Autumn 23

WildNet AlanPriceGatehouseStudios

Here at The Fishery, tucked into the forest’s edge and home to burn, pool and loch, we are blessed with moth, midge and swallow.   Swallows, those artic terns of the meadow, weave, dip and skim our water bodies, seeking whirring insects.  My dear Spring-departed Dad called his first modern fibre-glass canoe, ‘Procne’, meaning ‘Swallow’ in Ancient Greek.  Procne was twin to ‘Caeruleus’, a Roman deity of the deep blue seas and she was my Mum’s own vessel.   

Aged five, I was ferried over the River Trent, in a canvas double canoe, which Dad had made in 1954 to circumnavigate Lindisfarne, the place of his childhood holidays.   ‘Euryonme’, which he translated simply as ‘Water Sprite’ was also used to enhance his  spear fishing trips in those northern waters.   Snug in my mini 1970s yellow lifejacket, Euronyme would whisk me away to play with my best friend, who lived on the far bank.  This would save Dad a fifteen mile round trip in the car and no doubt appealed to his spirit for adventure.   The experience must have rubbed off, as thirty years later I set off to paddle down the west coast of the Outer Hebrides, but there begins another story.

Hirundo rustica, the brave little swallow, fills me with sweet memories.   Where I grew up as a Midlander, huge flights would congregate on the telegraph wires outside our house, before they flew the thousands of miles to their South African wintering grounds.  One family nested annually in our wood shed, looping round our heads if we forgot to leave the doors open.  My Dad cherished them.  This summer swallows nested in the Dumfries shed above my old boat, christening her bows.   Some twenty years before, Dad had persuaded me to buy ‘The Dabber’, a small traditional sailing boat, to soften my land- locked Rutland days.   Later tho’ he later forbade me to sail her in the truculent waters of the Outer Hebrides: one of his wiser consels.  In theory Dad, don’t you still own the back half?  Or is it the front?  Whichever, she needs serious restoration work, but come spring, with ceremony, I will sail her again in your favourite Fleet Bay.

Surveying the quiet cobwebbed meadow, on the cusp of winter, I sense how my own tiny voyages fall short compared to the swallows’ time old and perilous autumn crossings of the Sahara.  Now, climate change has created weather extremes and expanded the deserts, while we on the edge of Europe destroy their nesting sites and deplete their food sources with our intensive farming systems.  Since my early river crossings, these beautiful birds have declined by up to an estimated 50% in the UK.    

While the swallows in the Fishery skies bring my Dad close, other happenings remind me of the distance.   This spring when I caught my first wild brownie of the year, I could not call or text him.  Each time I eat cheese and onion baps, I see him wrinkling his nose in delight, but he is not there to share them.  When the radio plays John Denver’s, ‘Sunshine on my shoulders’, I fold up inside like a deck chair.  These are tough times to navigate.  And they are even harder for my Mum, stranded on a long beach without him.

Before he went to “wherever and whatever it be”, he’d instructed us to “think of the good times and have one for me”.  So in moments of joy or delusion Dad, I see you windsurfing up the moon path, overtaking Pete the Dude in his Topaz dinghy.  I see you zig-zagging in the powder snow.  Or sometimes you are hurling a rugby ball across the field.  On early mornings you may be stalking magpies in your too big dewy wellies.  Or we are feasting on Mars Bars, you dispensing whisky macs and justice.  Dad, let’s just say, wherever you are, I believe Sprout is with you, resting his head at your knee.   

Vade in pace.