watch the scene fascinated a while. It was like a sideshow in hell, down there in the dark cellerage. Once in a kind of dumbshow for our benefit, the man held up a plucked bird by the neck and easing his hand down its body to the rump, produced an egg. Either it was a fowl on the brink of laying, which is quite likely, or a clever bit of conjuring, if not as clever as Dickâs baked-bean trick. As to the chicken and egg, I always believed my eyes, whereas with the baked beans, you couldnât, so fast Dick moved, defying time.
* * *
To everything its season. There were shoreline seasons too, and tidal passions that came to fill my waking thoughts, to distract me from lessons, to keep a weather-eye on the window, to worry not about the timetable but the tide-table. A prospect of the sea within sound of the sea, piers and jetties and harbours, boats inshore and ships on the skyline, tugs at me now as I write, like a mooring, hauling me back into the solitude and unlonely loneliness of those shoreline days. This was my self in the making.
By the time I was ten, about three years before we moved to the wooded hill, when a different balance between the hill and the sea was struck, the coast took strong claim on my free time. It is hard to accept now what fishing there was to be had on Colwyn shore, between Penmaen and the point of Rhos when I was young. Nothing like it survives, just as nothing like the freedom to come and go remains today for children as young as we were. âDrive carefully, free-range children at playâ, I saw on a sign remote in Argyll the other day. We were free-range children in every way, except as to word from the unknown world.
It was quite early one morning would be the way to start to tell you.
But it started well before morning. It was afternoon, is closer yet, if thereâs a beginning to find, the day before, in the backyard at âThornfieldâ. Eleven going on twelve, twelve going on thirteen, Iâm a free being, too young to be employed in a holiday job. With all the time in the world on my hands, except the time of the tides that rule my thoughts, Iâm away in my dream, trying my hand at a nightline.
My ambition is unlimited. Iâm all imagining without a thought in my head of failure. Every hook Iâm tying to the line on its little length of 12lb breaking-strain nylon will take a fish in the course of the night. You believe it. I bite through the nylon droppers at the knot, tough bite through tough line for young teeth. Iâm so hooked I think of nothing but being ready for the night, as the afternoon softens in the yard and my mother calls me for tea.
This boy that I was â I remind you â is eleven going on twelve, at the youngest. The ages of eight, ten, thirteen are defining points of moment in his story and make it possible to relate it with some degree of accuracy, as to what happened when. He wonât reach thirteen before his world is transformed and heâs transported elsewhere, away, seven miles off, under the wooded hill. There nightlines will lengthen unimaginably, dreams deepen and fish multiply. What heâs doing now in the Red Wood is merely preparatory. He thinks it is the real thing. And so it is, until he learns otherwise. And as youâll realise when you reach âThe Black Lakeâ heâs begun to harden just a little now, and has a slightly clearer sense of purpose, resolve discovered in the mountains at the Black Lake.
Soon youâll see him emerge with his nightline over his shoulder. The line consists of a length of stout, domestic electrical wire, rescued from the tip at Fairmount, hung with hooks on âdroppersâ, and wound round three sticks. Heâs slung the silvery canned-fruit bait-tin along the handle of his spade. And off he sets, both hands full, his spade over his other shoulder. The can slides now and then and bangs against the step of the spade as he walks, then slides back onto
* * *
To everything its season. There were shoreline seasons too, and tidal passions that came to fill my waking thoughts, to distract me from lessons, to keep a weather-eye on the window, to worry not about the timetable but the tide-table. A prospect of the sea within sound of the sea, piers and jetties and harbours, boats inshore and ships on the skyline, tugs at me now as I write, like a mooring, hauling me back into the solitude and unlonely loneliness of those shoreline days. This was my self in the making.
By the time I was ten, about three years before we moved to the wooded hill, when a different balance between the hill and the sea was struck, the coast took strong claim on my free time. It is hard to accept now what fishing there was to be had on Colwyn shore, between Penmaen and the point of Rhos when I was young. Nothing like it survives, just as nothing like the freedom to come and go remains today for children as young as we were. âDrive carefully, free-range children at playâ, I saw on a sign remote in Argyll the other day. We were free-range children in every way, except as to word from the unknown world.
It was quite early one morning would be the way to start to tell you.
But it started well before morning. It was afternoon, is closer yet, if thereâs a beginning to find, the day before, in the backyard at âThornfieldâ. Eleven going on twelve, twelve going on thirteen, Iâm a free being, too young to be employed in a holiday job. With all the time in the world on my hands, except the time of the tides that rule my thoughts, Iâm away in my dream, trying my hand at a nightline.
My ambition is unlimited. Iâm all imagining without a thought in my head of failure. Every hook Iâm tying to the line on its little length of 12lb breaking-strain nylon will take a fish in the course of the night. You believe it. I bite through the nylon droppers at the knot, tough bite through tough line for young teeth. Iâm so hooked I think of nothing but being ready for the night, as the afternoon softens in the yard and my mother calls me for tea.
This boy that I was â I remind you â is eleven going on twelve, at the youngest. The ages of eight, ten, thirteen are defining points of moment in his story and make it possible to relate it with some degree of accuracy, as to what happened when. He wonât reach thirteen before his world is transformed and heâs transported elsewhere, away, seven miles off, under the wooded hill. There nightlines will lengthen unimaginably, dreams deepen and fish multiply. What heâs doing now in the Red Wood is merely preparatory. He thinks it is the real thing. And so it is, until he learns otherwise. And as youâll realise when you reach âThe Black Lakeâ heâs begun to harden just a little now, and has a slightly clearer sense of purpose, resolve discovered in the mountains at the Black Lake.
Soon youâll see him emerge with his nightline over his shoulder. The line consists of a length of stout, domestic electrical wire, rescued from the tip at Fairmount, hung with hooks on âdroppersâ, and wound round three sticks. Heâs slung the silvery canned-fruit bait-tin along the handle of his spade. And off he sets, both hands full, his spade over his other shoulder. The can slides now and then and bangs against the step of the spade as he walks, then slides back onto
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