpsed in a moment of stillness when clouds were otherwise scudding over a full moon during a summer gale. The memory of the absolute stillness of other nights at the waterside causes me to hold my breath for a second or two. I see the wheeling of the plough across the sky on countless sessions.  I see sun rises, sun sets, and phases of the moon. I have these images that I very deliberately set in my mind, anticipating ageing, and the narrowing of the way. Fading senses cannot dim a sharp memory. These memories flow and flow in the isolation between carers visits called independence.

I recalled the childhood day my father decided to take me fishing. We went to a lake; we had no licences. After an hour or so he told me the lake was ‘all fished out’ and we left. The tackle bought for the day went into the garage and stayed there. The Maurice Wiggin book ‘Fishing for Beginners’  bought at the same time was not shelved. I pored over it. Such was the desire to fish I dared to take my father’s fishing tackle, swallowing the fear this act triggered, I went poaching fearlessly.

That day, on the Doctor’s stretch of the River Meon at Wickham, I caught my first fish, a Brown Trout taken ‘long corking’ maggot; holding the float back slightly at the end of the run had led to the bite, just as the Maurice Wiggin book had said. It was a wonder the granny knotted hook stayed on. I couldn’t make sense of Maurice Wiggin’s knot diagrams, and there was no one with the patience to show me. It was my friend Moth who did when he realised what I was doing on a lakeside camping trip with his  parents.

Rookesbury Park Pond was within walking distance of home, and I joined the controlling club. I had read about luncheon meat for catching carp. Smearing cubes of this with Marmite & grilling them a little toughened them enough to stay better on the hook. A miscast landed my float fished bait in a tiny bay in a lily bed. I gazed at the quill for hours. Then it was gone. It took a second to register this as reality. I struck – all hell broke loose as I refused to give line and the short spinning rod creaked at the butt. The fish heaved and thrashed but the six-pound line held. A common carp was banked.  I was a Carp Fisher.

Moth and I went for our first night fishing session at Stoneham Lakes. He set up his rod beach caster style as his angling experience was in the sea. I persuaded him that he needed to freeline or link leger. Imagine if he had seen the beach caster style through, and his side hooked bait had been taken, leading us to adopting this as a successful way to go?

Heron buzzers, camo jacket, Terry Eustace T24 rods, beta light bobbins, paste bait with a size 2 hook buried in it, night sessions under a small brolly, unable to sleep on a garden recliner that poked well out from the cover. I fished the same swim at Stoneham all the time, (unless Moth came with me), because it was surrounded by Rhododendrons, and nobody could creep up on me in the night.

I recalled a conversation with Chris Currie who was top angler at Stoneham at the time. I earnestly told him about Tim Rice who wrote articles about Stoneham, (disguised as Rockpork in print), not realising that this was a nom de plume for…Chris Currie.  He was baiting up with particles. I had seen him working around the swims throwing out a few handfuls of his bait at each one.  I invited him to put some into my swim. He did so.  As soon as I was sure he had gone I scrabbled around in the swim, and the one next door, gathering a handful of the spilt particles – I had no idea what they were, (Chickpeas, as it happened), and caught nothing on them.

One hot Stoneham afternoon, my bobbin rose slowly, and line moved steadily from the open spool. A 16-pound common shifted the axis of my world. A gigantic fish. Moth and I returned to Stoneham many years later, and after its restoration from silting up. We fished a night. My banana flavoured sweet corn, set under a beta light float, was taken by another gigantic carp.  As Moth wielded the net and its size became apparent, he said in a hushed tone, ‘Rich, it’s massive.’ In the light of a torch, we gazed at a dream made real. Moth spoke, ‘Its foul hooked.’ It was, just by its nostril. There could only be disappointment, and acceptance without question, it didn’t count. We weighed it at 21 pounds.

I shift in my seat and drift a little further in memory.   The Sergeant Major bellows, ‘you there, come here.’ I obey, putting down my weed rake and walking over. ‘Speak to the officer,’ he bristles. I do. ‘Yes, well,’ begins the officer, ‘we rather wondered what you are doing.’ I was on the bank of Mytchett Lake, where it abutted an army location, raking a swim for opening night. They were not impressed and left. Words such as, ‘security’ and ‘fence’ hung in the air. Opening night was a fantastic disappointment. Dawn was a massive success.  Nineteen times Tench dipped my float.

Now, I am walking towards The Tasty Pitch on the marsh.

 Grandson is there, I call his name, then chuckle, his concentration is such, he hasn’t heard me. I get a little closer then call again. This time he looks over his shoulder a puzzled expression on his face. ‘Grandad?’ he whispers staring a little before shaking his head and turning away. I register that he can’t see me. I can’t decide whether I am dreaming or remembering.

Light sparkles on the water, each sparkle burning briefly bright before winking out to nothing. I feel a gentle but insistent pull that dampens my confusion and allow myself to be drawn away to the west and the setting sun.

Chest rise, chest fall, chest rise, chest fall, chest still.  Grandson notices, as steady as ever, he gently takes my daughter by the shoulder, ‘It was time for granddad to cut sticks Mum’

The Stoneham 16 remains my biggest ever carp, [since writing this it has risen to 23 lbs] the size irrelevant to the sustenance that the romantic age of carp angling had fed my soul.  Even in the decades I was a lapsed angler, fish and fishing waters were a constant in my mind. I knew I would return to angling when the time was right.

Reworking Maurice Wiggin from his postscript to ‘Fishing for Beginners,’ (1953), the book that fired my desire to be at the waterside – ‘Heaven be praised…for life and strength and health and hope…for fishing all my days’.

*Old time shepherds on the marsh would tally their flock by counting pairs and making a notch on a stick for each score of sheep. ‘Time to cut sticks ‘was the vernacular for letting people know you had to leave.