fishydreams

A little while ago Harry Abbott and I made a little deal. Harry suggested he would trade a float tube for a couple of watercolour paintings and that was cool with me. I happen to be the owner of a float tube already but having an extra one would mean that I could go off fishing with a mate, rather than on my own, which can be nice. Harry and I have fished together like this many times and we have always enjoyed ourselves.

The deal, as first suggested, was to barter the tube for a couple of paintings, one of a trout and the other of a gypsy barbel. But things didn´t pan out exactly that way. As I was showing Harry a few paintings from which to choose his favourite trout, Harry´s eye became fixed on a painting of a black bass.

I could tell straight away that something was up. His lip started quivering and his jaw dropped a little. I knew what was happening. He was getting bass fever.

Bass fishermen have this look which is hard to mistake for anything else. There are probably photographs of faces like this in textbooks on psychoanalysis and personality disorders. Their faces become progressively more contorted, and then the subjects begin to salivate uncontrollably and their mutterings become impossible to understand.

My teenage daughter Pippa was with me when this happened and I didn´t want Harry´s condition to deteriorate any further. She would probably find the seizures upsetting and it would be hard for me to explain why a grown man should cry like a baby. Black bass just do this to certain people. How can I explain that? It would have been exactly the same for me.

Anyway, I told Harry he could have the bass too and, thankfully, there was an immediate recovery. Harry and I have caught a lot of these things together over the years and I knew he was a man who would appreciate it.

It was really nice to meet up with Harry and Amy last week when this little exchange took place. They live in the UK now and so we don´t see each other so often. Their visit couldn´t have come at a better time because Pippa and I had just seen Leo off at Málaga station and were feeling somewhat deflated. Catriona was taking him off to University in York. People tell me that it is quite a jolt when your offspring leave the nest and it is quite true. Thankfully Harry and Amy helped us to take our minds off this for a little while.

Here are a few pictures to celebrate the occasion.

Here´s me with the float tube and Harry with a gypsy barbel.

And the trout!

The black bass painting.