Proper Space and the Farce of Artemis

Remember this?

  

Madam and myself back in the day, I’m the one on the left, sans instrument, the reason why will become clear later in the piece. 

The standard proclamation of this house to signify that we have been gadding about again in the name of living for pleasure alone since child A and Child B left home. 

Milan and Cremona this time. 

Milan because we’ve flown into it several times before heading off elsewhere and we were intrigued to see downtown. 

Cremona because a late life project was required and I’d an urge to buy a fiddle to learn a few tunes by way of preserving the grey matter. 

But first to the pods. 

We were departing from Heathrow T5 and for the first time had booked the “pod parking” An automated parking system that transfers you in space pods to the bowels of terminal Cinque. 

Along with Hover shoes, Blue Peter and possibly Tomorrow’s World predicted this kind of caper in the 1970’s. 

Well here we are. 

Ok’ we weren’t wearing the bacofoil silver onesie with calf length platform boots that Leslie Judd wore to explain the future, but we were in the future all the same. A driverless four seater pod taking us from our own outdated pod with an internal combustion engine, to space city T5. 

In your face Tim Peake and up your game Artemis II 

Pod parking at 4.30 am, you’ll never feel more alive! 

The flight went without real incident bar the burning of some solid gold aviation fuel. Landed in Linate, spent an hour passing over face and fingerprints to border control before catching the excellent Milano metro into town. 

Bags stored at a Newsagents near our AirBNB we headed off in search of sustenance and a table outside in the sunshine. Madam and myself are keen consumers of Italian food and wine so we began our quest for a table in the local environs, eschewing all the local Nona produce for a delicious chicken curry that on first sight we had down as a chicken and saffron risotto, which served as a reminder that our Italiano may be a little rusty. 

Replete with Risotto, which turned out to be a curry, it was down to the Duomo, which is massive. The largest gothic cathedral in the world according to the late Norris Mcwhirter, parts of it where unfortunately clad in scaffolding, which I’m not sure is what the Goths had in mind, but mightily impressive all the same. 

On to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle II next. The famous 19th century shopping mall stuffed with designer shops and high class restaurants with no sign of a Millets or Mountain Warehouse. There is however an ornate mosaic floor featuring a Bull whose gonads you are encouraged to stamp on if your shopping trip is to be successful.

We were billeted in an Air BNB a few minutes walk from the gargantuan Castello Storzesco. A leviathan of a fortress first chucked up in the 1400s and impregnable to all of Europe’s finest forces, until somebody forgot to lock the door one night. It is enormous and the local brick company must have done very well out of it’s construction. There is an impressive fountain out front that I imagine was a recent addition. 

We paused for a while to people watch, let another lunch go down and take in the swarms of swifts using the castle as a base. 

Up on to the ramparts next for some shady respite from bright sun that was pushing the temperature up to the mid twenties. The ramparts afford views across the city, with the gothic Duomo, Ziggurat like in the distance. 

Turning one hundred and eighty degrees, we took in the the modern city planner’s obsession with creating a “skyline”. With a nod to the 12th century Asinelli and Garisenda towers of Bologna (see previous guff) this one has been built on the wonk, who knows how the stairs work inside. 

The Florentines would never stand for this kind of modern skyline biznaz. 

Behind the castle, or North West if you’re of a navigational bent, is the magnificent Parco Sempione. Impeccably kept and well used by the Milanese, we visited over the Easter weekend which is a big time for family gatherings and, in fine weather, picnics were breaking out across the whole park. 

And then it was on to Navigli and the canal. 

Who knew? 

It’s a very old canal, and hey Tom Telford up your game. Leonardo Da Vinci was right across this kind of caper back in the day. First completed in the 12th century the canal linked Milan with the Italian lakes and Switzerland. Leonardo who invented most things in these parts, including a helicopter, last suppers, complicated staircases, spaghetti carbonara and the original C5, came up with an ingenious method in the 1400s of moving more boats up and down hills. 

After the glitz and glamour of downtown Milan it was an unexpected dose of “Boho” with an eclectic market and many book shops and well worth a ten minute ride on the excellent Milan Metro. 

At the head of the canal, which is full of fish, is a small dock. There is little boat traffic other than tourist trips and rowers/scullers, but parked up in the corner, was the mother of all weed cutting boats.

The biggest I have ever seen in freshwater. 

I immediately put in a call to my employer suggesting that this may be the way forward as opposed to my good self blundering about breathily with a blunt scythe. 

Milan done, on to the overground rails for an hour long ride to Cremona. 

A different vibe (I believe this is current parlance) to Milan. 

Very laid back with lots of old stuff having avoided the bombs of World War Two, unlike Milan. 

It’s got a very old Duomo, plus a three hundred foot tall clock tower with accompanying Baptistry. 

The town’s principle claim is violin production by some cove called Stradi Various.

 

During my recent bout of Pneumonia, high fever and sweats, a wizened musician appeared to me one afternoon and insisted that the fiddle was the way forward if redemption and possibly good health were to be restored. 

I’ve been down this road before with the guitar following a similar bout of the Screaming Oojahs when Bert Weedon came to me in a dream. 

I thought it went well and definitely had legs, but familial reviews were mixed, so after a decade the Gibson Epiphone Sheraton VSB, wah wah pedal and practise amp were traded in for items more sensible and less musical. 

Always a trier and vulnerable to visions I entered the Luthier’s den and swiftly exited stage left after being informed, following a brief try out, that I was completely unsuited to the instrument. 

Much to Madam’s relief. 

With Fiddling dreams dashed, it was in to the town. Somewhere between Winchester and Salisbury in size, it is a great place to spend a couple of days. 

Very laid back, like many Italian cities they like a tower. All of the Cremonese towers are “bob on” with no hint of a lean. Food and wine were more than fine, well it’s Italy. The weather fantastic and we met some nice fun people. 

Back on the train and metro to Linate before a flight back to our pod, where we donned our suits and helmets to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere. 

The pod’s heat shield performed as expected and we parachuted serenely down into the pod park and our rescue craft home. I didn’t expect the effects of zero gravity to have such an effect on my musculature, and it may be a while before I recover full strength and mobility. NASA reccomend a period of rest, a controlled resumption to normal duties and the purchase of a weed cutting boat, 

which I am more than happy to comply with. 

 Thanks as ever to everyone who held the fort at home with regard to The goons, the cat and the chickens.

The Lady of the Stream gets Jiggy and Monty Don's Gonads

Wehaaay! We have grayling spawning. 

No pictures available as yet but will persevere with idiot proof camera. 

I was showing another prospective rod and subsequently the latest addition to the waiting list, around one sunny afternoon last week and there were half a dozen grayling of around a pound getting jiggy on the top shallows. Completely oblivious to our obvious presence they flirted around for a good five minutes, dark fish, fins out of the water spawning in perfect conditions. 

I have been buffing up the fishing hut this afternoon and there were a similar number charging about on the shallows just upstream. For a few years we saw little spawning activity, certainly nothing like the video I took (it’s on here somewhere) around 2012 of twenty or thirty fish spawning on the shallows in front of the fishing hut. Hopefully this will continue the slow resurrection in numbers from a dearth of grayling three to four years ago. 

With the trout season fast approaching I have been attempting to engage the forces of crack willow on the far bank. They have been inaccessible for much of the winter due to a combination of depth of water and my diminutive stature (175 cm at the last count) Most of them have been conquered, but there are a few that remain protected by deep water. I made one attempt to tackle them, but with half an inch to the top of my waders and a river that is really pushing through, I sought a safe retreat. Not sure if it is my ageing frame or just a lively river but it was difficult to maintain a firm footing in fast flow and four and a half feet of water. 

It also became apparent while fiddling about in the river, just how clean the gravels are and how much silt has been sent on downstream this winter. Inevitably the river colours up when you jump in and start doing some work, but this week it has been very quick to clear once the work is done. 

Most afternoons are seeing an increasing number of olives coming off the water with several fish taking them off the top, no hawthorn yet but we’ve a few big bees undertaking slow motion bumbling about the place. No sign of any frog spawn or toad spawn yet, although we are yet to see flat adults on the lane, squashed by cars as they make their way from the bankside verge to the Millstream and river. 

They are not the only ones to be caught out by Brer Automobile. Modern cars are increasingly quiet, especially the ones that run on batteries. What impact this will have on the percentage of all species killed on the road may become apparent in the coming years. 

You may or may not recall that in 2019, I lost a lot of hearing on a flight to Toronto and must now wear expensive ear trumpets. I have one very good ear and one ear that hardly works at all. With only one ear left I have made a conscious decision to look after it and invested in an expensive pair of noise cancelling headphones to wear when working with machinery. I think I made the traffic news last year when cutting the hedge along the road. Engrossed in my work and warming to my task it may well have been half an hour before I looked around and noticed the four cars trying to get past me on the narrow lane. 

Even without my magic headphones I get caught out by the few electric cars that now inhabit the parish. Numerous times I have been walking down the road with the dogs, oblivious to the big pile of batteries slowly following me down the road. Moss and Dougal have now learnt to give me a nudge to let me know that there has been a car behind us for what may have been the last hundred yards of the walk. 

Not for no reason am I increasingly known as “The walking speed bump” 

There’s talk of an Osprey in the environs, but I’ve not seen it yet. It’s not unusual to see one at this time of the year as they make their way north, stopping off for an easy meal of chalk stream trout by way of sustenance. On our fortieth birthdays, my late employer threw a birthday party for us in the big room over the road. An Osprey turned up, perched in a long dead tree by the fishing hut before plucking a fish pushing two pound from the river. With most of the room outside of multiple glasses of champagne, it was decided that this must be a portent from a greater force and major events over the coming years would confirm this, 

or possibly we would grow wings and turn pescatarian. 

Well eighteen years on we’re still waiting, I still don’t eat much fish (Scallops, Calamari on holiday) and neither of us can fly, although we haven’t really tried of late. 

It was a good party though. 

The chalk valleys currently play host to a Capybara called Samba. Not yet seen it on the short stretch of the Itchen that I fall in and out of, but it’s been spotted south of Winchester and possibly thirty odd miles away at Stonehenge, although this may have been a sheep. It has yet to be ascertained where Samba will fit in to the fishery management hierarchy on the chalkstreams but the principle fear is that she will join the coup instigated by Brer Beaver and soon our overlords on the chalk rivers will be, with a nod to Orwell, a politburo of oversized toothy rodents. 

What times we live in, at which point I’d recommend an excellent article in The Thunderer this week by Sir Monty Don highlighting the bollocks (Monty’s words) that is the cult of rewilding, it’ll be on the internet somewhere, possibly accompanied by an AI generated picture of Sir Monty’s gonads. 

We’ve had some fine weather of late but today it turned cold with a wind from the north and tonight we are forecast another frost. All the fruit trees about the place seem to have entered a state of stasis, unsure as to whether to go yet or not, the Wisteria often gets caught out at this time of year, but the Mulberry tree knows stuff and never mistimes its run. 

Myself? I have an allotment up the road that has only just dried out. Potatoes, carrots and Broad Beans have gone in a little later than normal and I have a shed and poly tunnel at home filled with plants that will hopefully fill the freezer this summer should I get the planting out time right. This time last year we had a very late frost towards the end of April that did for my runner beans, although returns of other fruit were the best for many years. The warm weather stuff did well, I froze seventy kilos of plum tomatoes and had oodles of peppers, cucumbers and chillis. Sweetcorn also very good although peas, runner beans and potatoes not so in the dry conditions and lettuce (forellenschluss – Speckled like a Trout, a spectacular Romaine variety) quick to go to seed. 

Peppers by the way, don’t pay a small fortune for a packet of eight seeds from the garden centre, just pick a pretty pointy pepper from Aldi, dry out the seeds and sow. Works every time, a hundred or more plants and loads of fruit. 

Anyway, where was I? 

Oh yes, Horticultural jeopardy at this time of year. It’s the clocks that do it, plus the gardening frenzy over the Easter break. As soon as the the evenings get longer the barbecue and benches come out and hey geraniums and other tender annuals come on, get out and get with the beat. 

Last year I was caught out by a couple of devastating late frosts and this year am proceeding with caution rather than pressing on regardless at the first hint of sunshine, although the first sign of asparagus spears on the crowns under glass make it difficult to resist embracing a frost free period, however brief.

Plague, Pike and an Imminent New Arrival

Apologies, not another hiatus but a brief period of the plague.

 

Two and a bit weeks ago I started to go a bit funny, had a body temperature of thirty nine and a half degrees and briefly spoke in tongues. After a forty eight hour period of coughing and struggling to breath properly, Madam contacted NHS111 online and an hour later I was on the phone to a medico. The conclusion drawn was that I should proceed to Winchester hospital where, after a series of tests – blood oxygen level – 90%, raised heart rate and blood pressure and a body temperature that was still on the high side, the diagnosis was pronounced as Pneumonia. 

Big bits of antibiotics were prescribed and after a few days of coughing up blood the pills kicked in and I am now firmly on the mend and undertaking lightish duties. 

For most of the time I spent in bed or in the chair (The Cheltenham Festival helped), the weather remained fairly dry and the river is now back within its banks and the whole place is starting to dry out. We had three mornings of frost towards the end of last week that put a pause on some of the buds that seemed to be in a rush to break, but overall you can sense the sparkle that comes with the onset of early spring. 

In the river there is no sign yet of any Grayling spawning. Conditions are perfect with plenty of water on clean gravels and ranunculus beginning to push on through. The general consensus from those who have fished here for grayling for some years is that numbers are recovering from a few years ago when they were decidedly thin on the ground. Several large fish were present throughout last summer, but no sign of them on the shallows just yet. 

There are signs of a few pike nosing around the entrance to a couple of spring holes. Regular spawning spots, the pike are mostly small jacks, probably males waiting for a larger female to enter stage left.

The coarse fishing season on this river has now closed, but a productive tactic in the last few weeks of the season when spinning for pike is if a jack is hooked, keep chucking your spinner or wobbly sprat back into the same hole until you hook the larger female that is drawing the attention of the amorous jacks. Child B and his mate when spinning on the middle Test in their teenage years pulled three jacks between two and four pound from a hole under a larger chestnut tree, before latching on to a large female a shade under twenty pounds from the same hole. 

All pike are returned now as, like many species, their numbers have taken a hit from good old Tarka, but a decade or more ago, a local French restaurant of some renown, would take smaller pike for a particular fish cake recipe whose name I forget.  Germaine the proprietor insisted that chalk stream pike have a superior flavour to any other pike due to the purity of chalkstream water. 

I shall back up this theory with a story about my Dad who once caught a largish pike from a lake next to the Rugby Cement works. In different times, it was banged on the head and taken home to provide sustenance for his family. I didn’t try it but both my Mum and Dad insisted that it tasted of cement. 

During the ten years or so when we travelled extensively in France in pursuit of coarse fish various in many different rivers, the locals would invariably hammer the pike and zander for some such recipe or other, and when I fished the Shannon (Lough Ree, Lough Derg) in the eighties there were several parties of Germans filling their car boots with pike to take back to Westfalia and other teutonic parts.

This seems to have drifted off into a reverie on Esox Lucius, so I shall conclude with the recent popularity for fishing for chalkstream pike on the fly. I’ve had a go here a few times, but our pike don’t reach much of a size. On the middle and lower river fish have been taken to over thirty pounds. It’s a clunky cast with a wire trace and large pike fly that threatens to pierce ears or wherever else you choose to take your peircings, but great fun on a 9ft 8wt single handed fly rod. 

Pike done! 

We are now four weeks away from the start of the Trout season on this stretch of the Dever. For much of January and February I was preoccupied with wet weather jobs, keeping away from the riverbank to avoid making a muddy mess. With the river now a little less angry I can begin to think about some of the crack willow on the non fishing bank that needs attending to and I also suspect that the ranunculus will need a trim before the start of the season, a sign that we have received a reasonable amount of winter rain. 

A dry day or a brief period of sunshine brings out a few olives in the afternoon and fish are beginning to look up. We have a lot of trout in the river that have had a proper winter workout in the high water and will be fit and raring to go at the beginning of the season. Before Christmas we had a few vacancies for syndicate places, but these have now all been filled and we are in the fortunate position of once again having a waiting list for rods. 

Oh yes, I turned fifty eight this week. Not sure how that happened and what with some of the capers over the years (a lot of them chainsaw based) I’m pleased to have made it this far. 

I have just completed thirty four years falling in and out of this stretch of the Dever and in early August it will be forty years since I left the North West to work on the southern chalkstreams. Several of my contemporaries have either retired or are on the cusp of retirement, mostly due to the physical nature of the work. I ache a lot, am no longer as quick across the ground as I used to be and can’t lift as much as I used to, add into that recent health issues(recalcitrant back, bursitis in both elbows, psoriasis plus recent respiratory events) and it does cross your mind that it may be time for a life on easy street with biscuit wheels. 

Ok sums must be done and the prospect of a managed decline with fewer hours does appeal, but the breaking buds, the clearing river, the increasing presence of fly and the imminent arrival of another season of trout fishermen leads me to conclude – Nope, not just yet.

 

Oh yes, in other news. Child A and her husband are expecting a baby in September, 

Madam and myself are over the moon and to paraphrase the Iron Lady “We are soon to become a Grandmother”

Water Water, Celine Dion and a Boy with Heavy Bones

Erm, what to write? 

Apologies, did I say that out loud? 

Well you can see by the photos that it has been raining a lot, with the sun seemingly on a sabbatical. It’s quite remarkable (After David Coleman) that having endured the lowest river levels in recent memory less than five months ago, we are now where we are with Spring Bottom bursting forth and decidedly soggy river banks.

Increasing extremes in climate are undoubtedly a thing and could I encourage all who encounter a “flatearther” who suggests otherwise, to flick them on their nose, clap them round the ears and call them out for having self interest in denying what is plain for even the most addled eye to see. 

I’m not complaining about the rain, although a little more sunshine may help with the onset of grey sky induced melancholy. The river is bank high, with gravels that stood proud of the water in November, sparkling and silt free now under many inches of water. It all looks good for the impending trout season, but prospects didn’t look half bad this time last year and then the water went away at an alarming rate to leave little left by the end of June. 

Conditions have affected normal work at this time of the year. I have trees to attend to in the wood and the forces of bankside crack willow need to be confronted, but currently I have to limit my movements in the tractor and most of the errant bankside willow hangs over water that is currently unwadeable. 

Another bridge has been buffed up and taken off the endangered list and I have been planking up some beech that Lord Ludgershall and myself dragged up the road quite a few years back for more seat tops. The beech has some beautiful markings that are enhanced when they are wet. 

The bar in The Swan in Barton Stacey is made from a beech that toppled over on the back track two decades or more ago. I know this because I helped to get it out and it was heavy. The markings are also enhanced if you spill your pint on it. 

I’ve also started on a large field maple trunk. Inch and a quarter thick planks about six foot long. It too came came from along the back track just along from The Andyke and I remember dragging it home with the tractor because I couldn’t get it up into the trailer. It seems well seasoned and is also beautifully marked, although very different to the beech. 

To the best of my knowledge, and over the years I have conducted extensive research, there are no bars in the surrounding valley made from field maple. 

Oh yes, as promised, this is Dougal. A work in progress and one year old, he thinks like no Labrador we have ever had before. More news as we have it. 

We’re also back in the poultry game. Three Light Sussex and three Bluebells. They have settled in very well and like all of our previous flocks are very sociable and slowly starting to produce results/eggs.

This is head hen, and very much the leader on their expeditions about the place. Previously when we have had chooks sans cock, a head hen has assumed control and even attempted the odd “cock a doodle doo” although no tune of any merit emanating from this one as yet.

Looking back on previous guff in an attempt rediscover the person I once was, I find that we used to gad about quite a bit. I won’t go into the fine details of where we went during my self imposed hiatus from chucking up guff, but from memory we’ve been in Malta and Gozo, Brussels, Dubrovnik, Montreal, Zurich, Lucerne, Sicily, Bath, Basingstoke several Test matches and the shop. 

In the words of Celine Dion, who we may or may not have bumped into in Switzerland, It’s all coming back to me now. 

Returning to the river and all it’s water. This is the water meadow upstream from here that is doing just what it should be doing at this time of the year. 

This is the winter bourne that carries Spring Bottom’s contribution to the river flow. It runs through the village and along with the spawn of Spring Bottom’s loins it carries much of the direct run off from the roads on the south side of Barton Stacey, which can be quite a bit. Anything on the road or chucked down a drain or placed in the bourne ditch when it is dry, ends up in the river. 

Just sayin folks.

There’s a similar stream that runs through the village in Easton that empties into the short stretch of the Itchen that I fall in and out of (yes, I’m still doing that too) that gets a bit “foamy” at times.

In trout news, we had plenty of redds in the river as it began to rise before Christmas and on the grayling front numbers seem to be on the increase following a steep decline in numbers in the past ten years. We continue to play host to teams of Tarka, who did not play a fair game during the high heat and low levels of last summer. Cormorants are increasingly present, although this may be due to easier fishing in the deeper water. They don’t normally stop off here, seeking out easier fishing elsewhere in the valley. 

I don’t think there’s much else. Madam is still employed at the local primary School, where she has now clocked up 26 years (how did that happen??) Child A and her husband (Wedding was three and a bit years ago?????) have sold their place in Kingsclere and moved just up the road to Overton where they have many friends, and Child B has bought a flat in Putney and lives with his musical partner and harbors hopes of a career in rowing. It’s not going to happen, he isn’t buoyant and has always sunk like a stone when introduced to water. 

Today the sun came out for five minutes to reveal the first hint of cherry blossom that had been hidden by the grey and the gloom of recent days. It always goes early this cherry but normally takes silver medal to a nearby Almond. The daffodils are also having a go despite the abundance of the old eau and we have wild garlic/ramsens starting to put in an appearance, which makes it hard to believe it's still January.   It's February - Ed