Big brown trout are hard to come by, or at least, I find them hard to come by. And so I am full of admiration for people who are able to catch them consistently. One person who has caught a shed load of large trout is Dennis Moss and he wrote an interesting account of one of his big fish, taken in Lough Arrow, in his book “Irish Rise”. View full article »
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Everybody knows that cool people take millions of “selfies” and send them out to their flocks of admirers. You just need to look at the Daily Mail to see that the beautiful people out there are busy taking photos of themselves and that the images they capture, which usually portray them wearing little or nothing, become instant “news.”
Inspired by the success of the celebrities in the media, I thought I might boost my own profile by posting some selfies of my own (I could become another Kardashian!)
You will be pleased and relieved to hear that I will refrain from parading in my underwear.
Check out my selfies below: View full article »
A few days ago I was out walking the dog when we came across a bunch of caterpillars crossing the road. These were processionary caterpillars and are a familiar sight in this part of the world particularly at this time of the year. They walk in a line one after another, a habit that gives them their common name. They produce a trail of pheromones but it is the hairs at the rear of the caterpillar in front provide the main stimulus for the caterpillar following behind. Even though I have seen this behavior many times I had never stopped to consider WHY they should be marching in a procession like this away from the pine trees on which they grow over the winter.
So why DID the caterpillars cross the road? View full article »
I´ll tell you a story I heard one time about a young fella at a dance. I don´t remember the details like they guy´s name but I can give you the gist of the story anyway.
It all happened back in Ireland and the dance was really a nightclub somewhere on the edge of some provincial town in Roscommon. But again, these are details.
He was infatuated with a girl but was too shy to ask her to dance. He was also one of these non-drinking types so he couldn´t just knock back a couple of pints and give himself a little Dutch courage. Anyway, after a bunch of false starts he finally managed to approach the girl and ask her if she would dance with him. View full article »
Sixteen years ago today our daughter Pippa was born. She has lived pretty much all of her life in the South of Spain but she was born in the South Island of New Zealand, half a world away.
It rained heavily on the day she was born. This was the sustained rainfall that the farmers had been waiting for and which put an end to a long period of drought. All day long, as we waited for her to put in an appearance, we watched the water streaming down the window of the delivery room while the radio broadcast interviews with jubilant farmers. It was impossible to get away from the idea that only good things could come of a day like this, and so it proved to be.
There is too much to say about Pippa to squeeze it into a space as small as this one. So I won´t even try. If you know her yourself you won´t need me to tell you what a lovely person she is. She is friendly and kind and has a heart of gold.
So I will state simply that we are all so proud of her and so delighted by the young lady she has grown to become.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY PIPPA!
Pipster
The way things work around our way is that if you don´t have internet you can´t watch the telly, or at least you can´t watch British telly. Most of the time this is no great loss but things are different during the spring when the six nations is underway and the best rugby teams in the northern hemisphere are slugging it out.
On Sunday the internet signal was on the blink and I had no way of watching the Ireland England game at home. What was more, the few guys who had been talking of meeting up to watch it over a pint called it off for one reason or another. View full article »
Last night I buried my dog Bonita between some fruit trees on our little plot of land. It was late when I started and I finished the task in moonlight.
She had died the previous night and, truthfully, had been in deteriorating health for some time. We all knew that her days were numbered.
I was probably closer to Bonita than any other dog I have owned and for many years we walked together, usually at night, for a mile or so. I don´t know how many times we did this. It must have been a thousand at least, and it occurred to me this evening that our walks, if linked end to end could take us from one end of the country to the other.
Bonita was about as white as you can imagine and she stood out even on a dark night. She was pretty fat too, to be honest and would gobble down, not only her own food, but her sister´s too if she had half a chance. Her tendency to put on weight was one of the reasons for our nightly walk.
If she was close enough to you and her legs were tucked underneath her she looked like a white cloud drifting a couple of feet above the meandering dirt track we followed.
At night you can have the campo to yourself and there is no one around to listen to you. So it was Bonita who heard many of my most private thoughts and listened to many of the songs I would be too embarrassed to sing publicly. She also listened to some comedy scripts that I was writing, some pieces of which were later performed. Nobody else has heard anything like as much as she did.
We will all miss Bonita. I was the last to see her. Her white silhouette stood in stark contrast to the dark floor at the bottom of the cubic metre of soil I had dug out for her and she was illuminated, fittingly, by the light of the moon.
Bonita
An odd thing happened this afternoon. I spent a couple of hours on the Río Grande seeing if I could catch a barbel and did catch one in the end in a rather unexpected way. View full article »
Remember Jack and the Beanstalk? This kid Jack wanders off to market to sell his cow, the only possession of any value his desperate family owns and, instead of returning with some cash for selling the thing, he returns to his distraught mother with a handful of beans. What an idiot! View full article »
The sky in not the same size everywhere. In Montana the people describe their State as “Big Sky Country” which seems only fitting in a place with a horizon broken only by the distant Rocky Mountains. I have never been to Montana but I think I would love it there with all those famous trout streams below and all that big sky above.
The sky here may not be as big as it is in Montana but it´s pretty big all the same. And sometimes it is so eye-catching that it makes you stop what you are doing and just take stock of all the drama above you. Yesterday the skyscape was so striking on the way back from the river that I stopped the short journey, not just once but twice, and stepped out of the car to take a few photographs. View full article »
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