Just in Time...
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"It's that urge to catch things - I've had it since I was a small boy." Tony continues to go lobster catching on the Gower coast.
Transcript
"It started as an urge to catch things ... I've had it since a small boy ... minnows first in a flour bag net, then roach ... even gudgeon from the canal, grass snakes.
When I was older ... trout.
When the mortgage was payed off ... salmon.
My father was an expert in everything he did, and I couldn't compete with him ... but we did have one meeting point ... lobsters ... catching them by hand.
Gower, where we spent family holidays, juts out into the Bristol Channel where there is a huge rise and fall in tide. Once a month, rocks are exposed where lobsters and crabs hide.
I go down Slade Valley to the sea as excited at 60 as I was at seven. Left along the Brinks ... at Lucas point I follow a gully going out to the sea, and No-Man ... an island at low tide ... twenty foot buried at high ... barren? not a bit of it ... this is Ellis's pool ... the only lobster hole my father showed me ... there may be one at the back of the underwater ledge ... got one? ... yes ... but a bit small ... back it goes.
Here's a better haul with me looking a bit smug ... well, they're not bad, are they?
When I was a young man, my ambition was to catch a lobster to match my father's best. That big one was elusive. When was it going to come? Then, just three weeks before my father died, I caught it ... and a pool full of lobster it was too ... and I showed it to my dad.
It was as if a spell had been broken... just in time."
Tony whistling - "Ar lan y Mor"
An interview with the author
Where are you from Tony?
I'm glad that I grew up in Neath, in the fifties, next to the wild Gnoll grounds and Cefn Morfudd. That's where I spent all of my time, spare or not, until I was sixteen. I taught horticulture until I retired to the Gower coast.
What's your story about?
My story is about a lobster, and of a boy's attempts to impress his father. I wanted to show how my life has been involved with nature: catching it, photographing it and horticulture. There is a hint of competitiveness in it too, I suppose.
How did you find the workshop?
Fabulous. The nine other participants in the group were such lovely people. We were helped at every stage by a ´óÏó´«Ã½ team who were kind helpful and enthusiastic. We didn't want it to finish.
Your comments
"Great story. Hope to try my luck this summer. Hear Oxwich is a good place to start."
Ceri Griffiths formerly of Seven Sisters."A vivid short story. I have memories of my father bringing home lobsters and crabs from the Gower when I was a boy in Swansea in the 50s/60s. He would go to what I thought was his secret world, and spend afternoons in the rock pools around the Gower (he only once took me to Oxwich) - mysteriously, bringing home these wonderful creatures for our tea."
Cledwyn Davies, Salisbury, Wiltshire.
