This week I am mostly reading...

Just before Christmas a slim volume dropped through the door. Crowd funded I think you call it. Well. I coughed up some pennies along with a few more to Unbound to get The Lost Diary published.

http://unbound.co.uk/books/the-lost-diary

 "Took the punt out after my meal and cruised gently into the weedbeds where lay, basking, the carp.." Yates writes in his usual languid style, and it's a world you'd like to be in for a while.

Treading similar ground (in fact probably the same foot steps) over thirty years on is this from Stuart Harris or The Sweetcorn Kid from Little Egret Press. The writing is a little  more functional than Yates to be honest, but again you can imagine being there with the green giant niblet as he soaks up the world that is according to Fennel's Priory and that is the writers gift after all.

I've got my eye on a few more Little Egret titles. Who needs the mammon of Waterstones?

Largest Bureboy (him from Peckham) searched me out this collection from Picador,which to be honest was a world away (or the other side of the Atlantic) from my usual nature led meander books which are of the Deakin and Mabey variety but so far has been a fascinating look at how the real wild west was found. Not a straight through read but a chapter snatched on the pot sort of book. Which is where in truth most of my reading gets done these days. A lovely book to hold, and already foxed looking pages. The patina of paper.....

I've also just started to read  this gem which I think was previously from Wye Valley Publishing. but out again as a paperback through Amazon. Two chapters in of 21 and it is thinking about getting into John Aston territory. That is very high company indeed. I am not surprised John Bailey is on board.

New Year approacheth so whisky and more Tom's Book calls....

Cromerama

Several days away with a large proportion of  the family over the Christmas break on the edge of the Cromer Ridge. I won't show the devastation wreaked along the sea front as it is a lot of peoples real life misery. Suffice to say, the sea can be a vicious cruel and indiscriminate force.                                

The North Sea in a calmer mode a few short days later.

Base camp , with the highest floor just below the snow line

Heavy manners reporting restriction in force so not much human interest allowed in the smuggled out footage but the boy Tonton Macoute does what everyone does when faced with a huge expanse of water and a large quantity of stones at their disposal.

Cromer sticks out a battered but resolute square jaw.Tobermory has a lot to answer for but the colour box theme does lift out of the gathering gloom quite well

Perhaps a few more boats, trailers and tractors hauled out than usual as the old bors take a break from the crab and lobster pots

Some fascinating detail can be found  amongst the assorted haulage tractors. Not so much bog shed door blue (Hats off to  The Two Terriers) as North sea tarp.
 

A little less esoteric

Abstraction

And to finish the  industro porn

Finished off with a little  light refreshment

On the Huh. From one of Norfolk's many Beestons. This one reps somewhere  in the PE32 enz but the grain is from Branthill, just above Wells I think. A little yeasty warm out of the bottle but a pleasantly satisfying accompaniment to Blackiston's rather quite good haddock and chips.

Aternative arti shlock (actually I am quite pleased with this)

The blue bottle dead centre of picture adorning the wall was probably an instailation or something

Antics

Couple of hours on the Ant at Stalham Staithe this afternoon. Mixed offering of roach, perch, ruffe and this little skimmer.

The  float  above the half sardine positioned  just at the junction of a dyke dipped and then sped back into the channel at a rate of knots, and following a game scrap this solid pike was in the net. First blood to The
Essex Scribbler poly ball.

The bringer of the big tides that have wreaked such damage glints cruelly over the marina as dusk falls

The surge.

Walcott has been ripped open by the big storm surges. I won't pick over the bones of people's real life misery but this shows just where the sea can go when it wants to:

The hard defences on the horizon did little to hold back the surge and a swathe of debris  runs all the way across the field back to those bungalows. Debris? Propane cylinders and caged water tanks lifted like bath toys. That debris had been through and came from people's houses and businesses The water had then surged along the lane to the right and the seal sanctuary so a good mile inland. Walls knocked over like lego bricks.

New dawn fades

Pre storm dawn

Sun set was a harsh affair, a real pike tooth moon and attendant dog star (or space station , I am never sure) against a cruel dark blue and low strung, vivid red streaks over the coastal bulge with the tide coming in nearly 2 hours early and already topping some areas.

Cold morning warm sky

Friday morning sunrise from the front of Bureboy Villas..wind sending clouds fairly scudding across the sky hence wavy telephone lines.

Maybe's

Usual weekend outing with littlest ones and found some maybe's..

This is a little boatyard just off the Ant. Spent half an hour yesterday listening to the Canaries managing a back to back home win and watching a chap having a bite a chuck on the whip, several nice skimmers, roach, perch and a ruffe. Sniffs of a rather decent perch as well. I think an hour  or two into dusk would be interesting. No one there this morning 

A bit further towards East Ruston saw this through the trees:

It is a syndicate I think but certainly looks nice and secluded even if just off the road.

Nothing doing

Took some of The Essex Scribbler's poly floats out on to Captains this afternoon. Spent 2  and  a half hours sheltering from the rain and not seeing the floats going away. Never mind. Here is a boring rods shot, it was all I had to look at as well.......

Postie calls..

Glorious North Norfolk morning, late autumn colour. Thought I'd stop at  a gastro barn for a coffee. It was actually very good coffee.  Table right much rumours and murmurs of (political) war* past and yet to come. I'll dine out on that spot for a while. Wont slip into the ghastly "celeb" nonsense, rather a statesman of stature. Cheese and leek pastie to go, which was also very good.
*(You simply must check out Live at the Counter Eurovision by Misty in Roots by the way)

Home then, to"postie's been"or rather left a slip that package to be picked up. Which it had been.
Never mind Lure of the Float, or The Sweetcorn Kid with their artisan offerings. Just look what
The Essex Scribbler has just made and sent me..the real deal.

Drop-offs and polyball floats. Just right for the river. Determined they will get a run out this weekend.

Shad I stay..

Dank, dark afternoon, constant drizzle but mild. Had decided I really must try some lure fishing as it is something that I rarely have done. Had bought a couple of slightly bigger shads though you'd hardly say I had an overabundant stock of lures(there's a couple more in the old Woollies bits tidy).Fox Rage, 5.5 inches, 10grm head. That's all I can remember from the packet.

Dropped in below Hautbois Bridge, on a free stretch of the Bure. River looks just about perfect at the moment. Soon remembered why I don't lure fish much. Constant casting, standing to fish and much removal of weed. Having that said that when weedless the shads look the biz on the drop with a great tail flutter. Third likely area and the rod tip bent round, just where I had expected it, under an overhang of reeds. Head shaking and twisting in the clear water but the 6/0 didn't stay in. Looked jackish. It didn't fancy another go at the shad.. Need to give the method a bit more time, more often I suppose but I wont be rushing out to spool up with braid just yet. 

Thinking that shads work best when bounced along the bottom, The puffs of silt look really good and some weed hung up won't look so out of place.  Discover Norfolk'n'Good saying just the same thing. Not sure that I would have had less interest in a couple of sardine or smelt twitched back up the margin, or back from the far shelf under a float but I would have felt wetter, hunkered down.