Have you heard? We´re living in a new era! It´s post-truth. Everybody´s talking about it so I guess it must be true, if anything can now be considered to be true that is.

It seems to me that truth didn´t keel over and expire suddenly. Instead, it underwent a gradual deterioration of health last year before it finally succumbed. There was no bedside vigil in the final hours and days. It was gone before anyone noticed.

Early symptoms emerged in June with Brexit. The Brexit case was famously bolstered by claims that, subsequently, did not stand up to scrutiny. And then people who ought to know what they were talking about like economists, businessmen, financial experts, educators and others were not only routinely ignored by the electorate, but condemned as interfering doom-mongerers who just wanted to spoil the party.

Why listen to an expert when you can listen to Fred Bloggs down at the Nag´s Head who will tell you that some Brussels bureaucrat has just pissed in his pint, that immigrants are queueing up outside the pub, and that every German is a Nazi?

And it that wasn´t bad enough the giant child that the Americans have decided would make a fine choice for the next leader of the free world has shown, again and again, that he doesn´t actually know what the truth is. His best guess is that it is whatever jumps into his head at that moment.

Is there an up side to any of this? I hope so – at least for us fly fishermen. Now that telling the truth is considered passé we won´t need to suffer those awkward conversations when people ask us how we got on at the river. It won´t be necessary to concede that you caught nothing, that you spooked the only decent fish you saw all day, that you hooked the tree behind you on your back cast or any of the other uncomfortable truths that may apply.

Instead you tell them whatever you want. Don´t worry, it will probably feel a little strange at first. Just remember that anything goes in our shiny new post-truth era.

Take today, I spent the day sorting out firewood for the coming months and driving down to the coast to collect my daughter – but that´s not going to stop me from claiming that today was my first trip to the river of the year. Christ, you should have seen me! I caught one fish after another.

You should have seen the size of them!

p1030057

This was the smallest one!