In Other News

We went fishing for the first time in months last Sunday. I used my new rod that I got for my birthday way back in MAY. I caught a nice baby Cod, and we both got mugged by crabs. We put the fish back to fight another day. It was nice to have the time spare at last.

On another plus; instead of losing rigs to rock and weed, we both landed rigs with swivels and leads still attached, and being the pair of pikey’s we are J I bought them home and untangled the good bits and added them to our fishing box.

And then to complete our day of foraging and fishing, I brought the air rifle out of its hiding place and finally showed Amanda how to use it ... and you wouldn’t believe it ... she had one flyer (that’s a pellet that goes wide) and the remaining four in a really acceptable sub inch grouping. Very steady for a first time, we were both very pleased.

PS: Apologies for the face ... it's the only one I have.

Sloe Gin

On the lighter side of life, I found a Blackthorn bush (Prunus Spinosa) in a spinney so loaded with sloes, that it was decided that Sloe Gin had to be made again this year. Last year we made three litres and gave it away as Christmas presents. This year I thought we were going to be completely out of luck as the rainy summer seems to have kept the bees away from the bushes out in the open and the fruits that there are, are hardly worth the bother. However on the way back across the fields from the MOT test centre last Friday I found some sheltered Blackthorns, under a Willow spinney (Salix alba ... but I’ve not checked) running along a banked path with deep ditches either side. These ditch banks have their own populations of burrowing bees.

Now I’m not an entomologist or a botanist or an ecologist or other modern day bio-diversity and habitat specialist ... but I’d like to think I’ve just seen a bit of cause and effect. To whit: Bees protected by bank and trees, Blackthorn bushes protected by trees, heavy rains feeding black thorn bushes, hence giant sloes (some had started to go over they were so juicy), and either side of that protected spinney Blackthorns almost devoid of fruit. So what I think I saw there is a tiny 50 by 8 metre island habitat. I may be talking utter bollocks, and maybe the bushes beyond the spinney have been ravaged by Wood Pigeons ... but that wouldn’t explain the difference between Blackberry sizes inside and outside the spinney and the below average numbers in our usual picking spot down near the river. 

    

So on the Friday I earmarked the bushes for a Sloe foraging session early Sunday morning (around 10am in the end ... we had good intentions honest). And then we went out for the shopping trip mentioned in the previous post. Followed by the calamity of the roof leak on Sunday (which if you are interested will be fixed by a complete new felt roof being installed tomorrow Friday 28th September £650 cash) ... PS: Fuck You David Gauke, if you want to eliminate the black economy and tax avoidance at low level ask your senior colleagues to stop giving my hard earned money to fuck nugget bankers that spunked trillions on dodgy deals ... lets shake hands and call it a rebate. 

Back to Sunday afternoon, and the roof leak had been reduced from a Sev1 to a Temp Fix in place. So we sat down to stab almost plum sized sloes with map pins (not silver tined forks ... we keep them for special and if the vicar is popping round ... ahem). We then forced the sloes down the necks of 1.5ltr bottles of Gin or dropped them on mass into Kilner jars with the pre-requisite amount of sugar, a damn fine shake to get the fermentation going and retired to the lounge to write blog posts and watch the Brendan Fraser movie Journey To The Centre Of The Earth http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373051/ (I would have given it 7/10 myself IMDB’s reviewers must have been expecting Ghandi or something FFS it’s a kids film).

So despite the expense and the worry and the rain that means we’ve had to tell the Estate Agent not to bring anyone around this week in case there is water dripping from the ceiling into an Ikea storage box perched on the kitchen counter... not that anyone has requested to come around; well we’ve still had some fun making Christmas hooch. And if there is a Giant Intergalactic Spider watching over us (See South park episode Red Hot Catholic Love for an explanation ... I can’t be arsed), then perhaps he’ll cut us some slack now, and point a willing cash buyer who doesn’t like to haggle in our direction and we can move forward with travel plans.

Hunting and Fishing

Things must be ramping up, two posts in the month so far. Last week saw me fettling with the stock of my sixteen year old bull-pup Falcon Pre-charged air rifle. Over time, 16 years by my reckoning, the stock has shrunk just a fraction. Over time this has allowed, a fraction of movement of the entire action (about 0.5mm) around a central fixing point. That sounds like nothing but take that 0.5mm of play in the barrel and then run it out over a twenty five metres, and you will find your shots going wide.

It took an evening of making snooker cue chalk dust, then carefully covering the under surface of the Inter-mount block (on my rifle that’s the bit that holds the barrel, cylinder and the scope rails all in one) and then rubbing the Inter-mount gently but firmly against the inside face of the stock to find the high points.

Once this was done several times, to ensure all the high  spots were visible by virtue of the absence of chalk dust and the glazed appearance of the timber where the Inter-mount block had created friction, and everything else was covered in a fine green dust, I had to gently rub the high-spots away with a very light sandpaper, and very light touch; while avoiding sanding any of the edges of the inner groove where the action should sit square.

When the stock felt tight against the Inter-mount, I applied a light coat of specialist stock oil to the inner face of the stock to encourage the timber to swell a little and to form the tight seal between the stock and it’s Inter-mount. And finally the stock was sat overnight to dry before final tweaks and re-mounting of the complete action and scope.

All that remains is to borrow a Black and Decker Workmate and do the re-zeroing of the scope… though I’m in no real rush, what with other activities going on. Once the rifle is zeroed and I’ve had some field target practice, I will add the rifle to the inventory of travel kit, and items that need to be covered by insurance.

The air rifle, the fishing rods, a proper shrimping net and a few foraging field guides will join us on our travels and hopefully they will all be put to good use feeding us.

It all sounds quite novel and romantic when you write it down like that, but the facts are, that if you set out in the morning or the evening to hunt bunnies for the pot, you had better be ready to fail and have bought a pack of bangers and a packet of Smash in the event of a hunting failure. Likewise with fishing, shrimping and even gathering plants, there are no guarantees.

Getting Ready: The Tangents.

When eventually we leave the safety of home and home comforts, other than the Aluminium and polystyrene walls of the habitation unit of our motorhome, we intend where possible, legal and fun to try and forage for ourselves, both on the flora and fauna of our land and sea. And now without the flowery language; a bit of fishing, shooting and picking of herbs etc. In part this will help to save some pennies, (though we would hope never to be that poor), and of course it brings you a little closer to the land and sea you’re exploring, and adds extra dimensions to the overall adventure.

To this end, a week or so back we bought some very basic fishing rods and reels (from these people http://www.tacklebargains.co.uk ) and went out to practice the art of salt water fishing down near where we live on the tidal Thames at Tilbury. Now many years ago I did fish the inland waterways near home, and experienced most of my first forays into camping and sleeping outdoors in that environment. Amanda on the other hand has never fished with rod and line. So guess who blanked and who caught? That’s right on Amanda’s second cast she came up with a small Flounder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flounder, I was very pleased for her for the reason regaled below.

I remember being invited to go fishing once a week by a fella who lived up the road from us, my mum had said I wanted to go fishing, and as he was an Angler, he volunteered for the task. Then once a week for the next four weeks or so we sat at the same spot and didn’t catch a thing. Frankly I was losing the will to live and the desire to fish. Then one evening (usually a Wednesday as I remember) I caught my first fish; a Roach,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Roach . And from that moment on I was hooked. However until that moment I was just about sick to the back teeth of sitting by the Lea Canal at the junction of the Hertford Union canal in Stratford catching nothing. Eventually the fella (Phil) if I remember correctly moved away, but by that time I had got all my own gear and fished for several years with a group of mates. Once we all left school our group broke up and, I took up hobbies like SCUBA diving, walking and more serious trekking and a bit of air rifle hunting (more about this later).

Since then fishing hasn’t really been on my agenda; but many is the time in the last four years since I moved to Tilbury that I’ve cycled past the guys that fish down by Tilbury Fort, and thought “I fancy some of that”. And so it would appear that in the making of our trip plan, I have fulfilled a side ambition, and introduced Amanda to the joys of tangles, lost fish, tall stories, and slimy cold things that won’t stay still while you try to take hooks from their mouths.

Given the relative success of our first trip, we went out again last Friday morning the 6^th of April, on the rising tide and bagged ourselves four Whiting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlangius_merlangus before cycling home as the tide started its ebb and the clouds started to fill the sky; up until that point we had been facing into bright sunshine for the best part of three hours, and we both caught fish. All things being equal a very good morning. And then home to start on the serious Easter jobs at home to get the house ready for sale or rent (we still haven’t decided, and it will depend on the market later this year).

The point of this post? Well I think it’s about a coming together of many strands of life, as the plan firms up. As things start slowly to gel together and the idea feels more and more like something concrete as opposed to a pipe dream, you suddenly find that things you have paid no heed to for decades, were stored like savings earning interest in your deep long-term memory. Things like how to tie a hook, that once upon a time drove you mad with frustration, or how to disgorge a hook, and even how to fillet a Whiting; which I learnt from an ex girlfriends dad on the only other occasion in my life that I had fished from the beach. I say beach, I mean the sea wall towards Jaywick East of Frinton in Essex, but even that memory of filleting your own fish and how to do it stuck. At an appropriate time, those memories bubble to the surface imbuing one with confidence. Maybe this post as with others is also about confidence, and finding those reserves you’ve subconsciously stored away for yourself. Anyway enough for now, fishing is back on the agenda. Things are coming together, and for that I am glad.