| KEVIN PERKINS | |
Never mind smelling the flowers, don’t forget to take time out to see the satirical side of fishing life and grab a laugh along the way as well. So here’s a regular column from Kevin Perkins to remind us that life is for laughing at, or taking the p*** out of, whenever we can. |
Curious CrabtreeWHILST I WAS in a contemplative mood recently, I found myself yearning for a mainline dose of nostalgia. Knowing just what would do the trick, I hopped onto eBay and engaged in a ferocious bidding war, where I successfully saw off all the competition, and acquired an original copy of ‘Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing’. As soon as my new purchase arrived, a cosy warm glow settled over me as I read through the book from cover to cover. It didn’t matter that even though it is more than thirty years since I last read a copy, I still seem to remember every frame of the cartoons, as I flicked through them first, then went back to devour the accompanying text.And I have to say that reading through the book again you have to give credit to the superb writing and illustrating skills of the late, great Bernard Venables. Whilst not wishing to trample on anyone’s corns when it comes to the championing of favourite/best angler/angling writer, here was a man of his era who surely had the ability to capture the very essence of angling and present it in a unique form that could be understood by anyone, and yet…. Through my jaded eyes, though, I espied a few anomalies that would be ever so slightly out of place in the modern fishing world. In the first instance, Mr Crabtree takes his young lad Peter with him every time he goes fishing, and very noble too, I hear you say, a fine piece of father/son bonding that should be encouraged. Except, young Peter doesn’t get to do much fishing, as Mr Crabtree doesn’t let him near his split cane rods very often, although with the price of them these days you can understand why. And even when young Peter isn’t actually doing any fishing, he quietly sits in rapt attention, which is not quite how the scenario would pan out today, I fear. Ten minutes into the session he would start by eating the entire contents of the lunch box, racing maggots round the bait box lid, standing right at the water’s edge looking for fish, finding uses other than the correct ones for the bait catapult, throwing pebbles at the float to make it go under, etc. etc. But back to the good old days, and when Mr C does eventually get the tackle out for both of them to use, he smugly informs Peter that whilst he himself will be using the very latest mutt’s nuts free-running ‘Flick-Em’ reel, young Peter has to make do with an old wooden star-back reel that looks like it was roughly hewn out the side of a mahogany sideboard. Try palming your old gear off on kids today and see what reaction you get, probably an accusation of mental cruelty, I shouldn’t wonder. Although in the text, Mr C likens arming a tyro angler with a threadline reel as dangerous as giving them a gun, probably no bad thing on some fisheries these days…… But the reference was more to do with allowing inexperienced young anglers the tools to empty fisheries without first having gained any knowledge through the then recognised fishing apprenticeship of acquiring skill through experience. Imagine trying that on the youngsters of today. Scores of them lined up on the bankside, all wearing ‘L’ plates and not allowed anywhere near a fixed spool reel until they had passed the ‘Wallis Cast’ test, I don’t think so. And while we’re on the subject of child cruelty, Mr. C takes Peter off on a pike fishing trip where the front plate illustration shows the pair of them wrapping scarves round their necks and Mr. C exclaiming that ‘Spinning will keep them warm!’ That’s all well and good, except that young Peter is kitted out in a pair of shorts and Wellington boots. After a day trudging round attired like that in mid-winter his legs will have attained the white-red-white appearance of a Victoria sponge. Whilst they are on their travels around, they never come across another angler fishing, never see a bailiff (no change there then!) it never seems to rain, they don’t travel by bus, car or even bike to get where they are going. To cut down on unnecessary gear, Mr C doesn’t even take a flask or sandwiches, so it seems he has never enjoyed the thrill of getting your only bite of the day when you have a sandwich in one hand and a steaming hot cup of coffee in the other. To support his rod he hacks a Y shaped branch out of the hedgerow wherever he goes, which, if all us anglers had copied for the last fifty years or so, would have saved the farmers a job of grubbing out all those hedges. Then we have the thorny issue of coarse fish removal. A net full of perch means that a couple are clonked on the head and taken home for the pot, as well as a pike of which gets the same treatment, although when it comes to chub, apparently, Mr C says that you ‘Might as well put it back as there is nothing you can do to it make it edible’. Hmmm….. Just how does he know that, you might ask. Although later in the book we are shown that the correct treatment for a 6 1/2 lb chub is to be clonked on the head so that it can go in a glass case, it’s what you go to the Hampshire Avon for, to ‘bag’ a specimen fish, apparently. All these fish are taken back for the mysterious and unseen Patsy to cook, my betting is that we don’t see her because her fish cooking skills betray the fact that she is probably from an Eastern European background, and was probably called Olga from the Volga before she slipped unnoticed into the country and changed her name to Patsy, (or is it Patski…?) However, all lighthearted banter aside, can the oh so different world depicted in this book really have been only one generation ago? Should we not be wondering if we ought to have a modern day Mr Crabtree to guide and give instruction to a new generation of anglers, and if so, who could it be? |
