Category: Other bits and bobs


An Odd Thing

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports, Other bits and bobs — 6 Comments
December 21, 2015

An odd thing happened on the river yesterday when Leo and I paid it a visit. Up until this point it had been business as usual and we had managed to catch a couple of fish. Leo, over the years, has become an accomplished fisherman and he has little need for any instruction from me. We often fish a little way apart so as to allow ourselves our own “private” stretch of undisturbed water and, at the time that the odd thing happened, he was a couple of hundred metres upstream of me.

Initially I became aware of some commotion and then noticed a group of horse riders were moving downstream along the river margins. Some little way downstream of Leo they crossed the shallow river and then continued walking in my direction. Continue reading →

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Four thousand three hundred and twenty two

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December 14, 2015

One of the dafter ideas I have had in recent times is to propose a staff show to raise funds for the Red Cross. I had rather naively thought that we might get a few volunteers to come up with some acts but it seems that volunteers are thin on the ground. Nevertheless we soldiered on and put something together. My friend Dave Cale took on the music and the staff band was awesome. Apart from music the rest of the show consisted of me doing some standup.

This is not the first time I have had a crack at standup but the scarcity of other acts meant I had to do quite a lot of it – over an hour!

Thankfully it seemed to go OK and people had a good night.

For the hell of it I have included a short extract from the comedy script. The following lines are part of a dialogue between me and the priest that takes place in the confession box. I had just admitted to all kinds of inappropriate sexual fantasies involving the women in the parish.

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Fly fishing for carp – an article from Dave Felce

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October 26, 2015

Recently I got a message from another fisherman, Dave Felce, who also likes to fish for carp on the fly. Dave lives in the UK but is an occasional visitor to Spain and likes to wet a line in Extremadura whenever he can. He was kind enough to say that he enjoyed what I had written on the subject in my book and that he has a perspective on the subject of fly fishing for carp that is very similar to my own.

He included with his message an excellent article he had written on the subject and was kind enough to let me reproduce it here:

 

Continue reading →

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A moment in Morocco

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October 25, 2015

On Tuesday I spent a little while playing with plastic building blocks with a delightful young lady in Tangiers. There were about eight of us sitting around a little table building all manner of temporary structures from colourful blocks, or, in our case dismantling them. As it happens we soon discovered that our own particular aptitude was for demolition. The young lady in question would pull apart the two block structure I had assembled and then make a spectacular facial expression to indicate wonder or awe or surprise. I would mirror the expression in turn and we both spent quite a while fully immersed in this little game: assembling, dismantling and then expressing complete astonishment.

The young lady in question has Down syndrome just like all the other children in her school and I was part of a visiting group from the school where I teach. There were 25 of us in all, two teachers and 23 of our sixth form students including my daughter, Pippa. Continue reading →

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Adventures in Thailand

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports, Folks I know, Natural history, Other bits and bobs — Leave a comment
August 31, 2015

My friend Harry Abbott has fished all over the place but one of the most unusual fishing destinations has been the remote jungle rivers of Thailand. He has often told me how interesting his experiences there were, not just from a fishing point of view, but from the point of view of wildlife and culture.

He was digging around in his computer the other day and found a couple of entries from his Thailand diary and sent them over to me. They are fascinating, and  he was kind enough to let me reproduce them here together with some of the photographs he took at the same time.

Take it away Harry…… Continue reading →

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Jim Corbett´s Rifle

Filed under: Books and stuff, Natural history, Other bits and bobs — 2 Comments
August 16, 2015

When I was at the CLA gamefair in Leeds recently I had an opportunity to attend a presentation on Jim Corbett, the legendary hunter and conservationist who is remembered for killing a number of man-eating leopards and tigers in India in the early part of the last century.

This talk was given by a representative of the famous gun makers, John Rigby & Co. and, during the presentation, members of the audience were invited to hold one of the most famous sporting rifles in the world, a .275 bolt-action rifle which was presented to Corbett in 1907 for shooting the single most prolific individual man-eater in history, the Tigress of Champarat. Continue reading →

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Have you got any books on lampreys?

Filed under: Books and stuff, Folks I know, Natural history, Other bits and bobs — Leave a comment
August 3, 2015

I have just come from the CLA game fair at Harewood House, just outside Leeds, where I was signing copies of a book that has just been published. The publisher is Coch-y-bonddu books and they sell and print books on an enormous variety of subjects. If you are interested in fishing, hunting, working dogs, falconry, natural history and all kinds of “outtdoorsy” things they are the people to go to.

The company was set up by Paul Morgan with whom I have collaborated on the book over the last three years or so and Paul was at the fair accompanied by Luke Edwards, Jane Kelsall and Marion Griffiths who are part of the Coch-y-bonddu team. They were joined by Ken Callahan who is another bookseller from New England and a longtime friend of Paul Morgan. Ken has a fine beard but not a whole lot of hair north of his eyebrows and he reminded me a little of Charles Darwin. It has to be said that, coming from a biology teacher, saying that a person reminds them of Darwin is the highest form of praise. Ken seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the literature relevant to his work and no end of other things besides and was and was a pleasure to listen to. I´m sure the real Darwin would have had little to say about the shortcomings of American airline security or the worryingly reduced life expectations of professional American Football players. Continue reading →

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Me and glamorous young women

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July 11, 2015

There are not a whole lot of perks in my line of work but occasionally I get to hang out with attractive and intelligent young ladies. Before this can happen, of course, I need to be tidied up a bit myself. I am routinely fumigated, showered and put into a suit. Once a year they even parade me around in an academic gown ask me to pretend that lofty thoughts floating are around in my head.

As if! Continue reading →

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Glamping

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June 20, 2015

Camping may not seem like a particularly glamorous activity to most people. Most of the camping I used to do was on the shores of loughs. We went fishing not camping. We just slept in tents. Our camp sites were open fields. There was grass, rain, and wind and not much else. Cows would wander around and occasionally make nuisances of themselves. Once, memorably, they relieved themselves all over the sides of our tents while we were away fishing and when we eventually returned in the dark and turned in for the night we found the zips and fly sheets and guy ropes were liberally coated in cow shit.

There was certainly no glamour on those trips – that´s for sure. There were no facilities of any kind – everything you needed you brought yourself or, more often, you forgot to bring. If you wanted a shower you just stood out in the rain. It was always raining. Continue reading →

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Old Trout

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Other bits and bobs — 3 Comments
June 11, 2015

Every now and then I start out on a painting and then, for one reason or another, forget about it. I came across an old trout today that I had started a long while ago and, having a little time on my hands, I thought I might see if I could finish it off.

It is now more or less done and so I popped out a few minutes ago to take a picture of it before the evening steals too many of its colours.

Here she is. An old trout.

P1020295

 

 

 

 

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