Yesterday we returned from the coast with some shopping in the back of the car and, as we normally do, went to and fro a couple of times between the car and the house carrying the bits and pieces we picked up. It was only as the last of these short errands were completed that I glanced over to a wall at the end of the house and noticed a mountain goat standing on it. It seems likely that it had been standing there all along.
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Sean and I spent a few hours fishing Lough Guitane in County Kerry on our last fishing day together last week. Guitane is about 10 km from Killarney and, at over a mile in length, it is a reasonably big lough, though it will raise few eyebrows in the west of Ireland.
Continue readingA weird thing happened today. There was this dead rabbit lying on the ground next to the fence of our property. I noticed it as Catriona and I were walking by. And then later on, the next time I went there, it was gone.
Continue readingMy local stretch of the Guadalhorce river is now reduced to a thread and you can step right across it in places. Even where it is too wide to do this, you may be able to walk across the tops of medium size stones and get from side to side without even getting your feet wet. It is difficult to imagine, during the heat of summer, that the lower branches of bank side trees capture the debris flushed down when the river is in flood. It is now as low as I have seen it for many years.
Continue readingMore often than not Sean and I will fish together but on a couple of evenings we were joined by Sean’s son, Dan, who is serving a kind of sporadic fly fishing apprenticeship. We began each session with what has become something of a tradition – the group photograph. We fished twice and so there are two of these. Sean is unable to have a serious face and so he is the one with the strange grin. I am the one holding the camera and am usually looking a bit perplexed. Dan, posing alongside his old man and his uncle, is the only one who looks even remotely normal.
Continue readingMy brother Sean lives in Ireland just a short hop form Cork City. The city centre is situated on an Island between two channels of the River Lee and is on the doorstep of one of the largest natural harbours in the world. On an another island, this one in Cork City´s harbour, is the town of Cobh from which the ill-fated Titanic set sail in April 1912 as well as, in earlier times, many ships carrying emigrants. The locals dub the departure point for these journeys, evocatively, Heartbreak Pier.
Continue readingSomebody told me the other day that, before Kim Kardashian decides what picture most flatters her and makes it onto social media, she might go through a thousand or so pouting selfies before deciding which makes the final cut. It is evident in my own photos that I do not engage in this process of whittling down and the result is that, more often than not, I look like a complete moron. PR and I were fishing together last week and I tried to get a snap of the two of us on the river bank. We are both exceedingly cool individuals but somehow or other the photograph does not seem to reflect this reality. Not even close.
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