Those adhesive memories

Those adhesive memories

Chris Avery | Sunday, 8 September 2024

Coming up the bank of the Brook one night on the edge of the long grass and the well-worn sandy foot path I stopped. A creature was ambling towards me. By the size I’m guessing was a young teenage Badger, no longer having to play just outside the set with its siblings, freshly finding its freedom to roam. Its head held high as it bumbled towards where I planned to join the footpath.

Not wanting to get in its way..after all it was on the footpath first, I politely waited for it to pass. I’m damn sure it could see me and my smell must have reached its nose, But it carried on and passed a few feet away, its chin up, a spring in its step,and what seemed to be a really satisfied smile on its face; a ‘cat that got the cream’ moment. It caught my eye and simply moved on by, unfazed by my presence, caught up in its own joy. I recognized that feeling it seemed to be going through; “Everything is just dandy and ain’t nothing going to change my world” 

My favorite photographer Henri Cartier Bresson grabbed a photo of a scruffy kid in Paris, with a big bottle of wine tucked under each arm, and you can feel the joy and pride pouring out of that kid, that badger in that snapshot of time reminded so much of that Image and that emotion.

It fascinates me why some events stick in the memory, and yet others seemingly more meaningful or life-changing, don’t. Sometimes and with experience of years you realise in that instance that it will register as a ‘keeper’ memory. Other times ‘stuff happens’ and to your surprise years later you find it’s left a permanent mark and you wonder, “Why has that become so significant.?”

A small speck of a Peregrine falcon in a clear gap of blue sky next to some high summer clouds and causing a profound ,eerie effect on the valley below, I do get the significance to this ex-childhood birdwatcher however!

I’d spent most of my life never knowingly seeing and experiencing Peregrines and longing to, looking at pictures in my oft’ studied bird books as a child, they belonged in the category of far too unusual for me to see in that world I was born into. It’s hard now to convey just how rare they had become.

The collapse in the wild population of Peregrines in the late 1950’s ( long before I was born) when farming practices of the time ground an agricultural boot on the neck of a population, which had already been decimated by human persecution. To the extent that, by the time I was longing to glimpse one, 80% of the British population was lost, seemingly forever, in all areas but the remotest parts of the United Kingdom.

It’s still a commonly heard misconception that the insecticide DDT getting into the food chain did it. DDT was banned some years before the major dip in numbers though and although the evidence was there about the chemical egg shell thinning, which caused failures in the nest and was certainly causing a decline in numbers of Peregrines and Sparrow hawks, it wasn’t the worst of it for them.

When an organic insecticide chemical seed dressing was introduced into the UK environment the real damage was done; Cyclodienes , known to us as Aldrin; Dieldrin; and Heptachlor. (Areas around high usage of heptachlor were also found to have higher incidence of breast cancers). These chemicals were more toxic to the accidental intake by vertebrates than DDT, especially the seed eating birds and though evidence was compelling that it was effecting much more than its target pests, the industry fought hard to keep it on the market. Eventually in 1973 all the main named chemicals were banned, just one Endosulphin, survived on the market in the West for a few more years. It’s now still used in India and China. 

After the banning of Aldrin and Dieldrin in the UK the Peregrine numbers immediately started to recover.

Still, the chances of young me meeting one in the wild felt about as likely  as seeing a Galapagos Tortoise or a Tasmanian Devil in its natural surroundings.

Peregrine Falcons in my bird books were the rare exotics along with Golden Orioles, Hoopoes and Nightingales, a maybe once in a lifetime glimpse and probably on a falconer’s glove. So I do get it that I’ve hyped myself up for ‘some’ of these encounters, but still it intrigues me why other more mundane memories stick and find a purchase to anchor and remain moored in my brain, I go back over them, and I guess, consolidate them further to memory with each re-visit.

The storm Beetle.

Finding a big black beetle as a scruffy arsed, scab knee’d kid,when turning over some rusty corrugated iron by the cricket pitch that we use to play around. (let’s be clear here, Beetles were not a rare occurrence).  I can remember exactly where along the overgrown fringe of blackberry and nettles by the fence under the stunted sycamores that I was playing, when I turned back the tin to see flattened light starved grass on dry sandy soil below, I remember the gentle summer heat and sunshine that transferred and focused warmth into that old tin in my hand, the crinkly feeling of the tired summer foliage I cleared off it, the sweet composting smell that rose as I turned the sheet back; and I saw it, a kid’s thumb nail sized scurrying beetle, startled I guess by the sudden light and breeze as its cover had been moved, and it scurried away out of view. .

That was all there was to it. Incredibly mundane.

I can just about remember being in bed that night and feeling something under the sheet, the button of a mattress probably and then thinking about that Beetle I’d uncovered.  I know there was a flash of lightning behind the curtains out in the night over the sea at that moment, and a crack of thunderseconds later that rumbled off into the distance. That should have been the more significant and dramatic memory. Yet it was the moment of “Beetle” that stuck. I have no idea why that is a significant signpost in my life and why it’s become part of my story and remained  a crystal-clear memory.

I was at an age when writing up a story at school in English was a paragraph long at best, and in big handwriting would take up half of a page. I  wrote a story called the storm beetle over a page and a half of my little exercise book, and got my first encouraging comments from a teacher ever, saying “ Despite the appalling spelling and handwriting….” ,that  my  storytelling of such a simple idea was very good  9/10 . I was seven or eight  at the time and already written off as potential for anything academic, quite rightly labelled as a daydreamer and wastrel who could do better, if only..

 

My first ever known encounter with a Peregrine was actually at the Brook years before and I knew for my memory bank at that moment it would be a keeper.

It was hard to honestly describe it to other people at the time without referencing some biblical based imagery of the scenario, and without feeling I would appear to be egging up the pudding a bit too much just for extra affect.

Especially as the first sentence is so inauspicious;-  “ I was walking along the path from the sewage works to the Brook!”.

But it was one of those encounters you just didn’t need to embellish.  I was actually, at the time, walking along the path from the sewage works to the Brook!.

It was an early summer, mid-afternoon, the light was cutting across hard as the sun, passing down from halfway between noon and the oncoming dusk. There had been a rainstorm passed through an hour before and left the spring green foliage clean of dust and the deep brown soil, damp and glistening ,colour rich.. Strong beams of light in the clear air, creating  small, sharply focused shadows, defining everything in view.

Every leaf; every blade; every stone; every twig; and every flower; into stark and sparkling clear definition. The quality of light that good cameramen just know, transforms mere snapshots into memorable images,  pleasant landscapes into drama filled vistas.

As I got clear of the Sewage works and the land opened out, it was an intense blue sky above me, but there were dark black storm clouds distantly growing and filling the sky over in the distance behind the direction of the fishing I was heading towards, and I was wondering if I would get a few hour’s grace, before it hit. Or whether some other poor buggers would cop a deluge later. Those black clouds you encounter usually as a backdrop to the most vibrant and brilliant rainbows and so often just walk on by without spilling a drop.

 

Across the scene, a hundred yards distant down the path and the very gentle slope, under clouds of milky white blossom covering the Hawthorns and the bud swelling Elderfowers was my destination. The meandering line of these odd scruffy old trees rising gnawled and weather beaten out of tall unmown grasses and wild flowers, maintain that lovely scruffy fertile contrast along the footpath to the orderly, uniformed cropped fields around the valley, while under them , unseen from here, wandered the waters of our little Brook.  

Despite the foreboding dark on the distant fringes of the sky, everywhere in view was bathed in glorious, dazzling sunshine.  To my left was a wide meadow of dense, soft green, tufted Barley heads wafting in ripples and nodding  in waves across the field, etching and plotting the passing gusts of breeze witha living, acres wide, animation. That breeze, shaking lose the last remaining rain drops. That cooled breeze, refreshing the air and lifting the pressure from the day .  

 

Above the Barley against the back drop of the brooding storm cloud was a flight of a dozen pure white doves,  spreading the message of peace, with one grey mourning dove in tow, or maybe leading the pack. Homing around and seemingly, bizarrely circling around above a telegraph pole and wires just above the crops, One moment against a blue clear sky and next with a backdrop of foreboding and doom as they wheeled around.

I tilted back my head to get a better view of the scene, obscured under the visor of my fishing cap. The circle had quickly become tighter and lower, noticeably more frantic.

 I  didn’t recognise this event in front of me. Doves in my experienced circled wider and wheeled away into the distance or up to the heavens, not faster and lower and tighter ,almost in a panicked spiral.  Then in an instance they just dropped the last few feet out of the sky, plummeting down randomly, vanishing into the Barley field below. My experiences could not commute what was occurring in front of me.

Out of the sky suddenly from the right where it had been hidden from me by the visor of my cap,  cut into my view  the rapier fast stroke, plunging down and across  the vista with incredible speed. The end movement of the power dive of a hunting Peregrine Falcon. Never seen before by my eyes, it occurred in the split of a tiny second, but I didn’t have to question what I was seeing.  

It continued over shooting, looking like a fighter plane unable to get out of a power dive, ploughing straight into a parting line of the crop, crashing into the stalks and out of view.. Biggles in the Barley disappearing into an area containing a dozen terrified disciples and one saviour, who now had his work cut out. A murderous devil had descended from the heavens and crashed to earth.

Nothing moved except heart beats. For a second or two the world went still, silent with the expectancy. That foreboding of a coming storm increased and focused the world in on those few square yards of drama, amidst a sea of waving Barley ears.

Then  a rustle and  up  popped  the Peregrine empty clawed, looking somewhat pathetic with its power and threat now lost. Strangely resembling an ungainly Osprey clawing up into the air after a plunge into the water surface. Freeing itself from the dense still air and the crop with laborious strokes of its sickle wings trying to lift it up into the clear breeze, and away from the shameful failing, the debacle in the Barley.

Majestic and murderous high above its victims, those wings designed for gliding and steering and tilting in dives, now it looked clumsy and vulnerable out of its element.  Like a dog leaving the water, It seemed to shake itself off when finally in flight in a nervy ruffle of feathers , a few strong upward pulls of the wings  to grasp some height and then  settled into level flight, low and fast over the fields and hurdling low over the hedges leaving its humiliation behind, disappearing off into the landscapes beyond. Life turned to normal, a distant speckspreading silence and dread below its wings again.

One by one the Doves reappeared from the safe refuge of the crop and gained the sky finding their wings and easy rhythm,  then all clear, the flight confidently merged  back together and they circled over the field. Stark clean white Doves against the background of black storm clouds. One grey mourning dove  amongst  them still. The doves circled off to some homely coop in the distance, the lifting breeze sent gentle waves across the Barley again and I  sighed and pinched myself and continued walking down towards my fishing. Feeling slightly blessed while wondering if it would become either a portentous omen, or clumsy metaphor for the fishing session ahead. (maybe despite seeing a dozen fish rises, I was destined to clumsily miss every one of them!)

Confident that the memory would be one of those keepers! 

My favourite photographer Henri Cartier Bresson epitomises great and the most memorable photography for me, I could probably name thirty of his photos at least, that have travelled with my memories picked up at various moments of my life. Snapshots of moments adhered in the memory bank, long after the exhibition or the book is closed. Usually in black and white. (Which in itself leaves your brain with some work to do).

Talking about what makes a great photograph. He’s offered many theories about what a successful image entails, and people offer his “The decisive moment” quote, but there’s much more to it, than just that trick.

For me, distilling his philosophy and paraphrasing him ; a great photograph is a combination of pleasing Geometry, a precise moment, and a little mystery.  

A pleasing composition for the eye to be drawn into and find rest in the picture, a snap shot of time, and, crucially, an engaging question in the image that keeps you thinking, long after that picture has gone.

These ‘Keeper” memories of meetings with the natural world are usually outside, so the composition is pleasing, they involve unpredicted moments or things that can’t easily be explained, the little mystery that keep you engaged long after the incident has passed.

A variation of this holds true to us fishermen.

Hundreds of times a season I’ll see a fish rise, present an acceptable fly close by without spooking it, manage the drift, time the strike, get the fish safely to net and then gently return it to the waters. The complete narrative of what we are here for, and the success we seek.

Within weeks I can barely remember any of those successes unless something out of the ordinary occurs.  

Yet I am haunted to a hellish eternity with regrets for many of the ones I have lost. They have the power to keep me awake with regret and cold sweats, the ones I failed to complete the transaction and they maintain that mystery, bare testament to my failings and the question of “if only I’d done this different…?.” As over the years they grow in size, and consequently, the pain of the loss increases.

So, if the only memorable fish are the lost ones. Why the hell do we punish ourselves with this?

Have a great weekend with no earth shattering lost leviathans to haunt your future nights and accompany you to the grave.

Be Happy!

Chris Avery

 

(Heres a funny thing…. While coming home to complete this last night I was in the local supermarket car park, above me the stately 210 feet spire of the church. Sand stone gothic stone work. The Crows and pigeons were making a fearful, or a fear filled din, hunkered down out of view. Looking up at the steeple high on a perch was a small shape huddled above a stone window, having a rest. Even from a few hundred feet below its shape was instantly recognisable, a Peregrine. My first sighting for a year or more, I wondered if it was nesting up in the top of the spire. Then came a female, a third bigger in size wheeling around looking like she was berating her lazy male.

I watched for a while till eventually she shot into a window high above the belfry, and he dropped off his perch and went off on the saunter. He was, it seems making his presence felt and protecting whatever was high in that tower. From that lofty vantage anything that approached from below, wouldn’t have stood a chance.)