Fish Festival

Newhaven was a regular haunt when I was a youngster as my (older) brother and his mates were keenly into fishing off the pier, and I used to tag along occasionally, aged nine or ten. I even had a little rod, though I rarely caught anything with it. For one thing I wasn’t allowed on ‘the struts’ on the side of the pier, from where the best fishing was to be done. The most common fish caught by the others were mackerel and garfish, and I associate the taste of these fish with that period. Garfish has green bones, which is why you rarely see it in the fishmongers, even though it has a good taste.

I might go back to Newhaven this weekend, to visit its annual Fish Festival. There are all sorts of fun fairs, marching bands, arts and crafts workshops and displays from local community groups, which I will do my best to avoid. There’s an exhibition by the Newhaven Model Railway Society that I won’t attend. What I’ll do to stock up on locally caught fresh fish, (maybe they’ll have garfish) as well as checking out what’s new in the Dieppe Market, which comes to town every now and again. And I’ll take a nostalgic walk up the pier, which I haven’t been to since those fishing days, where I’ll recall with some vividness the landing of my first ever fish, a quarter-pound pollack, from the side. My brother, I remember, made me throw it back in the water. AL