A Nice Way To End My 60s

[Penelope]

On 11/25/2017 at 07:14, figgy said:

Many happy returns on turning seventy and one very pleasurable read. 

When the older Fowler’s post flight reports like this one and anser2 has, it makes better reading than most books. They remind me of reading the likes of country gun and other writers in shooting times a decade ago. 

Thanks for posting. 

Bloody good point figgy. BB, Willock, and Humphreys all over again. Used to be the first articles I read as a lad. Now it's Alistair Mitchell to see what misery is afoot. How 'Times' change  .

'From egg to plate - a lifetimes 'fowling'

 

There's ya title John. Well, that's the hard bit done, so the rest should be easy  .

[JDog]

I would be happy to aid MM if he ever considered writing a few fowling memoirs.

[hawkeye]

Better late than never happy birthday marsh man i reached the same age last January soon be 71 the mind is still young but the body says otherwise...

 

 

[marsh man]

Thanks again for your kind words and Mr JDogs offer of assisting me if ever I decided to put a few of my outings down in a book , I have kept a diary for a number of years but unlike answer2 who managed to put a whole page down about one of his flights or adventures on the marsh.

Mine mainly consisted of two lines , what I shot , a small bit about the weather , and a mention about my shooting partner who 99 . 9 of the time was my dog.

One of my favourites fowling books was , and still is, was Kenzie The Wild Goose Man ,  when Colin Willock  started to gather the information for the book it was mainly off scrapes of paper and Kenzie dictating his exploits into a tape recorder and sending them off to be transferred onto to paper, so his diary must have been very similar to mine.

We all know one or two rough diamonds who were very similar to the early days of Kenzies life , I suppose I might have had a drop of his blood strain into me , although we never poached Pheasants and nobody who I knew ever got locked up in Norwich Prison , that's not to say I haven't got a criminal record caused by something attached to shooting.

When I was 13 I bought my first gun from Darlows in Norwich and at that time my only form of transport was a push bike , with spending most of my money on a gun and what I had leftover on a box of cartridges left me with nothing to spend on such luxuries as bicycle lights , anyhow , on this particular night I was on my way home down the A47 after a blank flight and I didn't really give it thought why the lorries were  jamming on there brakes behind me and the cars flashing there lights now and again in front of me , after swearing and calling them a load of nutters under my breath a little police Panda car  pulled up behind me with his Blue light on , after he told me how dangerous it was and I was lucky not to be flattened by one of the lorries that kept braking hard he got out his note book and took my name and address , and told me to walk the rest of the way home.

After two or three weeks I forgot all about it until a official looking envelope came through my parents door with a summons to attend a juvenile court at Blofield , which was about 12 miles in the deep countryside from where we were living , at that time we were light years from having a car and the only way for me and my mother to get there was by bus , I cant remember the exact timing but the buses then were not that regular and after my mum taking a morning off from work and me a morning off from school off we went , we thought the timing was close but time the bus got there and we walked down to the court house the chap who done the paperwork informed us our case had already gone through and I got fined One pound and ten shillings , in todays money  £1.50p , which at the time our bus fare might have been more.

So by more luck than judgement that is the only time I have had to attend a court house with me being the guilty party, and from that day to this I have kept on the straight and narrow .......... with just the odd kink in it along the way

[Penelope]

And look what those two lines produce.

We all know one or two rough diamonds who were very similar to the early days of Kenzies life , I suppose I might have had a drop of his blood strain into me , although we never poached Pheasants and nobody who I knew ever got locked up in Norwich Prison , that's not to say I haven't got a criminal record caused by something attached to shooting.

When I was 13 I bought my first gun from Darlows in Norwich and at that time my only form of transport was a push bike , with spending most of my money on a gun and what I had leftover on a box of cartridges left me with nothing to spend on such luxuries as bicycle lights , anyhow , on this particular night I was on my way home down the A47 after a blank flight and I didn't really give it thought why the lorries were  jamming on there brakes behind me and the cars flashing there lights now and again in front of me , after swearing and calling them a load of nutters under my breath a little police Panda car  pulled up behind me with his Blue light on , after he told me how dangerous it was and I was lucky not to be flattened by one of the lorries that kept braking hard he got out his note book and took my name and address , and told me to walk the rest of the way home.

After two or three weeks I forgot all about it until a official looking envelope came through my parents door with a summons to attend a juvenile court at Blofield , which was about 12 miles in the deep countryside from where we were living , at that time we were light years from having a car and the only way for me and my mother to get there was by bus , I cant remember the exact timing but the buses then were not that regular and after my mum taking a morning off from work and me a morning off from school off we went , we thought the timing was close but time the bus got there and we walked down to the court house the chap who done the paperwork informed us our case had already gone through and I got fined One pound and ten shillings , in todays money  £1.50p , which at the time our bus fare might have been more.

So by more luck than judgement that is the only time I have had to attend a court house with me being the guilty party, and from that day to this I have kept on the straight and narrow .......... with just the odd kink in it along the way