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Fly-fishing and the pursuit of happiness: Where it all began

I don’t know about you, but I happen to remember the place and moment in time, when I decided that fly-fishing was my thing, and that quite frankly, from that moment on, it would be a lifelong pursuit. If that sounds a little like a religious experience, then so be it. I was standing on the path leading to the school hall. It was junior school. I had probably caught my first Trout in 1979. My second had been on a school trip to “Mc Dougall’s dam” on Strathaven in Underberg: It was now 1981.My classmate Murray and I were

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6 October 2015

Book launch

When I was at varsity there was this dumb saying, that in a man’s life he should buy a farm, write a book, and visit a whorehouse! I have no intention of achieving one of those, and another I simply can’t afford. I have however published a book! This is an announcement  I make here with conflicting emotions of satisfaction and humility. Satisfaction, because it has been close on two years of work, and I am pleased as punch with the result. Humility, because ……well because it feels downright pretentious and uncomfortable to announce this out in the marketplace and

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21 September 2015

Treasures and treats

My wife and I  pulled up outside a shop the other day, and while she went in search of ice for the cool box, I hung back and answered questions from a woman who was swooning…..over our boat.  She seemed a bit rough around the edges. Hard as a woodpeckers lips in fact. Her fingers were tobacco stained, and her hair was like straw. But she got it. She got it that this work of art is a thing of such beauty, that to travel with it, to launch it, and to climb into it, is in itself a treasured

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21 July 2015

African snow

This post is largely for the benefit and interest of foreigners to South Africa. With the exception of the tip of South Africa, in what we call the Western Cape, ours is a country in which rainfall comes in summer. Our winters, by contrast, are brutally dry. And I really do mean brutally dry. We can see rainfall taper off as early as late March, and not have a drop of precipitation again until October. Those in tune with our seasons, as I believe I am, are acutely aware of the length and severity of winter’s dryness. Did the rains

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11 July 2015
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