Fallon’s Angler, issue 7: It’s chalk, Jacques, but not as we know it…
After taking a break for a few issues, I’m delighted to say that I’ve just had another article published in Fallon’s Angler…
… this time revisiting (from a very different angle) a few days I spent exploring the chalkstreams of northern France last summer with Jeremy Lucas and a couple of pals from the South East Rivers Trust:
The river curves away from us in the thickets, and we struggle down to a boggy fringe of reeds. The far bank is park-like and closely mown, and while there’s something I don’t quite fancy about the bungalow in the distance, or the concentration-camp spotlights on the corners of two square ponds surrounded by chain link fences, the whole stretch is clearly marked on the map as part of the local fishing association’s beat. The bed of the river looks silty, glinting with shoals of cans and bottles that must have drifted down from Ligny. Keith, all six feet seven of him, ploughs confidently across and gives me a hand out of the water. We creep along the bank…
Editor Garrett Fallon usually asks for something in the region of 2,000 words, so I’m hugely grateful to him for letting me shoot well over that word limit in pursuit of my subject (which quite apart from spookily-familiar chalkstreams also includes dogs, war, big grayling, and some lesser-known but still scalp-tingling poetry from Robert Service).
For all the obvious benefits of social media and microblogging, most publishing formats aren’t getting any longer, and having the freedom to develop a full, polished story arc is a very real luxury for any writer. I’m probably not the only one who feels this way: in fact I’m almost certain Dom Garnett, Bruno Vincent, Chris Yates, Kevin Parr, Dexter Petley and several other contributors to this issue feel exactly the same…
Issue 7 of Fallon’s Angler is now available from the magazine’s website and a few selected outlets – if you’d like to read more, please do click here to get your copy today!
Leave a Reply