The Written Word

I have never been very good at keeping stuff simply for the sake of it. Periodically through my life there have been several immense and cathartic clear-outs. Consequently very few of my boyhood possessions are still with me. Some photos, my school reports, and a few books. Books...

As a young boy I had a passionate interest in natural history, but no mentor to foster it. Basically I was on my own. Initially that interest was less in identifying things, more in getting amongst them. Fishing fitted the bill perfectly. To extract a small roach from a local pond, and have that glittering silver-blue bar of perfection close-up, in your hand, was awesome. I had no one to teach me fishing, so how did I learn? Books.

When I was nine my family moved to Kenton, in the Harrow/Wembley area of NW London. Our nearest high street was Preston Road, at the end of which was the public library. Where I pretty much wore out every single fishing book they had. I can picture some of the photos in my mind's eye, and almost feel the frustrated longing they evoked, knowing that such enormous specimens, and the idyllic, fish-infested rivers and lakes where they lived were all out of reach to a boy like me. The images, the feelings and emotions, even now are still fresh though half a century has passed. Books.

Yes, the written word can be a powerful thing. Especially upon a young mind. I wonder whether the authors of such relatively unromantic works as books on how to fish, or how to identify a bird, are necessarily conscious of that fact?

A couple of clear-out survivors...

Both from my boyhood

Small Stream Fishing was published in 1966, and I've owned this copy for almost 50 years. David Carl Forbes was also a gifted artist, and his beautiful illustrations are peppered throughout the book. As a boy I had no access to the kind of waters he describes, but that didn't stop me devouring every word and trying to adapt his advice to my own fishing. Opening the pages now is like like stepping into a time machine. It takes me straight back. Wonderful. DCF died tragically young in the late '70s. I wonder what he would make of the current angling scene?

The Popular Handbook of British Birds is essentially a condensed version of the famous Handbook of British Birds by Witherby et al. I didn't know about field guides, so when I got the opportunity to acquire a book to help me learn birds I chose this. Believe it or not I used to take this into the field with me. Armed with the Popular Handbook and my late grandfather's ex-army 7x50s it is a wonder that I managed to identify anything really. But I did. A summer holiday visit to my other grandparents' place in North Norfolk features on the inside back cover...

Clearly I was never that bothered about book abuse. Also: 'oyster catcher'! Ha ha!

I can see myself now, simultaneously trying to thumb through the wader plates, wield my monster bins and not flush the bird, the 'unknown small wader - later identified as a dunlin'. Who knows what it actually was? As per usual I had been dropped off at Morston quay, where I caught the boat out to Blakeney Point and walked back to Cley or Salthouse. I assume that 'Weybourne-618' was my grandparents' phone number in 1974.

Perhaps there's a lesson here for some of us? If you have a mentor - a friend or relative who can teach and encourage you in your interest, who can show you the ropes - you are fortunate indeed. Appreciate it. Pass it on.

Anyway, this post hasn't led quite where I thought it would. I was intending to compare the books of yore to today's more ephemeral written matter: the blogs, social media output and so forth, which exists in the ether. Blogs, for example, can literally vanish at the press of a button. I know. But for some reason I've ended up reminiscing instead...

Well, whatever form it takes, the written word is still a mighty powerful thing, and I love it.