Feasts, Festivals and Friends

Never let it be said that life in a seemingly fast asleep fishing village, content to sit out it's old age, can ever be boring or dull; with it's nocturnal wanderings and silent intrigue, where one persons drama becomes the vine of gossips delight. Sleep it may, but village life continues as each generation melts into the pot of yesterday; with the feasts and festivals of today remembered through the photographs and videos hidden in the drawers of tomorrow. We watch as we celebrate the life and colour of the village, its people, its traditions and its past; last week we enjoyed and endulged in the fish, fun filled Herring Festival with its smoked, soused, rollmop, baked, grilled, fried, bloatered and net fresh herrings, silver darlings, unrivalled kings of the sea. They come swimming down through the Irish sea year after year visiting our bay, their breeding bay, where they will spawn, beginning again the seven year life cycle that brings them back from whitebait to fully mature fish.
The festival was a day marinaded in atmosphere as people came to delight, taste and take home some fine fare, from fishcakes to fillets, from cider to cheese, even the local television came to cover the day. It is through events such as these that we learn to see the village built on fish by men and women brought up on fish; the lives of one dependent on the existance of the other. We know of some families still in Clovelly whose ancestors came here because of the sea and the
herring, stayed because of the sea and the herring and remain thanks to the sea and the herring. My own family surviving five generations as mariners and herring men. For over 20 years I have been a herring man. Today people make Clovelly their home for different reasons, having little understanding of the seasonal fishery, unaware of the night long boats drifting across the tide of the lantern lit bay, the shaking of the fishful nets in the cold, still air of the harbour, leaving the pebbled beach slippery and glistening with silver scales; where once donkeys laboured through the pannier and basket laden night. Boats no longer land the great shoals, picarooners don't line the shore, the smell of tanned nets no more hang drying from the wall. For most those days are long passed, for me it is a past still alive and will remain as long as there are still some herring being landed.
When I sit alone at sea in the cold, dark night, gently rocking with the Southerly swell, looking back at the Christmas lit village; I think of those fast asleep houses, unaware of their past and when it's time to haul in the nets, watching the fish come aboard, I think of all the men gone now and how hard it was for them as they often toiled with their heavy nets and I wonder will I be one of the last.
With the nets hauled, fish counted, customers supplied and satisfied all that remains to do is the most important part of the season; with fish and car I head into Devons hinterland, knocking, calling, visiting and surprising my most favourite people, those who have bought herring from me over the last 20 years, those who have eaten herring all their lives, who remember their parents salting in herring for the Winter, those who tell stories of herring for breakfast and herring for tea, whose lives are richer for the taste and goodness of Clovelly herring and my life shall never be boring or dull only richer for the knowing of them all.

A week to remember.

I watched them go to sea, walk down the beach, saying their farewells, they boarded their boat, the "Blue Hooker,"and headed off, rounding the Quay and away down the choppy shore, the boat dipping with the swells, the men preparing for another days fishing, just as they had the days and weeks and months before. I intended to go out myself, it was good herring weather, grey and a little blustery but not too bad, or so it seemed. I decided to have a look at the sea state from behind the Red Lion, where a motley gang of fisher types were gathering, watching the winds freshen and sea build; they were expecting to see the return of the boat, but as yet there was no sign. Two men decided to take a look from the cliff top, while the Honorary Secretary of the Lifeboat headed to the boathouse inorder to call the boat or the Coastguard and get them to return home. My decision as to whether or not I was going to sea was answered when the Coastguard requested us to launch, as helmsman I climbed aboard the Lifeboat and we slipped the boat to sea. That was ten years ago on the 12th of November; today we remember them as the great oaks of the village that they were, we remember as if it were yesterday, the loss, the fear, the guilt, the desperate need to bring them home. The endless, hopeful searching, the slow realization of tragedy, the helpless watching as the pain sets in, the numbness that hangs over a village waking to the news. Amidst this time of rememberance, when we stand in silence for the many sevice men and women whose sacrifice means we today can live in peace, we also remember those whose only wish was to earn a living, provide for their families and support their community as best they could, whose loss is our loss.
This week we also said goodbye to another local character, the Chipper Skipper, Ralph Atkinson who finally lost his long battle with cancer, he ran his charter boat the "Hooker," from Clovelly for many years and became renowned for his bacon butties, very bad jokes and bugle calls; another one gone, but Clovelly harbour has endured many ships passing throughout its long life, from storms and calms, wrecks and rescues, it is through such adversity that character forms; and these are the foundation stones of our harbour.

The Old Fisherman

He sits in his damp, dark workshop, surrounded by the debris of a long fishing past, both his and that of his never to be forgotten ancestors; a variety of fish boxes, buoy's and floats,ropes, anchors, nets, trawls and lobster pots all fill the air with the salt stained smells and distant memories of better days at sea. He listens, collecting forecasts, choosing whichever one is best or worst, adding them together to make a gale. Tourists love him, with his 18th Century beard, his age old charm, he wouldn't look out of place in a tired portrait. He wears the dusty uniform of the ancient seadog, weathered, worn and windblown. His early days were spent at sea, the Bristol Channel trade, Bridgwater, Swansea, Appledore were all familiar ports to him before returning home to fish and drink. With his encyclopedic memory he can tell you of all the ports around the world and he takes an interest in the few remaining ships that ply their wares from Bristol bound for Spain, watching as they pass on by, from his seafront bedroom window.
Take his photograph, many do; for if he had a pound for every picture taken, he'd be a wealthy man today; from Nova Scotia to New Zealand his face is found. Newspapers, magazines, films, adverts and television, he's done them all.
Ask him about the fishing and you'll receive a history of the industry, ask him about the village and he'll take you back in time, but don't ask him about the weather, it's never quite right, ask him about the future, "What future!" He comes from a time when a son learned the skills of the trade from his father or grandfather, when men relied on themselves in order to net a days fish and usually did. He looks forward to a time full of rules and regulations, paperfull days on shore, replacing the hope of a catch and no one listening to the man that just wants to make a living.
Will there be another like him? The tides recede from his world, the echoes of his day are waves rushing by and fish already caught, they cannot be caught again. He is one in a million, the last of his kind, he is a character, there are no characters like him, there are no characters.