CHARACTERS I HAVE MET
by Jim Emerton
In 1965 I stayed with John Shinn, crack shot and big game hunter in Kenzie the wild goose man's houseboat moored on the Wash saltings. It was a wild, rugged and remote wilderness of tidal creeks, sea lavender and samphire. At high spring tide the boat lifted on its moorings and you were floating on the edge of the North Sea. At times like this my imagination was fired and intensified - will the moorings break and the boat float out to the eternal sea? Cooking the potatoes from the local fields was done on a parrafin stove with sea water scooped from the depths. A foggy cloud enveloped the boat and the calls of the common seals intensified in the murky dampness. At dawn the great man arrived, Mackenzie Thorpe himself - artist with Sir Peter Scott, ex-jail bird, middle-weight boxing champ, poacher and wildfowler par excellence. His eyes were deep with knowledge, face craggy with wind and salt exposure - a unique and solitary figure in this lunar landscape. John and I embraced nature full on as we learned the Wash secrets of the hoards of waders, the ducks and geese, the marsh harriers floating by and the wily marsh pheasants as they tried to evade the gun. We lived the boys' adventure tale and these essential times by the sea, sun and stars framed my life and instincts forever. Old Kenzie passed away in 1976 when the houseboat was torched by Romany tradition and John is soon to enjoy the adventure of a wild boar hunt in Turkey, hardcase that the man is.
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