Apple & Thread.
So many little clips of my younger life run around my head, things that I often reminisce about nowadays when I am attempting to get some sleep. I have found that this practice has often helped me to skate away into that dark forgetful void, and also allowed me to drift away to Nod on a cloud of fond memories.
Lately I’ve begun dredging through some of my vaguer memories, and today I have selected two of the longer recollections at the edge of my filed thoughts.
I’m still very young in this first memory, and this first one relates to my father, and something that he always did in the late summer – autumn when he was out with me.
He and I would be walking the dogs in Porth, some of the time, it would be a walk out onto Trevelgue Headland’s island.
The island back then was much wilder, and after crossing the slatted wooden bridge to the island, you then walked through high earthworks to get into the interior. These fortifications were very interesting to me as a child, and although I’ll talk more of these in memories to come, I’ll also dally slightly on them now.
When the bridge had been constructed, the engineers had cut through these earthworks and exposed the inside layers. My father had been intensely interested in Archaeology, and between us, we had discovered many flint arrowheads, and even a flint knife.
He’d explained to me that these arrowheads must have been used during a battle to defend the island, and then lost to the soil.
He would often paint vivid images on my young mind of how these battles may looked, with me listening in awe.
During the war, and before I was born, the family had lived in Dorset, and he had visited ‘Maiden Castle’ a lot. Often as he talked to me about Porth’s history, but he had also told me of Maiden Castle, and just how impressive it was.
Eventually I had visited it for myself, sadly though, a short while after my father had died, for I would have loved to walk its slopes with, see it again through his eyes.
For the first few years after his demise, I often walked on my own with my own dogs, out onto Porth island and its fortifications, and thought back on him, and regretted the things we would never share again.
Back then, and once we’d gotten out onto the island proper, we’d then make the slow ten-minute walk to the farthest point on the right-hand side.
It was then that we’d sit on the rocks in the warm sun facing out over the Atlantic. There might be a slight breeze that would bring ozone to our nostrils, an aroma as of slightly rotting seaweed, salt and mixed with a mysterious fragrance that to my romantic mind thought of as far away exotic destinations.
After a while, and we would sit there for at least thirty minutes, it was then that he’d always suddenly produce two small apples. They were usually small Cox’s Orange Pippin, their skins would be striped with shiny red, orange and green, and they’d be warm and fragrant from the heat of father’s pocket.
We’d sit there eating their juicy flesh, sometimes he would regale me of tales of foreign countries, and on others there would be a silence between us.
I would often find myself lost in observing the restless water, and their ebb and flow. I found the sounds of the ocean, the gulls and breezes, very relaxing, and even today, I love to sit near to water, especially an Ocean.
I’ve sat next to the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, and they seemed too vibrant, it’s hard today for me to believe that human stupidity is killing them.
My second memory today, is of my father taking me to a large rock pool on Whipsiderry, it was situated next to a large natural stone archway.
The archway in itself was interesting, it was raised from the sands on a pedestal made of hard rock, and the mainstay curve stood a good fifty at its highest point.
Underneath and to the right-hand side of this massive rock doorway, there was a deep and wide rockpool. It was a microcosm of the sea, with its own seaweeds, anemones, fish, crabs and prawns, and its waters were replenished at every tide rise.
I have memories to tell of just this pool, of my sisters, my friends, and Sharon and I, but it will feature later in this telling of my life on the beach.
The rock pool I will talk about now however, was on the left of this archway with its massive pillar. This pool was set into a large dark rock that I guess was made when the archway was slowly being formed by the rumbling strength of winter storms.
We’d scrambled to the top on that day, and once there, had hunkered down by the side of this pool. Its jagged edged side went straight down into the surface of its salty waters, it was a wide largish pool with a depth of eighteen inches. The bottom was covered in fine sand, weed and a few large flattish stones.
As I had crouched there in my T-shirt, chino shorts and bare feet, he’d taken his penknife out.
He had a cream bone handled knife, and it went everywhere that he went. Over the years to come, I saw him use it many times in the garden, peeling fruit, cutting up pears and apples to eat. Although he ate the cores, much as I do today, leaving no waste behind us when out, my mother and sisters didn’t, hence his needing it.
He’d pare twigs on shrubs for cuttings, and basically used this knife to cut anything he had need of to slice.
So, on this day, he used it to cut up a limpet, a fat limpet that he’d knocked from its mooring on the rocks surface with a quick blow of his hand. He’d then removed the flesh from its almost unbreakable shell and he’d sliced away all the inedible parts, and finally portioned it into four.
Next from his pocket, he’d produced some strong black cotton thread on a spool, it was slightly waxed. He’d unrolled about eight feet, and then cut that length off, and then repeated his actions.
He’d shown me how with a simple knot, he could tie the little portion of limpet flesh to the thread.
Having made his, he’d had me make my own, the orange, grey, cream flesh of the shellfish was slippery and hard to tie onto the thread. I remember that I wasn’t too impressed by the tangy smell of the limpet either, but I never have told him that, I had wanted to seem brave.
He had then lifted me and sat me securely on the edge with my little legs dangling, he’d then hunkered down by me, and shown me how to dangle the line into the water below.
I’d watched fascinated as he had jigged the tiny piece of limp meat up and down near one of the larger flat stones.
He had then pointed out that the stone was lifted at one end because it was sitting awkwardly on another stone under it. As I had watched, I had spotted movement under this part of the stone, and then out had popped the dark greenish head of a little fish.
With a little more tempting, the fish had left its home, and moved on the bait like a flash before dragging it back out of sight.
We had waited a short while, and then he had gently pulled the line back to him, complete with the wriggling fish, the fish that he had explained to me, was a common Blenny.
I had examined it as it had lain in the palm of his hand, watched its wide mouth opening and closing, it’s gills juddering, and felt its slightly slimy skin.
I’d then watched as he had carefully pulled on the thread with the bait still attached, as it had slipped from the fish’s mouth. I’d seen him drop his hand down near to the water, and then he released the fish back into the pool. I had watched it dash back to its hidey hole and disappear, and then he gave me an important lesson. “Never kill anything unless you intend to eat it, or it is threatening you, and you cannot safely run away.”
We stayed there for maybe an hour, me fishing in the pool, and him identifying what every catch was, whilst he lay back in the sun.
I caught crabs, both brown and green, Goby’s, and more than once, the same Blenny.
It was an idyllic afternoon for me, being with my father on my own, the adventure of fishing, the interest in the all the life in the pool.
In later years as I got older, I found that I just couldn’t recapture that excitement, although I did still enjoy catching crabs and prawns around the rock pools, which I then ate, and did right up to when I married Sharon, also subject to a memory to be written.
From beneath the Duvet 