Trott, 2012 Not Out!

Much of this week has been spent in palls of smoke as the neighbouring estate burns unharvested fields of linseed. It all went a bit flat in the early summer rain and would have been a slow job with the combine, but if they had needed it, they would have got it in somehow, Linseed fetches between £300 and £400 a tonne through the winter and up until a few years ago there was a substantial subsidy for growing the stuff. I guess the sums were done by a Barley Baron in a land far far away and an assessment made of the potential yield, the thumb pointed down and the field set alight, modern farming, it’s a funny old game! Linseed is an odd grain , pretty blue flowers on thin spindly stalks that occasionally catch fire during harvest turn into flat shiny grains that, sans spectacles, look like an undernourished tick. As a student I worked the corn cart for four summers on an estate on the middle river. For two summers they grew a few hundred acres of linseed that cut beautifully in the sunshine but was a bugger to cut on an overcast day. The trailer load of linseed acts more like water than wheat, slopping around on every corner and refusing to go up in a heap., jump in a bin full of wheat or barley and you will sink in to your ankle, jump in bin full of linseed and you just keep on going down.

On the river fishing has tailed off a tad, a few fish are entertaining carnal thoughts but a significant number give the impression that they may be vaguely interested in surface food. The influx of extra water early in the summer has kept the river in good condition for much of the season and the fish have responded accordingly, far fewer Brown Trout have sulked and skulked during recent weeks compared to the low flows of the last two seasons when most Browns in the river have tucked themselves away from mid July onwards, fewer fish have been caught on a nymph this season and most rods have found a rising fish somewhere, but many of these late season fish have been around the block and in cricketing terms with the end of season approaching are looking to protect their average with a few “not outs” . One fish, twenty yards below the fishing hut I have named Trott. An idiosyncratic fish she has remained on the same station since early April unfussed by the Grayling Roach, Pike and Perch that occupy the same hole. There is nothing flashy about her rise but it gets the job done, returning religiously to the same station, scratching her crease to prepare for the next fly that the river will deliver be it in one minute or one hour. She has had all manner of things thrown at her throughout the summer all of which have been met with a dead bat, she has got bigger and bigger and after a couple of seasons in the river is now around five pounds. Earlier in the season she had a partner of similar seniority on a neighbouring station who I shall call Kevin, after a promising start to the season in which he showed great discipline through a surfeit of Hawthorn and Mayfly he fell to the first flashy nymph that was twitched past his nose; Kevin is now exploring new career opportunities at the smoker. Barring injury during the close season Trott will be in the same spot next year, bigger wiser and a prize catch/wicket for someone cute enough to catch him out. There’s also a fish I call Ian who is the best looking fish in the river who plucks flies from the surface with perfect timing but has been hooked and lost a few times when concentration has been lost.

Chalk stream Brown Trout are batsmen and once their eye is in, they often stay in. The angler is the bowler, some days rewarded by a consistent line on off stump with the fiftieth ball/cast finding success, on other days variety is the key, mixing up deliveries or going through the fly box in order to achieve success. On other days the bowler is removed from the attack only for the next bowler/angler to reap the rewards, often with their first ball/cast.

Hatches of medium Olives from late morning on have been reasonable as have the numbers of Blue Winged Olive who continue to take five in various parts of our house. As is often the case at this time of year a cool zephyr results in a procession of micro flotsam and jetsam taking the racing line through the river, much of which has blown off fading bankside trees, caught in amongst are small terrestrial bugs and beasties that draw the interest of feeding trout, look in a Yankee fly box and there will be all manner of patterns to cover such a situation and much more besides, but here small and black normally suffice.

The two parliamentary figures enjoyed their day, the outgoing chairman of the cross party committee for angling was indeed a keen coarse angler and duly swooned at our Roach, the present incumbent of the position proved a more than competent fisher with oodles of fly fishing experience and will undoubtedly go far in the house.

The evenings are now turning cooler and one morning this week we had a few small patches of frost in pockets up the river.
I have had some very kind invitations to fish in various places, a weekend on the Wye, bothering Barbel with a twenty four hour bankside festival of meat was declined due to a University open day for child B, and work commitments prevented a trip with a fly rod to the Kennet. I am however looking forward to day on the lower Itchen in pursuit of autumn Salmon. I haven’t visited the stretch of river for many years but do remember seeing almost every freshwater fish under the sun bar a Salmon the last time I was down there.

Unfortunately, for reasons beyond our control we will not be having our usual shooting days this year. The “circumstances beyond our control” bit was a tad surprising as the whole shebang was always under threat from inept keepering. It’s been a bit like an episode of Dallas in tweed but following “circumstances etc” we no longer have the ground on which we used to shoot. We will still have a few bumbles up and down the valley with the usual suspects in line to worry the local wildlife, but the jolly days of driving Partridge and Pheasant from our strips of maize and an Iron Age defence ditch will not be happening this year, which is a shame.

Returning to cricket, the club with which I and other members of my family are involved received the most votes in the Lloyds Bank Community fund awards and the 1st prize of £5000 has been splurged on an artificial wicket, which will be installed at the end of the month. If you were able to cast a vote in our direction, thank you very much!

Plenty of Pears, but where are the Apples?

A quick scan of the fishing records past and present reveal that August fishing on this river was the most productive for many years. Last year and the year before that, most Brown Trout took on a dark torpor and remained soporific, sulking on the bottom refusing to budge. This past month many fish have been up on the fin and fewer anglers have found it necessary to resort to a nymph. This week the evenings have a fresher feel and most fish have been caught during the afternoon when there has been a trickle of all sorts of Olives coming off the water with the number of sedges flittimg about increasing as the afternoon progresses. Lying in the bath the other night with the window open, as is my wont, I was joined by two types of voyeuristic sedge and a Blue Winged Olive, that took five on the wall by the loo.

The river has dropped a little during the past few weeks and there is very little water flowing down the Millstream, all the water is flowing down the main river in an attempt to limit the impact of the blanket weed that has bloomed in the past fortnight,

smothering water celery and ranunculus in some places. The water is crystal clear and the Grayling and Roach are fat and in peak condition, both have been feeding hard sub surface, the Roach in particular taking advantage of the cover of ribbon weed to pick dainties from the bed of the river. On the Itchen the weed growth is prolific and spikes of ribbon weed have once again broken the surface, fish have been caught throughout the month and seem to show at similar times of the day to the Dever, every month it has been necessary to hit the weed hard in an attempt to get the river back within its banks but there are still some squashy places on the fishing bank and wellies remain

the footwear of first choice for the September angler. While cutting weed in the top pool of the stretch of the Itchen I saw half a dozen enormous Grayling, long and chunky, they looked well over three pound and are possibly the big fish I saw spawning above the bridge earlier in the year. On the Dever we have few fish over two pound but nothing like these monsters in the Itchen. The Brown Trout are showing few signs of their minds turning to all things carnal and the majority continue to feed happily at some point or other during the day.

We have a few ducks coming in to the pond, but not huge numbers. The Phragmites in and around the pond has experienced a bumper year for growth, and is almost impenetrable, there could be anything lurking amongst the leggy stems and the Bittern will certainly enjoy the cover should he return this winter. Some of the Phragmites will have to be cut back early to aid picking up following duck flighting. Most of the reed beds that were burnt off in March are in a similar state of luxuriance following the summer rain and provide thick cover for the Pheasants along the river valley that will provide a stiff challenge for the best Spaniel on shoot day.

Fruit’s a bit of a worry and the neighbourhood is almost void of apples, plenty of pears and plums, but the apple trees around here are almost bare. Even the two megalithic Bramleys that could have tempted Eve aeons ago, that regularly yield trailer loads of big shiny apples have only a few dozen fruit. The vine in my garden is in a similar state and we shall miss a garden full of inebriated birds at the end of October. Drunk on over-ripe grapes,Blackbird wars have often broken out mid afternoon once the clocks have gone back, this year abstinence will probably do them good.

I have received several kind invitations to fish this past week and have a day on the lower Itchen and the Kennet lined up for later this month. I did have another offer of a day on the Kennet but had to decline as the arrival of the past and present chairman of the "all party parliamentary group for angling" is imminent plus I had a holiday’s worth of grass cutting and strimming to catch up on. The past Chairman purports to be a keen Coarse angler so it will be interesting to see if he has head turned by our Roach and Perch.

One invitation I did take up was a visit to some lakes on the middle river for some fishing with friends and fellow keepers. I completely forgot to take any tackle but remembered the all important beer. A jolly day, in great surroundings, food and company were excellent, even the rice, which chef worried over for hours.

A Cricketer's appeal

The local village cricket club in the neighbouring village of Longparish with which most of my family seem to be involved, is one of four finalists in the Lloyds Bank Community Fund awards which, in the grand manner of all things “X Factor” is decided by public vote. The two causes who receive the most votes will each be awarded £5000. If successful the money will be used by the club to part fund the installation of an artificial wicket, and not needlessly squandered on a media centre with sky tv and a fridge full of cold cuts and beer. An artificial wicket will principally be used by the Junior sides, their season is short and for the past two years has been devastated by the weather. An artificial wicket would mean that fewer games and coaching sessions would be lost to the weather and provide a true, even and safe surface on which to learn the game. With just over 24 hours to go Longparish Cricket club lie third in the voting with around 800 votes which is 26% of the total. Second place and the award of £5000 could be decided by as few as a dozen votes, hence this begging appeal which I promise not to repeat.

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Voting ends at midnight on Saturday 9th September

Mythos, the saviour of Greece

Following recent concerns over Olympic legacy, We have just returned from a seven day fact finding mission to a far flung corner of Greece to see how things have progressed since they hosted the games in 2004. Well that’s what I put in the expenses claim that is currently winging its way to Lord Coe and his crew. Realistically it was the only place that could accommodate us for a seven day period sandwiched between the end of the cricket season, the start of the school and college year, the August weed cut and the onset of the duck shooting season. The Canary islands seemed to be on fire so we

opted for Lefkada an island up from Corfu and Kaphalonia that statistically is due some major seismic activity any minute now. We travelled with five teenagers which may

not quite equate to the impact of the 2003 earthquake that toppled most of the buildings in the island's capital Lefkas but threatened to come quite close. Unsure of the currency of first choice we left the currency exchange to the last minute opting for Euros but keeping a few pounds in reserve and a handful of drachma retained from a student trip to Crete many years ago when I had a fringe and before my chest had slipped.

Most places were booked up, beaches, bars and boats were all busy, business looked good , the favourable exchange rate with the pound to euro made living fairly cheap and easy with a half decent dinner with wine of sorts and beer costing around sixty pound. A seven seat dory could be hired for seventy five pound including a day’s fuel and a quad bike for a day whizzing around the mountains, thirty five pound.

Kafeneion culture was very much to the fore as it has been for centuries, discussion was often heated and one can only guess at the subjects, with tourist trade good and most in the town gainfully employed in one form or another, events at central command over the past decade must be high on the list for discussion. Why were the books cooked in 2001 to allow Greece into the European union and the subsequent over borrowing to fund massive infrastructure projects, services and public sector wages? The Greek government has a history of wanting to “treat its people well” and with good cause, the country took a bit of a hammering in the middle of the past century, the brutality of civil and world wars, famine and earthquake all live long in the memory of many Greeks, but the six year splurge on easy EU credit did the everyday Stavros a disservice

Following the election in 2009 it became clear that the Greek government had been a little lenient with the truth as to their true financial position on entry to the EU in 2001 and also during the years that followed and once a clearer picture of their financial position was established the roof fell in on the economy. A huge burden of debt must now be repaid by your average Costas and Sophie, and not by the third rate politicians who ran the country during the early part of this century that included the Olympic games of 2004. The games of 2004 are still seen as a positive thing by most Greeks but their legacy is a host of dilapidated stadia and a crumbling sporting infrastructure, crippling national debt and some pleasant accommodation for the third rate politicians in the cool of the hills.

But that’s enough politics. A fishing rod crept into the suitcase, a six piece eight foot spinning rod that was put to use in the harbour to winkle out small bass and bream on float fished bread on a size sixteen hook to four pound line; double maggot would have cleaned up as it does on the cob at Lyme Regis were the bites were also hard to hit. Many of the locals legered with smnall baits thirty yards from the shore but didn't seem to be faring any better, one chap fished every day with his pet cat.

Ten minutes spinning from the boat with a two inch toby while the youth of today snorkelled nearby produced a long beige coloured fish with paddles for pectorals that I have yet to identify, and a slow troll back to base, produced a bend in the rod and a snapped line a hundred yards from the shore. Next time I may sneak a fly rod in as I am sure I can get away with fewer clothes; extensive shufties with the snorkel suggested that some of the quieter coves that we visited in the boat may well have produced some decent sport.

In town the Yia Yia’s were out, black clothed matriarchs who sat in judgement in shops and cafes holding their own discussion on the state of play. One dispensed delicious home-made Feta and Tzatziki from buckets at the back of one shop with a scowl that should have been squeezed out of her at sales school.

Teenagers proved good company and provided humourous tales of their midnight adventures including being coaxed into a nightclub for a knock down fee of ten euro only to sit through two hours of Greek stand up comedy..............in greek,
the expensive drinks didn’t help the evening along but they remained in attendance for several hours in order to get full value for their entrance money even though they didn’t understand a word that was said throughout the show.

Aquaculture is huge in the region with cages full of farmed bass and bream in the sheltered coves around the island, 40% of the world’s farmed bass and bream are produced in Greece, with Italy and Spain the principle markets followed by the UK and Germany.

The islands lend themselves perfectly to the production of these two species and several techniques in their production have been pioneered in Greece. There may also be money to be made in medical tourism as we caught sight of two ladies studying the menu outside the medical centre although we couldn't pick out hip and knee replacements among the starters.

The big mystery for me is Mythos, the leading Hellenic beer, and why it is not a world-wide brand. Sustained consumption has failed to deter me from the view that Mythos is good stuff, I even snuck a bottle home to drink in the rain away from the golden glow of a greek holiday and it still tastes good. It may be a subsiduary of Carlsberg, but it’s brewed in Thessalonkia,

I have yet to hear a bad review and half of Europe associates the brand with Greece. A marketing campaign with Greece’s most famous son Homer should set the country back on it’s feet, that or change the brand name to Duffos and incorporate the second most famous Homer to push the product.

River stuff to follow, mentally I’m still on the beach..... it was that good!

Gold for Yorkshire! and it's all down to uncovered pitches

Mid August and the footwear of first choice for the angler is wellingtons, it hasn’t been like this for years, this time last year you could have fished all day in blue suede shoes without a mark on the upper on departing the river. The river has continued to creep up as the increased ground water flow kicks in, weed is having the time of its life causing the river to once again breach its banks. For the third time this year I will be cutting weed this month with an eye to getting rid of water rather than

holding it up. Fishing continues to be productive with most fish playing ball and very few sulking on the bottom. Sedge fishing has been particularly good and fish have been caught at all hours of the day. We have had few "Daddy" days and Greenwell's Glory has caught more fish in the afternoon than for many years. It’s August Jim, but not as we know it.......or have known it for some years.

Up until recently kingfishers had been having a high time of it in these parts. Two pairs nested and adults and juveniles feast on the thousands of Minnows in the Millstream and Silverfish fry in the margins of the pond. Unfortunately one flew into our window and broke its beak. This has happened once before to a bird who thought he could fly through our kitchen, the children were young at the time and they were

having fish fingers for tea , but I think he could see right through to the garden beyond and may have been taking evasive action from another aggressive Kingfisher, seeking out a narrow tunnel to shake off his pursuer as they do below low hanging trees on the Millstream.

Moorhens are going through the motions of bringing off another brood, and we have a few ducks about that flit from an evening on the barley stubble to a night on the pond. The valley has been full of geese for much of the year and both Greylags and Canadas have also sampled the stubble.

The chubby Bream in the pond are quite a bit bigger than I initially thought, on a warm afternoon a shoal of twenty basked in the sun a few inches below the surface, out of character for the brainless bream they were no doubt urged by the canny carp to give it a go the smallest was around five pound andthe biggest pushing nine.

Many of the past days have passed with my earphones in listening to the Olympics. Coffee, tea and lunch all fitted around finals, a fantastic fortnight that exceeded all expectations (the Olympics not my recent work on the river) Steve Redgrave has once again starred, many a time the camera panned across to him and he was in the arms of a young female rower or bending down sorting out his water. Most anglers want an update on the day’s action that they are missing and with a strong Yorkshire showing in the medal table, how long before Geoffrey Boycott rocks up on the pundit’s couch to proffer opinion on the latest synchronised swimming oor taekwondo, with all success atributed to uncovered pitches no doubt! As Yorkshire have claimed more gold than Australia he could be unbearable during the final Test against South Africa. Jessica Ennis is odds on to be Strictly Come dancing Champion sometime in the near future although the Taekwondo medallist Jade james should get top marks in the Argentine Tango if she doesn't have Anton's eye out!

At the London 2012 fifteen shooting medals were on offer and good old Pigeon Pete, fresh from the farm, kept his cool to pick up a well deserved gold, so why no fishing? There is plenty of competitive fishing, coarse, game and sea all have competition at a local, national and international level. Casting competitions would be what skeet shooting is to pigeon shooting. Sky sports put on “Fish O mania” each year where anglers fish in a perfectly round lake where all swims are equal to present equal conditions for all competitors. It's not for me and the presence of a sky camera team at each peg must make the fishing a tad tedious but it does make for equal competition. Coars fishing matchesare more often than not influenced by the luck of the draw. As a youngster I fished for a few years in a junior winter league on the river Dee, most matches were won from the same dozen pegs, if you were lucky enough to draw “ the slab” or somewhere thereabouts you could trot a single maggot six feet below a stick float and bang out a couple of pound of dace to win the match. If the slab was not yours for the day it was feeder fishing for three or four fish and a section win.
Since La Tour and all things Velodrome, the lanes around here are littered with loons in lycra sold the cyclo dream by Wiggo et al, If Norman Thelwell still stalked the valley and had chosen bikes over horses he'd have a lifetime's subject matter. Other sports may follow suit, and I keep a keen eye out for sculls on the river and archers in the wood, but would a gold medal from an Olympic fishing competition have a similar effect on the number of people getting their rods out?

When woody debris goes bad

If anyone from flood defence would like the contact details of those who implored us all to fling bits of wood into the rivers of these Isles in a National Angling publication just to see what happens, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thankfully most ignored the advice in these environs else we’d have had a huge pile up of timber in front of the hatch in the house causing havoc for much of this past week. Done well woody debris works, done badly it causes damage. I’ve said it before but two thousand words urging everyone to “have a go” and see what happens was irresponsible advice from those who proclaim themselves experts in the field.

I have seen various examples of its use in recent times, both effective and ineffective. A consultation that incurred a bill running well into three figures recommended work that would have seriously impacted on the bottom hundred yards of our fishing.

The advice has not been taken up but the report is there for all to read on the internet of you delve deep enough. Another installation not far from here was quite peculiar and looked to have achieved precisley five eigths of f*** a** I hope the owners had not been required to stump up a similar sum for a consultation. If the fleece is fine enough and the walking shoes of the latest design (the equivalent in painting and decorating circles of Tarquin the interior designer in a stripy shirt) some will always be lured to the bait.

The banks may be a bit squishy, and the meadows remain unmowed, but the river has not looked this good in July for some years. The July weed cut has been a heavy one, I even eschewed church to cut weed on a Sunday, the lord may frown on those who wield a scythe on the Sabbath but the allotments near a rising spring hole may notice the difference as will the ducks who live on an island that was under threat of being submerged. It is the first time in some years that I have had to cut weed with a mind to getting rid of water , taking weed off the shallows and edging the fringe to make the channel as big as possible has dropped the river by four inches and got it back under some semblance of control. The Millstream is also in its best condition for some years. In dry years water is taken away from this man made channel to supplement the flow in the main river. The fringe has been cut back hard and weed has quickly returned with the increased flow. Fishing between the showers has been pretty good but the promised settled period of weather should see fish adopt a more regular feeding pattern, with this amount of water the second of half of the season promises to be much improved on recent years, if I had to pick a week to fly fish for Brown Trout on this river I’d go for September, Grayling fishing in October and early November holds equal promise.

Several Kingfishers currently fill their boots on Minnows in the Millstream and Roach and Rudd fry in the pond and unfortunatley our tiny trout in the stew pond have also drawn the eye of the emerald and orange bird. Many times during the day I round a corner to hear a “Wheeet!” and witness the "blue-green flash" scarper. The larger fish in the pond have enjoyed the top up of fresh water, normally at this time of the year blobs of blanket weed appear in the warm water and the fish take on a torpor that is only lifted at the onset of dusk or dawn. There are some very chubby Bream that do the rounds for much of the day and a couple of ancient Commons pushing twenty pounds spend much of the day fiddling around in the Phragmites. The margins are alive with silver fish fry providing sustenance not only for the Kingfishers but also the large Perch that charge open mouthed through the shoal sending the small fish skittering across the surface.

The reed beds in the top water meadow that we burn off in spring are almost impenetrable to man but are a hive of activity as various bugs beasties, butterflies bees and much more besides flit from flower to flower to reed. Stand still and look close and there is an awful lot of activity.

Today we received visitors from the “EU Water Framework Directive” Beamed aboard to Bransbury Mill central, at reception phasers were set to “stun” then quickly turned to "off" as it turned out to be the beleaguered boys from the EA’s fishery department who wanted to have a quick shufty with electronic probes over a hundred metres of our river to make an assessment as to the......well I’m not really sure but it’s aims are laid out here:

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Research/Fisheries_WFD_150410.pdf

Much is promised, and for an EU directive it appears to be a relatively sensible one, Its principle "plus" that river catchments must be looked at individually. Purveyors of muddled national inland fishery strategies please take note.

The one hundred metres of river subjected to survey didn’t show up any Roach, Perch or Pike all of which thrive in other reaches of this river along with the odd Chub, Dace and a lone Orfe Concern was showed over our lack of Bullheads although these are present in numbers in other areas. The hundred metre stretch surveyed was all fast and shallow, a survey of hundred metres of deeper water would have thrown up a differnet set of results. Plenty of Grayling popped up along with several Eels, Loach and Minnows. Brown Trout made up the bulk of the sample, most of which on visual inspection received the classification of “wild”. Team leader was pleased with what he saw and asked if we had ever stocked the river. His reply on hearing that it had been stocked regularly with locally sourced Diploid Brown Trout for many many years?

“Well that blows a few theories out of the water”

If only

Angel of the North

Oedipus has gone, along with his miserable mother who this year declined to sojourn for a fast and loose fortnight with Greylags on the common, an outing that definitely lifted her mood last summer. She stuck around on this river to batter seven bells out of any ducks that dared to enter her space, the jolly Indian runners in the orchard came in for some particularly rough treatment which proved to be the last straw so Oedipus and Jocasta were bundled into the back of the jeep and transported to a neighbouring farm where they now wallow in their own misery with half a dozen other white geese. White geese box ticked, move on, sleep easy Indian runners you’re far more entertaining and your eggs ain’t bad either!

Talk has once again returned to water. We have plenty and in some quarters talk centres around an over-reaction earlier in the year when drought conditions were declared in these parts. In March we were undoubtedly in trouble, with average rainfall for spring and early summer I half expected to be moving fish from our stew ponds to goodness knows where. Successive dry winters had left this river on its knees, if anything drought orders should have been put in place months before they were. Many up and down this valley stated that we needed a winters worth of rain in the space of a few months to restore the chalkstreams and their aquifers to anything

like their normal level for the time of the year. Thankfully it has happened, three months of record rainfall and what had been termed “one in two hundred years” climatic conditions have restored the rivers in these parts to their seasonal average level, but no more, the cricketing equivalent of a number eleven hitting a hundred to draw a match, but not a win. A brief tour of the valley on a wet Saturday morning revealed the Upper Dever about where it should be at Western Colley,

in March it had all but dried up. A stretch of the upper Test above Overton that we used to stock in good order and the Bourne at St Marybourne flowing through the village but dry at Stoke, which is what one would expect for a normal mid summer.

Many rivers around the country have flooded and reservoirs are full which all give the visual lie that all is well where water supplies are concerned, for those who receive their water from such sources things may be ok but for those who take their water from the ground 70% in the South, 35% in England and Wales, things are not quite so rosy. It takes longer to fill up an aquifer than it does a reservoir and it takes even longer in the summer than it does the winter. The aquifers around here have undoubtedly risen but only to the extent that the drought order has only this week been withdrawn, the spring ditches that supply this river remain rather short. The issues raised in March over a need to become more “water wise” remain. The water butt may be full and puddles may cover the drive but there is still a need for a change in mindset and for us all to use our water as efficiently as possible, particularly in the South where it is fast becoming an ever more valuable resource.
Three miles from here 1200 homes are under construction as a neighbouring town inexorably sprawls our way. Their water supply will come from the ground, undergo treatment and be flushed back down the river system to the sea where we will rely on the water cycle to dump it back in the valley. Unfortunately Poseidon and his squalls have sent the South’s share of the black clouds scurrying elsewhere and someone else has been getting our rain, Wales most probably for the past two and a half years.
If these houses had been up and running five years ago and water pulled from the ground this river would have been in even worse shape during this March just gone. If water is to be taken from the ground why not put it back at or near to the point it was taken from? Each house has its own metered borehole and a septic tank and French drain in the garden. The tank collects the solids that can be removed and the grey water soaks away under the back lawn down into the aquifer. There would have to be a reduction in the number of houses per hectare because soakaways need space. Otis couldn't turn round without rubbing his backside on the fence of some of the houses already completed so there would have to be some trade off in plot size, but no main pipes to leak, each household is charged for what they use and is aware of where their water is coming from and the impact they have upon its supply, a good supply of organic compost and a nice green lawn to boot.

Several would suggest that I occupy a rung on Mdme evolutions’s ladder somewhere around plant life. Well if I must return to this life as a blade of grass I would hope that it is in times such as these. The grass around here whether on the river bank, back garden or cricket pitch has never had so much fun. Mowing and strimming has currently taken on Forth bridge proportions, and just when I think the job is jobbed the bit where I first started has grown a couple of inches; sit down on a bench to “take it all in” and you can see the bloody stuff grow. The wheat and barley in the fields behind our house are also decidedly tall and grains swollen to a large size that would suggest a bountiful harvest provided the slugs don’t do for it first, it doesn’t rot in the field and it stops raining long enough to get the combine through it.

With a top up of water the river is in sparkling form. Just about broaching the banks fish feed on Olives and Sedge from late morning on. Many rods have been rained off so it remains relatively lightly fished and we now have enough water to run the mill stream for the first time in a few seasons. Mowing the meadows is proving tricky with parts matching a venerable keeper’s classification of a water meadow in good nick “ do not venture forth even in a four by four” Two days of dry weather and I should be ok in the tractor.

Two clowns looked to take advantage of an exciting mens final at Wimbledon by sitting in the bushes surrounding the mill pool float fishing bread and maggots on a fly rod to the Brown Trout below. The roof closure on centre court didn’t do much for "Auld Andy’s" cause or the two clowns in the bushes as I took the opportunity to walk the dogs, Otis flushed them from cover before eating half their bait, the wobbly spaniel chased the muppets and their maggots with 3 AAA Wagglers on fly rods down the road.

We have also had a visit from the local Art society, not quite the bohemian set of Blommsbury or Chelsea, car parking was inspired by Picasso, before cagoules were donned to erect easels in the garden and its surrounds. Pencils were sharpened, a muse sought and then the heavens opened sending artists scurrying back to their cars. By way of a thank you they left behind an installation.

Similar in concept to Anthony Gormley’s “Angel of the North” it is highly visible, modern in design and stands next to the road. Like Gormleys other works it has been replicated several times countrywide. The work requires a title, the favourite so far:
“Another place.........for parking”