Does anyone ever read the titles? I always forget that I've given a title to my ramblings, then I bump into someone who says 'what was the dog days' about? Well, hopefully I'll really flummox them this time!

So, what's been going on since the last meander? Ohh, November's been a long month. Long but good I guess. There's been frosty mornings, long walks, a bit of fishing, fireworks, trips to Brownsea Island, a crashed hire car, a new hire car and today, a work party on the headwaters of the river Wylye. The same bit mentioned in the 5/7/07 entry so search for it there if you need to.

Anyways, this is nothing more than a public opportunity to say thank you to everyone who turned up. It was a great day and we really got a whole load done. Oh, and the fact that the fishery is 10 mins away from my new office had absolutely nothing to do with me choosing it for a work party. Honest!

~ malcolm

Some days you just know. You know things are going to go well, or badly, from the moment you wake up and the day filters through the sleepy dust and caffeine withdrawal.

Last Thursday, I woke up and knew it was going to be a bad day. My neighbor cheerily let me know at 7:30 that a cat/fox/rat had been at the bins, so I spent a while picking up rubbish from the alley. Halfway to work I had a phone call to say my boy had broken his collar bone, so a swift turnaround had me flying back towards Wilton, and then onto Salisbury district, where he'd been taken by ambulance. I stopped at home, ran in to get some stuff to take to hospital, came out after 10 minutes to find that someone had crashed into the hire car and driven off... As I say, some days you just know.

Sunday on the other hand was pretty much a good day from the second I woke up. I had planned to head up to the Kennet carriers near Newbury for a days Grayling fishing, as mentioned last time. I peeked out of my curtains groggily to see a heavy thick fog blanketing the world. Having grown up in Dorset I have a thing for fog, apart from on the westcountry moors I've never seen it roll in as thick as it does in Dorset. I remember many an evening driving back from the Windwhistle through fog so thick that you could barely see the end of the bonnet.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the world was cold and grey. Cold, grey and damp, but I quite like it like that to be honest. I threw on some warm clothes and headed out for the car and then gingerly drove up north (north from here anyway, hell I had to even go on the m4, that's a long way north to me!). There were no other cars on the roads (or maybe there were and I just couldn't see them?) so the journey was blissfully peaceful, just the dulcet tones of the smashing pumpkins serenading me at full volume for company. I find some irony in the fact that having crawled through heavy fog for an hour, the fog lifted a bit just as I got to the m4 and then what do I see? A 12' sign flashing FOG at me, as if to make sure I'd been paying attention. Honestly, do you really need a sign to tell you it's foggy? Surely the lack of visibility ought to give it away? What we really need is a big sign that only works from 9am til 6pm that flashes 'DARK SOON' in big letters to remind you that it'll soon be nighttime. Or writing on takeaway coffee cups that says caution, drink may be hot... Oh, they do that already? Crazy Americans.

So, ranting over and done with, I arrived safely at the river. Met the others in the group and then headed out to fish. I got put onto a nice beat that started with a lovely little weir and pool, although I was reliably informed that no fish were ever caught in the pool for some reason. Bull, red rag springs to mind. Well anyway, I obsessed on that pool (photo below) for an hour with no luck, so I threw on a black woolly bugger (noone was watching!) and stripped it through the pool a few times. After about the 4th or 5th go the fly stopped in it's tracks and I thought I'd caught a snag or something, only to have the rod tip take a sudden dip. The reel gave a momentary squeek as line pulled off only to be silenced as whatever was in that pool broke the leader and left me wishing I'd brought my pike gear. Oh well, back to the grayling...

I worked my way slowly up to the bridge that marked a sort of halfway point catching a small brownie and an even smaller couple of grayling when I noticed that there were a number of fish rising just below the bridge. Most were small little sip rises but there, just off the point of the weed, that looks like a bigger fish. Fly switched to cdc & elk, combat crawling mode turned on and I'm shortly in position. Cast is thrown out, just to have it drag back towards me frustratingly. A 2 minute wait proved that my submarine target was still hungry and a second cast, combined with a little flick just before the fly landed on the water to give some slack resulted in a rainbow of about 1 1/2 lb. I know, it's out of season, but a fish is a fish and from the far bank I couldn't see what was rising, just that it looked bigger than the other tiddlers. The rainbow was slipped quietly back and was feeding again in it's same spot 10 minutes later.

The day progressed with a few more fish, half a bottle of red wine, a steak sandwich from the rusty old bbq and a good number of tall fishy tales.

Heading home was an altogether smugly satisfying trip as I was going in the opposite direction to all the end-of-half-term traffic heading back to London and going past Stonehenge was one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen there. Unfortunately the traffic was too busy to stop for a picture (they don't call that dodgy junction hertz corner for nothing, it's a hire car mortuary...). You'll have to make do with words.

Those of you who know the area know that the henge sits up on a slight hill away from the a303. The fog was just starting to form as I passed and it was rolling, like a river, down the hill in a layer some 3' thick and crossing the road. It was exactly as if it was dry ice, all spooky and dramatic. A real once in a lifetime sight with the stones as a backdrop and the fences covered by the layer of the fog, I was transported back a thousand years or so. Well, apart from the endless stream of traffic heading east that is...

All in all though, just a thoroughly pleasant day :)









~ malcolm

I sometimes think I'm the only person that thinks in the odd way that I do. Yes even I think from time to time although I find it a dangerous pastime and avoid it whenever possible. So anyway, a couple of weeks back, I'm standing on a hillside in the Lake District with a group of colleagues. Behind me is wild cat island, the amazon river, beckfoot and holly howe. Magnificent peaks stretch out, orange in the autumn morning light up, up, up all the way to distant kanchenjunga (swallows and amazons for ever!).

The entire group of us however have our backs to the view, we are looking into a cess pit. This has been a pattern I've repeated over the last few weeks, I've visited all manner of fantastic locations with the new job and looked at Grease traps, cess pits, composting toilets, chemical stores, oil tanks, asbestos and falling down buildings. You know what though? I really don't care. My abstract (maybe optimistic?) thinking has me seeing refurbished, environmentally aware buildings and for the most part, I'm not noticing the current smells.

With the end of the trout season passed and days shortened by clock changes my fishing has been curtailed somewhat although tomorrow I'm off to meet a bunch of people by the river and pretend to fish for grayling. In actual fact what we'll be doing is gossiping, drinking tea and having a good laugh. That's what fishing was invented for. An excuse to leave the house and experience peace, tranquility, solitude, company, laughter and friendship - all rolled together.

Oh, and of course, I may have my back to the view, but I couldn't not take the camera along...













~ malcolm