Caught by the River

Mowing Days Are Here Again

Dexter Petley | 10th May 2008

ja

since your last glimpse of the winter underworld on the heath, the green fuse blew. from squelcher to scorcher in a week of spawning bream. grass growing under your feet as you mow, the oaks beat the poplars into leaf and there’s cuckoo spit on the willows. spring like a rapid deployment force in realtree. yesterday’s carp are over the spawning grounds and the villages are under the yellow siege of rapeseed:

last week i was squelched up to the nines, no sign of the fritz speigals here, flash floods and window fishing:

cast and run at penelope pit as the storm hit car rolling mood and even the land rover turned land lubber as i pitched in a swell with a face gone solihull green. three hours trapped in the cab, like the dug out’s caved in and the drowning rats cling to your hair. i suppose the rods stayed upright on the buzzers the way a butterfly survives a downpour.
a week later the patrol boat comes by:

no roaring forties, just a pit becalmed and a common under the rod top:

carp spies the other side had binocculars on me and mustered into the freelander, reaching me as i was mid-photo. oh, the tosser said, a little common. we know it well. your first fish is it? he squeels off in a cloud of dust, back to the day bivvy in the six-car swim. they packed up and went home at eight, back to their nintendos. they’re just hired rods, enduro fodder, fucking spodnicks with bent hook rigs and fin clippers in their 300 litre rucksacks. and they are everywhere and taking over. they want roads round all lakes and carparks and bait-boats and the right to fish under lights, compulsory enduros and margin fishing banned, swim booking agencies and no fishing unless accompanied by another arsehole to help throw the rubbish in the bushes. society probably says it’s better they’re fishing than hanging round carparks. well it’s not. society is better off if they’re knifing each other where they belong because the carp lake is now the carpark and it’s lone opportunists like me who are caught in the headlamps.

the writings on the birdtable

dp