Whiffle down the wind

Simon Garnham revisits his childhood stomping grounds in East Anglia 30 years on — but will it be as successful as the previous trip?

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Moving house is tedious, time-consuming and expensive. But it’s amazing what you find while clearing out the old place. Among game cards, wildfowling permits and diary entries I found a fading photo of two grubby-looking boys in waxed jackets and waders. Their faces are wreathed in smiles and they grasp proudly the spoils of an outing. On the back of the photo are the words: “First teal! With George (first greylag!)”

That photo was taken 30 years ago. The frozen fingers, the muddy barrels of my precious 16-bore, the dense fog and above all the rapture of accounting for three teal — yes, three! — are still vivid. The birds had seemed to skim and whistle and buzz like bullets in that November dawn.

I’m sure I missed plenty, too, but I distinctly recall stalking a huge pack and seeing two tumble to one shot as they sprang like fireworks. It still induces a shot of adrenalin. I remember the excitement of hearing a solitary greylag lost and calling as it beat its lonely way across the marsh. George found himself under it, managing to send it thumping into a creek. So began a serious case of goose fever that hasn’t been cured 30 years on. The urge to pursue sporting quarry in wild places remains unchanged.

A restless grey-brown stain filled the creeks and lapped at the saltings as once more we met on our little piece of East Anglian foreshore this month. A pale half-moon hung coldly just off the horizon. The witching hour approached. George had his outboard locked and loaded with a bag of decoys stuffed in the gunwales. Abel, his powerful Labrador, was already curled alongside, ready for our journey through a maze of creeks and across the mouth of the estuary to a hidden gutter just a few hundred yards from the site of our exertions all those years ago.