Books and thievery

It was a very disappointed thief who broke down my patio door in the middle of the night with an axe, in search of a flat screen TV. All he got was an angry Great Dane and a sea of books. I only wish we had managed to give him some fast flying lead too….the bastard! But let me put the angry thoughts of retribution aside for a moment and focus on his disappointment, and my delight: Books. I hadn’t realised it, but books, and more specifically flyfishing books, have been in my blood for a long time.  I remembered

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Close your eyes

I have an old friend who, when he is sitting comfortably in our lounge, and a truly classic piece of music comes on the stereo, closes his eyes as he listens. I think he sways a little too. He certainly zones out. He escapes the confines of our simple human surroundings, switches off the world around him, and allows his mind to soar to lofty and beautiful places in which the depth of his appreciation knows no bounds. He transcends those in the room who nod in his direction and snigger, and he rises to a place above us all.

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The timelessness of a river

“..the river moves on and on ; the heart follows, willingly, always glad to be Hunter, discoverer.”   Harry Middleton We describe rivers as living beings. The concept resonates and it allows for the attachment of a personality to a thread of water in Trout country. That seems appropriate. Yet rivers, if they are to be living things, are an anomaly, because they never die.  Sure, in the lowlands, some factory may dump waste and the river “dies”. But even there, look at the Thames and its tributaries now compared to how they were in the industrial revolution!  When man has

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