Let me introduce you – posthumously – to Arfur, Arfur ‘Fazakerly’, shall we say? He didn’t smoke a pipe, didn’t wear a trilby or a tie, nor did he have a son or sidekick called Peter, but he was very much our Mr Crabtree.
Facially, Arfur was what I have decided to call ‘Custeresque’ – he can be seen in any one of those classic shots of the American Civil War hierarchy – great walrus moustache, sharp nose, hair curling up behind the ears though what it did above that level nobody ever knew, the flat cap was a permanent extension of his head. His speech was legendary – very London but not loud. Foul, but not offensive. Indeed, his innovative use of the swear word was rather endearing, strange as that may seem.
Come to think of it, Arfur – like Crabtree – did wear a proper jacket, a shiny silver-grey one that never left his back all summer. Come winter, the jacket was shed to make way for a black duffle coat and nondescript scarf. So clad, he could be found most winter weekends tucked away somewhere on The Ripples, crouching. Arfur NEVER took a seat and in a near foetal position, he’d fish for ‘livelies’ with both the patience and the appearance of a garden gnome, allowing his famous six-foot pike rod to ‘get on with it’ somewhere down the bank.
When a run eventually came, the onlooker would be rewarded with the eagerly awaited “I’m away!” a common enough expression but I fancy he popularised it and, although he didn’t know it, that was his catch phrase. And what made that rod so famous? Well, it could be fairly described as a stepped up pool cue with a test curve of around one hundred and fifty pounds at a conservative estimate. Tony Corless, and I know this to be true having witnessed Arfur become snagged on a notoriously immovable, but unidentified, obstruction in the Main Pool’s ‘Pear Tree Swim’.
After much tugging and cursing, he decided to “Stop fuckin’ abaht” and stepped into the margin, taking up all possible slack – and more – with the Penn Sea Buoy multiplier. With everything tightly and frighteningly wound up, he braced himself – butt in groin – and hoisted onto the bank an ancient one gallon paint-tin full of muck, mud and mussels!
Poor old Arfur…he once invited me back to his top floor council flat for a cuppa and a bacon sandwich. I’d met him, by chance, fishing Thurrock A.C.’s waters with his wife, Betsy, a kind, hoarsely spoken woman of Polish origin, I believe. Come evening time, we packed away our gear and headed for the council penthouse suite they’d occupied since the early 50s, Betsy forever lagging behind and imploring the unforgiving Arfur to hang on. By the time we’d climbed the stairs to the flat, some two hours had elapsed and I, for one, was near salivating at the prospect of a wad dripping with fat and a mug of good, hot tea. We entered the dark, foreboding lobby – not a ray of light – felt our way through to the kitchen and opened the red Gingham curtains. Evening sunlight filled the room and I sat thankfully in its glare at the table while Arfur planned the assault on the cupboards. He clapped his hands and rubbed them eagerly. “Right! What we got?” The first cupboard to be opened produced an angry, frightened black cat which shot out like a Jack in the box. Arfur recoiled.
“Grrcha bastard!” he said, fetching it a swift kick up the backside with his welly. “Bastards they are, get everyfuckinwhere they do…Now let’s see what we got…” He scanned the shelves with glassy, grey eyes, shifted the odd container, peeked into various tins but came up with only a tube of tomato puree.
“Fuckin loada good that is” he said, and went on to the next cupboard. Again, a moggy was revealed – more docile this time – cursed in Arfur’s inimitable way and despatched with a tempered drop kick.
“Fuckin things…..get on my fuckin nerves they do.”
Arfur was on form, but no nearer to rustling up that bacon sarnie.
“What we got here, then?” He scanned the shelves. “We got some sugar, some bakin’ pahder, a carrot, glacé cherries………ah bollocks to the sandwich! Wanna cup o’ tea?”
The man was the stuff of legends; to this day here in Essex, the name of Arfur Fazakerly still raises a smile and an anecdote or nine…even his old black bike is fondly remembered, that and the famous pike-rod.
Most famously I would say – and I ask that you really put your mind to this – was a December morning on the club’s main-pool when a shallow, luminescent mist hung over the water; the sun was doing its best to burn it off but the blanket persisted completely obscuring my view of events on the opposite bank.
Evidently, a good number of anglers had arrived for the morning was beautifully calm and the mist seemed to have an amplifying effect; Stewart-box rattlings and the sound of replaced Thermos-cups could clearly be heard and even whole, muted conversations could be followed without straining the ears:
“What bait you using?”
“Bread.”
“I’m gonna try a worm.”
“Prob’ly pick up a perch.”
The usual stuff, but occasionally the unmistakable Arfur could be heard scolding his spouse for some casting misdemeanour or such-like. A little later, the tables would have turned with Betsy chiding Arfur for keeping the sandwiches to his self; then it would be Arfur’s turn again to give the missus a bollocking…
“Look…you’ve made a right klartz of yer reel! Gawd blimey…give us it ‘ere.”
“Oh, Arthur, don’t be so cruel…it’s not like I meant it…”
And so it would go on, clearly audible but not so loud as to offend or disturb anybody; indeed, it was considered light entertainment by just about everybody on the lake. Then the piece de resistance…
“Watch me rod, will you? I’m just goin’ for a jimmy.”
There ensued a vision-filled twenty second silence before the hoarse voice of Betsy echoed around the lake: “Oh, Arthur…put your cock away!”
The banks near-shook with laughter, the tearful giggling hanging on, dying, then resurfacing with each reminder. What a scream…the incident brings-on a stitch to this day in certain circles ensuring Arfur and Betsy’s place in local folklore. The childless couple are long gone but still they raise an affectionate smile.
