My summer 1988 call for volunteers to fill the remaining place in that year’s team brought (fortunately – otherwise I might have been back in the selection match lottery situation again!) only a single response – from Mike J of our North London office. I had previously met Mike on our first Barclays Training course in London back in March 1975 and looked forward to renewing our acquaintance.
Travel arrangements had been upset again in that, since Hastings, the Chelmsford office had closed resulting in my working in Cambridge and living just outside in the village of Histon. The Eastbourne office had also closed with Ian H working ‘next door’ in Brighton while David Sh and his wife Stephanie were working in Ipswich and living just outside Stowmarket. If they achieved nothing else these moves did, at least, ensure that difficulties over expenses claims for overnight stays were unlikely to occur again! We eventually decided that Mike would pick Ian up on the way and that David and I would go together. In fact Stephanie drove David and his gear to Histon, arriving at about 8am, and then turned around and went back to Ipswich to work – about a 100 mile round trip altogether!
We set off just after 9am via the M11, M25, M4 and M5 for South Devon, fortunately just missing the worst of the M25 ‘rush hour’. We stopped for a break at Membury Services on the M4 and I got the shock of my life while waiting at the cafeteria checkout when a hand smacked down hard on my shoulder after the fashion of a policeman making a ‘collar’! When my nerves permitted I turned, expecting I know not what, only to find Colin P with an idiot grin on his face saying (as he often did), “Hello you old bugger” and adding, “You got a guilty conscience then?” Several problems in later years might have been solved then and there had I given in to my instinct to throw him through the Cafeteria window onto the M4!
Fortunately we did not see any more of him as we continued on our way and we eventually reached Kingsbridge, on the River Dart at about 1pm (I’m not sure about the exact time but the pubs were still open!). We checked in at the accommodation booked for us – The Crabshell Motel. This was somewhat more than may be expected from the word ‘Motel’ having normal Hotel dining and bar facilities – the only difference was that the rooms had to be accessed from outside, were all on the first floor and had parking spaces beneath them. A couple of hundred yards down the road was a very old Inn which we ventured into (see my comments on Hotel bars in the previous chapter!). My first sight on entering this building was Geoff T playing the fruit machine – somehow over the years this has come to signify to me that all is well with the world!
Having met up with the rest of the team and enjoyed a long, liquid lunch it was back to the Motel for a rest and some time spent sorting out fishing tackle to ensure that everyone had enough of everything.
At the evening Captain’s meeting two main decisions were made – the venue and the scoring system. Firstly we agreed that the match would be fished at Slapton Sands a few miles to the South and West of us and would not be ‘pegged’ in a formal sense. Competitors were, however, expected to fish within walking distance of the weigh in point which was set (I wonder why?!) as the car park of a nearby Pub. This meant that anyone (i.e. Paul D and his team) fishing on a ‘hotspot’ that they might have discovered some way away from this point would have their advantage countered to some extent by the lost fishing time spent getting there and back.
We agreed to try a new (for us) scoring system that was, apparently in use by the local fishing leagues. While there were still over-riding minimum size limits for all species caught, points were awarded for each fish by calculating their percentage of a published ‘specimen weight’. Thus if the specimen weight for a Cod was set at 3 lb., a fish weighing 1½ lb. would score 50 points. Each individual’s points score would therefore depend upon what species they caught rather than just the total weight of fish.
Having also sorted out the venue for the following year I rejoined my team back at the Pub we had been in at lunchtime and we wandered into the town (village?) of Kingsbridge to see what it had to offer. Our first stop was the Fish and Chip shop (no Thursday evening meal was included in our package) and I recall Ian becoming quite indignant when he could not get mushy peas with his food. It seems that people from Manchester not only expect the rest of us to like their football team but think that their strange dietary requirements should also be available nationally. Sorry Ian but as far as I am concerned you can keep both of them! The food having made us thirsty again (lets face it, on these trips even drinking made US thirsty!) we tried a few of the local taverns. With one or two exceptions I never remember the names of these pubs but I believe that it was at about the second attempt that we found one where the beer was good AND the natives were friendly so we settled in for the evening. I dimly recall that we spent a lot of the time playing darts against the regulars for drinks (a rather syrupy, strong substance called Newquay Steam Lager which came in pint bottles with a heavy wire clip holding the top on) and then walked (staggered) back to the Motel where, surprise, surprise, the bar was still open! I do not remember going to bed but I definitely woke up in one so I suppose that I must have!
After the traditional ‘Full English breakfast’ (i.e. a big, greasy fry up!) the next morning we drove to Slapton Sands which, until this important event, had only been heard of in connection with a famous 2nd World War disaster involving American troops rehearsing D-day landings. The original story was that German E-boats had got in amongst the landing craft but since the Gulf War, which occurred a couple of years after we visited Slapton, theories involving ‘friendly fire’ have abounded.
We selected a spot to fish together as a team not far from the Pub Car Park mentioned earlier and directly down the beach from the US Army memorial – a Sherman Tank mounted on a concrete base – and then collected our bait which had, for reasons that now escape me, been picked up en masse by Colin P. I recall that it was a fairly pleasant day with isolated light showers and what wind there was blowing off the land.
After my difficulties in ‘getting started’ last year I was rather anxious this time to lead by example and was, consequently, delighted when, after only an hour or so I hooked a Flounder of just under 2 lb. – about 60% of specimen weight and, therefore, worth 60 points to the team. Over the years I have found that I enjoy these matches a lot more if I can ‘get one in the bag’ early on – the thought that I am otherwise letting the team down just will not go away!
Unfortunately, after this early success and a few barely legal Whiting each, the area of beach that we had selected failed to produce any other worthwhile catches and we felt that we had no chance of a significant position in the running order. We duly weighed-in at the car park and went back to the Motel for the usual pre-dinner clean up and drinks. Having eaten (as usual, fish appeared somewhere in the menu – a fact that the less successful always attributed to one of the organisers taking the mickey!) it was time for Basil S’s annual speech and the presentation of awards. It became apparent that most teams had had an even leaner time than my colleagues and I and we finished in third place behind South East Region (formerly known as Maidstone) and, I think, East Anglia Region (ex-Norwich). While this cheered us up a lot things got better when it was announced that the points from my Flounder had resulted in my winning the trophy for ‘Best Individual Catch’ – a silver goblet now in the same sorry state as the 1986 Runners up trophy!
I was so pleased with this that I did not make any fuss on being told that while I had also caught the ‘Best Specimen Fish’ for which a one-off trophy was to be awarded, it had been decided that an individual could not win two trophies and that this was to be given to the catcher of the second best fish. With hindsight I believe that this was unfair for a number of reasons; firstly I cannot see that Paul or Colin would have put up with this arbitrary reasoning for themselves or their teams and begs the question of what would have happened if (as might normally be expected) the largest catches belonged to members of the first or second place teams. Secondly how does this leave the actual recipient of the award feeling? When asked by friends and family how he got on does he say “Well I won a trophy for best specimen fish even though it wasn’t!” or does he lie about it? If this sort of thing ever happens again I will argue about it and risk appearing ‘unsporting’!
On this comparatively high note we went our separate ways again resolving to try again next year. I took David all the way back to Stowupland on the Saturday morning and we agreed that we had all got along so well that it would be a great shame to alter the team in the future unless this should be absolutely unavoidable. To this end I later designed a ‘flowchart’ to aid team selection in future and now publish an appropriately computerised version of this as Appendix 2. This was not meant entirely seriously and was never, in fact, used. When a situation did eventually arise where more than four people wanted to fish for us I solved the problem of selection quite simply by starting a second team! I was then able to call myself “Manager” as well as “Captain” – it is rather a shame that my Bank career has not progressed so well!
