Fellows of the Chalk

It’s quiet now. I live on the site of an old hospital; my apartment is next to the main ward. My door is open and a sea breeze is blowing in a salty, soporific scent- a mixture of sea beet from the nearby cliffs, and lavender from the gardens of Vale Square. The latter is early, but unmistakable; the Victorians planted it when they created the gardens there. They adored the idea of a sensory garden- one that engaged your nose, as well as your eyes. The whole town was built on chalk. Lavender thrives on it. It was the hottest day of the year yesterday and the resulting aroma has taken me back to those quiet, warm days when I stalked Grove Ferry for late summer perch. The countryside there had once been a giant lavender farm and the plant lingers.

But the beet brings me back to the coast; it grows all over the local chalk cliffs. I’m tired today, but I must stay awake: I’m hosting a dinner party in just a couple of hours. Thankfully, the breeze and the beet are proving an apt countermeasure to the lavender. We’re high up here, thirty seconds walk from the cliff’s edge and a view across the Channel. The chalk extends from the cliffs, and underpins this corner of Kent; the landscape is interspersed with dips and dells. Some are leftover bomb craters- the area was targeted heavily by the Luftwaffe in the last war; others are actually remnants of old chalk quarries. We lived at Nethercourt before moving and there’s a huge hole in the upper portion of the estate’s park that most take to be another wartime scar; in fact, it was the local chalk pit. At the bottom of my road, there’s a Waitrose; the building it occupies is very 1970s, but the walls that surround it are old and used to belong to the Tomson and Wotton Brewery- one of England’s oldest sites for making beer. T & W used the local water- which is full of calcium- to brew their various bitters, as does Gadds, the local successor. It lends the hops a crisp snap that isn’t possible elsewhere in the country. In fact, the Waitrose site is built atop a deep underground well, that Tomson and Wotton used to help make their beer.

The chalk lives on, and every nearby living creature thrives on it, including us. Our tap water draws on it, hence why our kettles grow so crusty. And the local wildlife seems to thrive on it. My friend Andi just moved into a flat in the centre of town; the building is set deep into the ground, and the lower apartments are surrounded by subterranean chalk; it’s very nice- many of the same flowers grow there, as grow on the coastal cliffs, and consequently, it’s often visited by the same birds and butterflies.

In the past twenty hours, I’ve encountered three fellows of the chalk, all of whom I’m rather fond. The first was the Painted Lady; they migrate and mate along the cliffs of southern England every warm season. Yesterday was exceptional for them; as I walked along the western promenade in the evening, I was hard-pressed to go five yards without bumping into one. I stalked one specimen for almost fifteen minutes before getting a picture I thought worthy of sharing with you:

I won’t photograph one until next year now. ‘Why bother?’ some might ask, seeing as I already have so many similar snaps. Well, to answer such a cynic is easy: it’s my religion. That, along with a thousand other small rituals, help me to find my place alongside my fellow creatures of the chalk, the second of whom- the linnet- I encountered soon after bidding adieu to my fair painted lady.

The linnet is no threat to a butterfly. If anything, I would theorise that their seductive song relaxes the latter and encourages it to mate. Indeed, how could it not? The song is so utterly transfixing and primal; it’s the least self-conscious call of all the animal kingdom and comes from somewhere that us humans strive but struggle to access. Here’s one I recorded down in Pegwell:

The birds were all over the hot chalk yesterday, climbing and chortling across the cliff-face in search of dandelion and dock seeds, which is the chief reason a painted lady can co-exist so peacefully with the bird- because the latter is a committed vegetarian. It’s even in their name- ‘Linaria Cannabina’: ‘linaria’ is Latin for ‘flax’, the seeds of which the birds like to plunder, in between sounding like a Victorian music box. Speaking of Victorians, I mentioned earlier that they prized a multi-sensory experience. Well, so do I, and between the beauty of the painted ladies, the song of the linnet and the scent of the cliff’s sweet honey-musk, my subconscious mind began to regress. When this happens naturally, it’s a wonderful thing. I was recently diagnosed with epilepsy and I’ve been given all kinds of advice on the importance of switching off. I try to set aside time for this, but it’s always so much the sweeter when it occurs involuntarily, à la Proust. My Combray yesterday was Pegwell; it helped that I was there already. It helped even more that at just gone eight ‘o’ clock, I was staring down into the old tidal pool where I played so often as a child. And this is where my third and final fellow of the chalk enters my recollection: the sea bass. The bass was my first fish, and a couple of hundred yards west of here, beneath the cliff-tunnel known as ‘The Chine’, I caught my first. I was not using bait, but instead a ‘spinner’- a small metal spoon that revolves as you retrieve, imitating a prey fish. For it to work well, the water must be clear, and yesterday evening- it was.

My thoughts narrowed and narrowed until I could think only of catching a bass- to boot, using the same method I used all those decades ago. The tide was on the turn, with a low water of ten to one in the next morning. I decided to go out at around eleven and fish a spot along the coast. I went home and got my lure fishing kit in order; in recent weeks, I’ve spent hours and hours thinking about doing this, but achieved nothing. Last night, in very little time at all, I set myself up for the entire season. I then took a nap, and woke up just after ten. As I walked to the bus stop, the bats were out everywhere, all over the old site; there are lots locally, thanks to a combination of Victorian rooftops and the local cliff tunnels. There is something of the bat in the bass: they’re both active at night, in the warmer months, and there’s that translucent webbing on a bass’ spiky dorsal, that so resembles a pipistrelle’s wing-span. The bus last night was full of drinkers- it’s a Bank Holiday. I was heading a little out of town, along the coast to another chalky stronghold that I sometimes visit. Bass fishermen collect secret places and alternate their visits according to a fine balance of practical consideration and abject superstition.

I keep my spots secret from other hunters, save for one chap- my friend Josh, with whom I’ve worked alongside these past eight years; as well as being a great pal, he’s also a fly fisher of prodigious talent. Prior to meeting Josh, I fly fished for trout a little, but more for coarse fish. Since, I’ve caught both pike and bass using his magnificent flies. Not to mention wild chalkstream trout. There’s little to match his fly-tying, which is on a par with the float making of Paul Cook and Andrew Field. But… When it comes to bass, I prefer to spin. It’s what I learned as a child, and objectively, I feel it gives me the most direct access to the fish. Last night, I was visiting a spot that can be awash with sand eels, rock gobies and and herring fry in a Kentish May.

As mentioned, it was hot yesterday. On a day like that, the baitfish gather around ‘bubble-ups’- small fissures in the chalk where water is released from the deep sources below; it cools the temperature and the fish enjoy drifting near to these release-points, in the same way I wallowed about my local (and highly air-conditioned) Tesco’s, earlier today. The chalk water mentioned is the same that runs underneath Thanet. I can’t say exactly where these spots are but I’m gaining in consistency; year on year, I’ve grown used to the idiosyncrasies of the various translucent fry-tribes. They never fail to gather in the same locales- some of which have no discernible features. These seemingly barren spots must have something going for them, and in the hotter weather, I suspect it’s the deep draughts of cool ground water that comes up. Rightly or wrongly, I caught three sizeable fish within twenty minutes, one of which came in at just over four pounds. I kept them all and threw the next three back, by which point my haul was hurting my back.

I descaled, gutted and cleaned my fish in a rockpool before walking most of the way back home. I got home at an atrocious hour; it’s not on, really. I’m supposed to be resting. Worse still, I immediately sent invitations out for this imminent grand dinner party. This meant making the aforementioned trip to Tesco, to buy champagne and parsley, and other bits. Champagne goes well with local bass, which tastes faintly of aniseed at this time of the year, when they feast so wildly on the local fry stocks. The vintage I purchased was ‘Tattinger Nocturne’; that latter word is such a fitting tribue for the bass, and their bat-like life.

According to the label, Tattinger does most of its grape-growing in chalk quarries; much like the local ale, the wine benefits from this and develops a crisp bouquet that is hard to match in other terroirs. I’m not supposed to drink any. I’ll cook with it, though, and pour it for others.

Perhaps I’ll sip a little, and think back to the song of those linnets, and other more essential memories.