Hazel Joe.....for ?tis my delight........."

[Traditionalist]

"..........for ?tis my delight on a shining night, in the season of the year".   Go the words of the famous old folk-song, "The Lincolnshire
Poacher".   This more or less accurately reflected my ideas of poaching at the time, and I was looking forward to it with considerable barely suppressed glee.

All very well and good, but this particular  night was not shining, it was pitch black, and it was not delightful either, it was bloody awful.  My arms were very tired, my feet were aching, as I had very foolishly decided to wear a new pair of rather cheap boots, and I already had a fair number of bruises from bumping into trees, and stumbling over roots.

The weight of the steel bucket and heavy stick in my arms seemed to increase at every step I took, and I was pretty fed up with the whole undertaking. We had been to several places already, but Joe had decided that there was no point trying them, communicated this extremely depressing knowledge to me in a hoarse whisper, and so we had marched on into the night. He as sure footed as ever, and apparently possessed of perfect night vision, while I blundered along in the dark, banging myself, and the bloody lousy bucket, on every conceivable obstruction in my path.

Every third or fourth resounding "clang" was greeted by a hissing "shhhhhhhhh......."  from the nebulous dark in front of me. He did not need his uncanny ability for disappearing, he was already absolutely invisible, just like every bloody tree and bush in the vicinity!

With the fascinating words, "We need pheasant tails", which Joe had uttered seemingly quite innocuously that morning, while we were supping tea on the terrace, this awful and seemingly unending sojourn into black despair had begun.  Young, foolish and impatient as I was, I had agreed without further ado, that we did indeed need pheasant tails.

"Have a kip", he said, "we?ll have a few tonight", and finishing his tea, retired to the caravan.

By now, I was somewhat accustomed to his ways, or so I fondly imagined, and was keyed up with excitement by the time I got home, and of course could not sleep at all. Upon my return to the caravan at nine that evening, I was surprised to see him sitting there in the fading light with a long heavy stick, and a steel bucket.  He had never used any complicated implements before, he had carried everything  in his pockets.

Unfortunately, even his capacious pockets could not conceal a steel bucket and a heavy forked stick, and the transport of these apparently essential aids, had naturally fallen to my most miserable lot.

"Bait" he said, apparently stopping and hunkering down at the same time, a fact of which I was most emphatically and forcefully apprised, as lost in contemplation of my seemingly endless misery, I walked into him, and fell over his back about three seconds later.

Joe never cursed. It was another of his peculiarities. There were certain words he simply did not use.  This was quite refreshing actually. Some of the guys I knew used words like "Fuck", and worse, at least twice in every sentence, and sometimes even more often, which often made it difficult to catch their drift.  After a while one automatically filtered it out, and more or less ceased to notice.  It was all the more surprising then to meet somebody who did not curse at all. It was also rather unsettling.

Prostrate on the ground, struggling with the bucket, and the stick, and making enough noise to wake the dead, while attempting to scramble to my feet again, it would not have surprised me at all to hear a stream of curses. But all I heard above the sound of my own clattering,  was silence, and after a few more seconds, the word "bait", although I imagined rather more forcefully this time.

Attempting to place the accursed implements in a position where I could find them again, but where I was less likely to stumble over them, no little feat considering the fact that as soon as I let go of them they became invisible, I fumbled around in my pockets for the sandwiches and tea.

Somewhat crushed, and with much of the filling pressed out, the sandwiches were not too bad. But on opening the flask, I realised with a sinking feeling what the unpleasant warm sensation on my leg had been shortly before. Oh well, it might have been worse, I could actually have wet myself, or been bleeding to death from an artery torn apart by a recalcitrant bucket.. Both thoughts which had gone through my mind at the time. It was of course only the broken flask leaking tea down my trouser leg.

"Sorry, the flask?s broken", I whispered,  completely unnecessarily, as anybody in the area would long since have been there to investigate the clanging and banging noises I had managed to generate with the bucket, the stick, and my unfortunate and severely maltreated person.

There was no reply. Feeling miserable, and actually rather hard done by, I hunkered down, and tried to enjoy my cheese and tomato sandwich,  without the tomato, which was squishing around in my pocket.

" Not far now", came a hoarse whisper from the dark after a few minutes.

Resigned to my fate, even then I was perfectly well aware that "not far" to Joe, could be anything between a hundred yards, and ten miles across country. His complete and utter disregard for time, was only exceeded by his contempt for distance.  I hoisted the bucket and the stick as quietly as possible, and attempted to orientate myself.  Listening as hard as I could, I tried to locate him.  It was hopeless, I could not hear anything at all. Not long, and a hoarse whisper from somewhere further on in the inky blackness said "You taking root?".

Feeling my way with my left hand, I followed the sound, hoping against hope that the trees might be thinning out.  After ten minutes or so the voice came again from the darkness. "Bucket", was all it said.

I squatted down, and the bucket was magically plucked from my grasp. The stick followed, and I awaited developments.   After about ten minutes, a very faint red glow could be discerned some way away.  Rather worried that I might be imagining things, I crawled towards the glow, and stopped just before I reached it.

The glow brightened somewhat, and seemed to rise into the night. Hunkered down, and looking up,  fascinated by these events, I was totally unprepared for what then occurred. A large object fell out of the blackness and hit me in the face.  My trouser leg was already wet, so at least one consequence of this event didn?t really matter, and somehow,  with either superhuman control, or perhaps just petrified with fright, I refrained from screaming, a most fortunate circumstance for which I am still eternally grateful.

"Put it in the sack", a voice said, and a rough sack was thrust into my hands. My shattered wits finally grasped that the object which had hit me in the face, was a pheasant, and that I was supposed to put it in the sack.  Groping around, I finally found it, and at the same time became aware of a most disgusting smell.

There were a couple of soft thumps, and the voice said "Come on lad, put ?em in the sack".   Crawling around completely blind, and almost sick from the smell, I managed to gather up five of the objects and stuff them in the sack.  Joe thrust several more into my hands, and then said "Let?s be gannin".

No attempt was made to burden me further, with either bucket or stick, and the sack made a fairly efficient tree buffer.  Eventually, we reached a road. I have no idea at all where, and the sky also started to lighten somewhat.

I saw the faint silhouette of Joe marching along in front of me, and ignoring the pain in my feet, my wet trousers which were chafing my leg badly, and the sack of birds, which had now become almost as large an imposition as the bloody bucket had been, I gritted my teeth and marched along.

We reached the caravan at just after seven in the morning. Seldom have I been so tired.  Joe took the sack, emptied it out on the ground, said "We?ll have a brew", and disappeared around the back of the caravan.  Absolutely knackered though I was, there was no way I was going to give in, and entering the caravan on wobbly legs, I managed to get the stove going, and finally managed to brew some tea.

Taking the mugs of tea to the terrace, it occurred to me to wonder what had happened to the bucket and stick, and handing Joe his tea, I asked him. "Stashed" was the reply, "need ?em next time". and he continued skinning the birds.

I did not write anything in my diary when I got home. I had a wash, threw my clothes in a heap in the bath, and went to bed. I slept all day and most of the night.

It was a couple of days before I visited the caravan again. I could hardly walk. My feet were a mass of broken and inflamed blisters, I had a nasty rash on my leg, and my face and hands looked as if they had been pulled through a roll of barbed wire.There were several lumps and bruises on various parts of my body, including a most remarkable egg-like formation on my forehead.

When I got to the caravan, Joe was sitting on the terrace dressing flies. He looked up briefly when I arrived and said,  "We?ll have a brew", and so I made the tea. I carried the mugs to the terrace, and sat gratefully in the old chair.  He put his gear down, picked up the mug, slurped his tea through his teeth, and stared at me over the rim of the mug. "Aye, sometimes life?s hard lad", he said.  "Lovely feathers though, here, these are yours" he continued, handing me a long thin parcel, and a large flat paper bag.  He later gave me a couple of smoked pheasants as well.  I tried a little of it later at home, but did not like it much, my family seemed to enjoy it though.

He showed me the trick in daylight sometime later.  He had several lumps of charcoal with him, some glycerine, some potassium permanganate, and some flowers of sulphur mixed with pine resin.

He had placed the charcoal in the bucket, placed a few drops of glycerine on it, and mixed in some permanganate with a stick. This had duly ignited, and set the charcoal burning.  Then he had added a handful of the sulphur/resin mixture, and lifted the bucket up with the stick so that it was immediately below the birds he knew to be roosting on the low branches. The birds were gassed, and fell out of the tree.

He had a number of buckets and sticks "stashed" at various places, which he had of course carried there in daylight. It was more or less his idea of a joke making me carry the bloody stuff over half of Yorkshire in the pitch dark. I don?t think he realised for a second what a terrible state I was in, it was just a pleasant hike through the night to get some feathers for him. Much like any normal person would go to a supermarket to get a loaf of bread or something.

It became a sort of standing joke between us, for a long time afterwards, every time he suggested a trip,  I immediately replied,  "No buckets?", to which he then also gravely replied "No buckets".

He was quite right of course, as always, they really were lovely feathers.

TL
MC

[ChildOfTheMist]

Stonkin stuff Mike - absolutely magic.

Slainte

Daibhidh

[thewaterbouys]

      Brilliant stuff Mike,best laugh i have had on a sunday morning .

                       Henry from the waterbuoys :lol: :lol:

[Traditionalist]

Thanks lads!  Pleased to hear you are enjoying them.

TL
MC