Gone fishing

Kick off my shoes and go out­side. Grass, gravel, dirt, dust: feel them all sur­ging and stick­ing between my toes. Head down to the dis­used canal — more pic­tur­esque than such an unin­spir­ing loc­a­tion has any right to be — to find my favour­ite bench along the quietest stretch, just before the incline, and sit. And wait. Wait for the world to right itself again. Wait forever, if needs be.

Yes, that’s where the memor­ies open, how they dawn. I’m sit­ting, hunched for­ward against the autum­nal bite, with my hands clasped between my knees, wish­ing I could sum­mon up the cour­age to write my name. I want to carve it for pos­ter­ity into the wood that’s emer­ging from under­neath the flak­ing lay­ers of local coun­cil green, dot­ted like some haphaz­ard archipelago. It’s now or never, because in twenty years I know that I’ll be just a dis­tant speck to this place. Everything — includ­ing the two uneven foot­prints in the wet cement at the back of the cricket pavil­ion — will have been filled in by rebuild­ing, redevel­op­ment, resur­fa­cing. Rewrit­ing the past.

If only I knew for cer­tain that my ini­tials were still there today, it would at least con­firm to this fre­quently fren­etic but woe­fully under­used mind that I did exist for a moment — in that place, at that time. Canal side, early autumn, some­where or other to the south-west.

Des­pite the dis­tant recol­lec­tion now becom­ing so much mis­ted, swim­ming vague­ness, this is where I fre­quently choose to return. This is where I allow myself to step back into a rounder, smoother skin and pause a moment. This is where the world is always sepia-coloured in a faded pho­to­graph that thank­fully makes me look older than I really am, rather than today’s splattered can­vas of one too many hues. This is where the child truly is father of the man — a concept I can finally grasp these many years later, even though as I sat by the almost unmov­ing water I rarely thought to open the copy of the col­lec­ted Wordsworth I habitu­ally stowed in my bag in read­i­ness to appear suit­ably earn­est and pro­found in front of friends.

I couldn’t help but stare intently at the lone fish­er­man who would some­times take his place on the grassy bank — my grassy bank. Mine. Even in his near motion­less hush, his arrival would shat­ter my solitude. Not that he ever caught any­thing, you under­stand. He was just there, exist­ing, gaz­ing off into the line of trees that bordered the open fields bey­ond, and hop­ing for his line to twitch. It never did. What a point­less waste of someone’s exist­ence, I clearly recall think­ing to myself as I cursed him under my breath. Would he want to know now how much I under­stand his stillness?

I can’t remem­ber what else passed through my mind in those hours I spent escap­ing into myself to the accom­pani­ment of dogs being walked, matches being played, babies being pushed. I have no doubt that I went to the bench to pon­der the sup­posedly great thoughts that now — still only sup­posedly — flow from my fin­gers onto a key­board, into a screen and out, out into a vir­tual land­scape of eyes that I know, styl­istic tics that I can instantly recog­nise, but faces that fail to ring even the most dis­tant of bells. Scan the lines, that’s how you’ll know me; much rather that than we should ever meet in a crowded, anonym­ous room amidst the incess­ant dron­ing, buzz­ing and gab­bling of life unfolding.

I go fish­ing, that’s what I do. A book beside me that remains unopened, trees bear­ing down on me and obscur­ing a view that I have no desire to see, and the lulling rhythm of the canal lap­ping gently and unhur­ried against its banks. I cast my line into the water’s green­ing murk and com­mence my vigil, hop­ing for the twitch­ing that will alert me to a prom­ise beneath the sur­face. And as I hope, I also wait. I wait for the moment when the world will right itself again.

It never comes. It never did then, and it never will now. But that no longer mat­ters, because from some­where deep within these memor­ies I’ve found the means, the knife, to carve my child-like jagged ini­tials into the woodwork.