Long form writing
(Caution: contains spoilers) Fishing at dusk and dawn can be very rewarding. There’s something about being by the water and out in nature when most people are tucked up in bed. Being outside after the world has gone to sleep, or before it has woken up, allows us to experience some of the quiet of …
Garrett Fallon meets Bob Hornegold, chairman of the Osprey Specimen Group A thick mist clings to Epping Forest, oozing from the ground like smoke from a burrow, badger bonfires blocking out the world. It obscures all, revealing light only at the very last moment: dodging cars on sharp bends, clenched teeth and arse cheeks desperately …
This is the first of over twenty short stories about life in Ireland by Niall Fallon, who died suddenly in the 1990s, before anybody had seen them. They have remained hidden from public eye, but no more. PADDY MURPHY WAS A LOCK-KEEPER ON THE GRAND CANAL. He lived alone, in the small, compact cottage set …
Garrett Fallon finally publishes a story he wrote nearly 25 years ago, about the capture of an Irish tench. To me, there are few fish more beautiful than the tench. It possesses in its strong lines all the grace and form of Grecian sculpture, yet has the power of something perhaps better suited to war. …
A river in the south of France leaves a lasting impression on Garrett Fallon. After weeks of lockdown, my fishing season is drifting slowly into focus as a punt might emerge from the mist, gently nudged along by a benevolent breeze. With relief, I’ll soon be casting a line again, but regardless of this enthusiasm, …
Garrett Fallon remembers how he’d like to fish. I rested on the wooden platform, my legs dangling over the edge while my eyes wandered over the still water of the canal in front. They were tired and reluctant to focus, nor could my mind hustle to attention, as if it was off playing somewhere in …
Niall Fallon recalls the life and times of one of Ireland’s best-known anglers, who taught him much about the Tipperary Suir. We had fished hard, the party of four rods, for the best part of three days. For all of that, bar the balmy hours of the July nights, the sun had beamed benevolently but …
I’d like to say it was a typical Irish summer’s evening, but it was not. It was warm and nurturing, not too hot, with the rain being contrary and going somewhere else for a while. The cornfield opposite blushed with colour as it flirted with the last of the sun and rippled gently as it …
The sound of the line unfurling through the air cut through the distant thrum of the rapids, bird song penetrating the backdrop like needles, sunlight dappling through the boughs of hornbeam, birch, and willow, splinters of shine, bouncing and carrying on the riffles of current. Then a step or two, the push of water as …
Our new series, called Short Bites, touches a little more upon specific species and the techniques used to catch them. In this short film, Kev Parr catches a grayling on the River Test in southern England using a centre pin reel and split cane rod.
I walked among a small buzz of St Mark’s flies yesterday morning, hanging like charcoal-bodied sentinels, their long legs trailing like a ski-jumper in mid-flight. I’ve been told that their emergence stirs the little brownies in the local streams into their first, reliable, rise of the season, and for the first time in 6 …
Redmire. If you have any interest in carp angling whatsoever, that name will conjure magic. If your angling is rooted in traditional carp angling, that name will open a gallery in your mind from a time when carp fishing was in its infancy and everything was a glorious and exciting adventure. I pored over the …
I rather limped to the end of my coarse fishing season. The rains swelled the rivers (I didn’t fish the Dorset Stour once all season) and the late-winter perch bonanza failed to materialise. There were a couple of finned flurries from the lake I had been visiting throughout the winter. Matt managed a …
December bustled in with its usual tinsel-edged blur; a flurry of fairy lights and fake snow, sentimentalism and overindulgence. Festive smiles seem ever more forced though. Money is tight and political uncertainty, no matter where you sit, does little to inspire the notion of fun. It can be a tough period for the self-employed. As …
Parr’s Diary – December 2018 – History Repeating Read More »
I have always been guilty of ignoring what is on my doorstep, convincing myself that I must travel to make the best of my fishing, that the far bank will always hold more fish than the water beneath my feet. This came in part from growing up in mid-Hampshire, where anglers came to cast dry-flies …
Sometimes, change is so gradual that we don’t notice it until we sit back and reflect. So subtle are the shifts, that subconsciously we accept the new as the original. The baseline moves – and unless we get a rude awakening we don’t notice the lack of chaffinches in the garden, or hair on the …
In the car, he thinks about time, and how much there used to be. How, years ago, playing an LP was a thing in itself. You lowered the stylus, there was that amplified crackle, and then you sat on the bedroom floor, playing every track before turning the disc with a deft flip of …
The autumn equinox is one of the loveliest times of the year, with soft days sandwiched between dew-drenched mornings and slow pink sunsets. Yet there is also a curious sense of poignancy, stirred by the end of summer, with a shift from light to dark and the quiet of the air. The fishing though, can …
Back in the thick heat of July, on World Cup Final weekend in fact, I made my way north across the county line and into Somerset. I snuck through Yeovil, dropped down onto the Levels and listen to the tyres crackle across the dust and loose stone of a well-worn track. Windows down, skin …
The heat has been relentless. July passed with barely a drop of rain and in response the earth shrank, the lawn cracked and the grass dried to dust. I looked upon familiar views with a new perspective. A blanket of brown and yellow, where even the trees struggled to splash any green. I was reminded …
It took more than an hour and a half to inch our way through Worthing. A lorry puncture causing A27 havoc at a spot which always congests. Our hopes of avoiding the worst of the Friday traffic well and truly dashed. It could have been a lot worse, though. The sun was shining, the …
Charles Rangeley-Wilson discovers a relaxed approach in Alderney It was a few years ago now, on a bucket-and-spade holiday with the kids. One still evening as the light washed out of the day I got away for an hour and walked with my fly rod along the cliff top above Fort Corblets strand. I …
I took a detour towards the end of the month to see how the Frome was looking. I have a favourite bridge on the upper reaches, many miles upstream of Dorchester, but in recent years the river beneath it has begun to look tired. Like so many of our chalkstreams, the Frome has struggled to …
In pursuit of trout, by Chris Yates. It was 51 years ago when I acquired my first fly rod. At that time, when I was 16 and living near Epsom, Surrey, there was no local trout fishing available to me, but there were plenty of dace and chub on the nearby River Mole, …
There is a moment in early April when the world suddenly seems a lot less dark. I will sit on the steps of the cottage with a morning cup of tea and my skin will tingle in the warmth of the sun. In a heartbeat, my soul shifts and much of the lethargy and leadenness …
I dug out the lawnmower at the weekend, lifted the blade as high as it would go, and lurched it around the garden. After an hour of hacking, there was a vague improvement, but the mower wasn’t happy and the cuttings were clinging to the mechanism like limpets on a rock. The problem came not …
“It is the magic of the Los Angeles River, a concrete corset that many know from Hollywood films: Drive, Transformers, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, it’s a long list that shows the concrete, but not the hidden seven miles or so nature has reclaimed.” The Los Angeles River is the unlikely scene for some urban …
Six winters have passed since the last spell of prolonged cold weather in this part of the south. We have had odd sprinkles of snow during that time, and one decent covering, but Dorset has remained fairly balmy for the most part. As a result, the recent blast of Siberian winter came as quite a …
Parr’s Diary – February 2018 – Beastly Easterlies Read More »
“Tramp” said her eyes, sunk into an intolerant, pityless look that contorted her face. “Weirdo” said the face of another, while hastily averting his glance less I ask him for any spare change. “Fisherman” said the welcome smile of a third. She knew her onions, recognised the rod as a tool (not a weapon), recognised …
There is a healthy sprinkle of salt in my father’s bones. He wasn’t born beside the sea, but his family moved to Swanage after the Second World War and he spent his formative years exploring the cliffs and coves of the Purbeck coast. It made for quite a contrast to the shell-shocked suburb of north-west …
I took a stroll along the Cobb at Lyme Regis a couple of days before Christmas. The morning had been overcast, but as the sun began to lower so it sunk below cloud level and gave the seafront an unseasonal blast of warmth. I was soon in a T-shirt, and wishing I’d ditched my jeans …
The green-eyed monster, a pack of lies and a big pike, by Garrett Fallon I was getting frustrated with all the talk of twenties. We’d been fishing the lake and its bays and inlets for three days, swapping between hunting lake trout and plugging for pike, but we hadn’t caught or hooked a single 20lb pike …
The spring that supplies us with water, bubbles up just below our cottage before trickling off to the north-east where it becomes the River Wyn. It is a tiny course that soon meets the Hooke and then the Frome, less than three miles away. Unlike the winterbourne that I grew up beside, the Wyn flows …
Photography and words by Matt Minter What do you get for a man who, at the great age of 80 years, has all the material things accumulated from a life well lived? A day’s autumnal angling seemed just the ticket, so along the banks of the nation’s river—old father Thames just above Oxford—a somewhat motley crew …
It has been a little while coming, but this morning brought the first frost of the autumn—with October almost over. The air had a clean, sweet edge that I could even taste from the warmth of my duvet, and as I look out of the window now (just after midday) there is a quality to …
Parr’s Diary – October 2017. The start of the perch season… Read More »
Growing up among the chalk stream sparkle of central Hampshire left me with a slightly distorted view of river life. The Itchen and her tributaries changed little across the seasons. They would invariably run clear, the weedbeds seemed rarely to thin and the trout could always be found in their usual lies. On rare occasions …
Parr’s Diary – September 2017. Back on the Dorset Stour… Read More »
It has been a long time since my fishing took a truly unexpected turn, but July has delivered a fresh and local diversion that has given my summer quite a lift. In fact, there has been enough going on for me to start to diarise as a piece for Fallon’s angler Issue 11, providing our …
Parr’s Diary – July 2017: of mushrooms, mackerel and a quartet of carp Read More »
I’m not a sun worshipper, not with my delicate Irish skin. I crisp like burnt potatoes, dry out rapidly like a jellyfish stranded on a beach. I find myself wishing for any of the many types of rain we have back home, hitting my skin and exploding into little balls of steam. Still, once the …
Surface tension for sun worshippers: chasing carp from the top Read More »
It seemed so straightforward. All we needed was a small lake or pond, preferably quiet, hopefully natural, but definitely home to a tench or two. Ideally there would be a lily pads and overhanging trees, with a grass snake slipping through the marginal reeds, a song thrush singing and a musty whiff on the air. …
It is easy to forget how close we live to the sea. Our cottage faces south, but is tucked into a fold of the West Dorset hills and we need to climb a few hundred feet in order to glimpse saltwater. Occasionally, with an inshore breeze, there is the faintest briny whiff on the air, …
Parr’s Diary – (May) Thank heavens for the Glorious 16th! Read More »
It rained on the 30th. Not quite the persistent pour that had been forecast, but a significant drop nonetheless. This news shouldn’t really warrant a mention, but April has been desperately dry, certainly down here in Dorset. In fact, in my father’s garden, where he keeps a daily check on the weather, only 3.9mm of …
“Spare any change mate? I need six quid for breakfast.” I give what I can, and the homeless man departs. That’s London prices for you. 7.30am, Sunday morning, Vauxhall station; a toxic junction of smell and sound that assaults the senses. Voices clash loudly, night owls mix with the morning larks. Drunkenness or drama? Violence …
None of us are strangers to unforeseen delays. As it is with trains, planes and so forth, so it is with publishing a magazine. We do our very best to avoid them, but there are many ways a spanner can be thrown, and we were hit by quite a few. But sometimes, those delays can …
The shop on Holy Street: Fallon’s Angler issue 9 Read More »
There is an intoxicating intensity to the final fortnight of the coarse season that is quite unlike any other part of my angling year. Winter is ceding ground to spring, celandines are dotting the banks and verges, and the fishing can be spectacular. There is proper warmth in the sun, though the wind retains a …
I’m not entirely sure where February went. One moment January was dragging its feet and a couple of blinks later the blackbirds are singing and March is upon us. The thin end of the coarse season always seems to rattle by, but I did manage to make it out three times over the past month, …
It was great to see Mark Walsingham (Skeff) on CountryFile earlier this month. He was with Dave Webb of the UK Wild Otter Trust to explain the new otter trapping licence, and the two of them featured in a segment focused on the current otter ‘debate’. Much of the piece was filmed at Ashmead, Skeff’s …
It’s cold. Damn cold. The lake is iced over across two thirds of its width, a mischievous crust selling an illusion of solid ground, and a boisterous wind blows towards the outflow, slowly pushing the thaw with it. Winter can be beautiful, especially with a frost or snow, but nature is naked today without a …
In memory of Niall Fallon, who passed away on 26th January 1996. Originally penned by Garrett Fallon in 1992. As a child I had little appetite for work, seeing it as something horrid that served you right for growing old. I also had a distinct lack of interest in grownups, as they talked incessantly of …
Festive television is invariably underwhelming. Full of re-makes, repeats and Christmas ‘specials’ that make you smile, but only because the excess of port and stilton has left you mildly stupefied. I did watch Charlie Brooker’s 2016 Wipe last evening though, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. Mind you, the past twelve months have delivered plenty of …
I went for a walk yesterday afternoon on my local patch. It was only a few degrees above freezing, but I had in mind that the sunshine might have tempted an adder out. I may have been proved right, but left it half an hour too late. The south facing bank where I had hoped …
5am. It’s dark. Sort of. There’s a full moon that lights up the garden like a five-a-side pitch. I can see my cat racing along the grass to tackle a trespassing fur ball. I like these early starts, when it feels like the whole world is asleep, but of course it’s not. A couple of …
I have long entertained a penchant for old fishing tackle. Collecting it was a hobby of my late father’s, though as a determined wordsmith, he was mainly interested in rare fishing books. Nevertheless, his office was stuffed with all manner of angling ephemera, mostly gathered from house auctions that proliferated the Irish midlands in those …
Of a certain vintage: drop shotting with split cane Read More »
I have always had a peculiar relationship with the Dorset Stour. A couple of visits as a child and teenager offered me a river full of mystery and intrigue, but after a long period of barbel obsession (that had a distinct chalk stream edge) I struggled to understand the Stour when I returned to her …
The howling wind—the song of a thousand banshees—tossed the ship up into the swell, urging the men to their death. The angry sea threatened to overwhelm the deck, the mast creaked and groaned and cracked like twigs under a heavy boot. The knight turned to face his God and prayed: “Please Lord, let me live, …
A Knight’s tale: the forgotten trout of Tintern de Voto Read More »
It ended up being two months between casts, give or take a few days. Illness, a lack of time and a monster bout of lethargy had left me dry through all of August and most of September. If I was going to end such a drought, then it may as well be somewhere extraordinary. Ashmead …
“Bring your coarse fishing gear!” read the text message. Three hours later Rick arrived, caught late on that devourer of Bank Holiday time, the A21, with wife, three children and sizeable dog in tow. They were visiting our little coastal bolt hole for the afternoon. I myself was visiting it for the weekend so that …
Were I not to be reflecting upon the past month then I might not have realised how long it is since I cast a line. In fact, now that I stop and consider the fact, it seems I have spent fewer hours fishing since the opening day of the season than I did on the …
July is normally a good month for an angler. The rivers aren’t always at their best, with low water levels and bright sunshine, while many of the fish remain more interested in one another than they are in eating. The long days give us plenty of time though, and sultry summer evenings can offer some …
“Wexford. The oldest place in Ireland,” some would say. “Like Cornwall, only wetter,” say others. I snuck an old sturdy carp rod into a packed car heading for a family holiday in Ireland, and found myself fishing on Booley Bay beach near Duncannon on the aptly named Hook Peninsula. The tide was racing in, the …
By Maurice Neill THERE are more words for a fool in Irish than in any other language and it takes a particular type of angling amadan to venture into the Galway Gaeltacht and onto Lough Mask when the forecast is for bad weather. It is a beautiful, vast and dangerous piece of water where squalls …
It is at least three years since Martin last cast a line. Work and family pressures, coupled with a lack of transport, have kept him dry for far longer than most anglers could bear. After such a period of abstinence, there is only one way to fully reconnect, and that involves an early start, dusk …
A tribute by Kevin Parr I am obviously not going to bother to look, and nor would I suggest anyone else does, but nevertheless I’d be astounded to read anywhere a bad word about Jan Porter. For someone who put himself out there, certainly when creating his image as the Man in Red, Jan came across …
“It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming.” John Steinbeck No matter how great we think we are, we are quickly brought back down to earth by those finned creatures that swim and attract our longing. I have caught a few …
March 15th and another chapter closed, the book back high on the shelves for now, out of reach unless I stand on the tackle box that is on holiday in the back of the shed, any maggots within slowly turning to flies. If they’re lucky they might see daylight, if I get around to cleaning …
I spent a few hours yesterday wandering the heath and bog of Wareham Forest. I heard my first cuckoo of the year, found lizards basking and lost an hour listening to the lamenting song of the woodlark. In the thick of the bog was a dark, peaty pond, reed-lined and slightly rank. A sedge warbler tchked …
Written by Greg Freestone There’s a river not far from here. It’s a miniature river, a Trumpton river winding through toy-towns and out into their rural hinterlands, flowing beneath hilltop churches, through ancient fords and under bridges, draining and watering this ever-thinning strip of old farming Essex, a shallow agricultural valley still surviving against constant assault …
Words by Nigel Ling New Year’s “fabled infant” comes to me stillborn. After the festival of Christmas I cannot shake off January’s slump; the winter bears down, the dim fairy lights in house windows, waiting on Twelfth Night, are relics of a better time. Fishing in January is usually hard; floods are expected and cold …
Words by Jon Berry I have just been carp fishing, not in itself unusual, except it is something I never do at this time of year. It wasn’t a bivouacked endurance test in thermals, wet gloves frozen to fingers, slack lines freezing in cat ice—more a casual few hours with an Avon rod, a pocket …
Written by Niall Fallon My biggest brown trout, which as I write stands nobly mounted in a case on my study wall, as stately and plump as any Buck Mulligan, was taken in total darkness on a mid-September evening on a small limestone lake. A day of wild wind and rain had been succeeded by …
As an Irishman I’m comfortable with rain, in fact I miss it when it hasn’t fallen for a while. I love the way the ground opens up to drink it after a dry spell, like that first pint after work on a Friday. You can feel the earth’s thirst being sated and the plants being …
Fallon’s Angler issue 5 is currently winging its way from the printers near Brighton to our distribution house in Slough, from where it will make its way to you, wherever you are. If you currently subscribe it will automatically be posted to you. If your subscription is due for renewal, you will get a separate email this …
Christmas Eve always meant a midday finish, and though there were a few loose ends to tie, the bulk of the morning would be spent nattering and clockwatching. I’d turn my computer on, and probably check my emails, but even my games of solitaire would be half hearted. In years past I would have clocked …
“Come on son. We’re gowan to ketch a perch,” sez he. I was too young to shave and still at an age when I thought girls were pointless and as annoying as acne. But I followed him like a puppy, yapping at his heels in joy. We approached the old stone bridge that crossed a …
I was introduced to Dominic Garnett in the middle of 2014, courtesy of my friend and fellow angling writer Theo Pike, when I was gathering contributors to appear in the first issue of Fallon’s Angler. I visited his website first, and devoured his material. There was something different about his work, something I hadn’t encountered very often …
We’re knee deep in the stream of production, with words and pictures gathering around us like salmon beneath a weir. We don’t like settling for second best so we’ll continue to tinker until we’re satisfied that we’ve published the best issue we can. At this moment, we’re hoping to send the magazine to press before Christmas, but with the …
Update on Issue 5: including subscription renewal Read More »
My older brother spent 25 years in sales, driving all over Ireland—staying in hotels and B&Bs, attending expos and events, meeting customers—his arse sunk in the back-straining seat of his car or van, gravity doing all it could to drag his spine into the ground. He’s out of that now, fitter and at least an …
I am in the field by the woods again. It is late October and the ground is sodden, and beneath the big oak trees the myriad fallen acorns crunch under my feet like crisps. “Howya Aran.” “Howya Garrett. How’s it going?” I patted his dog Sparky, a cheerful lurcher, rescued from Battersea, sleek and friendly, tail …
This summer of 2015 found us in a wet Co Kerry, joining old friends and extended family for the first time in a very long time just outside the village of Glenbeigh on the Iveagh Peninsula, part of the world-renowned Ring of Kerry. I spent many happy summers in Kerry as a child with a …
Why is it that we spend so much of our lives running, when really all we’d like to do is walk? We have a propensity to complicate our days, rush through them, fill them with activity, purpose, goals and achievements. But does it actually get us anywhere? Do we actually know where it is …
“May the luck of the Irish be with you!” is a well-known Irish blessing. I’m not sure of its origins, seeing as I don’t remember being especially lucky at any time, if you discount meeting a lovely lass and marrying her, and having a wonderful child. I’d like to think those things happened because I …
“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Actress and bishop jokes aside, it is healthy to occasionally ignore the brutish force of the colossal for the intimate pleasure of the small. As as with the best …
Words and pictures by Steve Roberts. Peace. Tranquil expectant peace. I sat in the boat waiting, the only movement the lazy passing of the foam from the weir, and some stirrings from a tent away downstream. A girl’s tired face peeped out and looked at me curiously as her boyfriend mixed up and lobbed out …
By Chris Netto The tendrils of mist wound lazily around the tree branches as I stood on the banks of the Dorset Stour on a dull, grey, mid-July dawn. I had planned this adventure for weeks, keen to get in among Throop’s not inconsiderable chub population, but really hoping for one of its sizeable barbel. …
The ‘wrong’ type of gold—memories of a river capture Read More »
Words and picture by Nick Fallowfield-Cooper Just over three months ago I had a long chat with Garrett in the Captain Kidd pub that stands by the Thames in Wapping. The conversation resulted with my experience as a picture editor and photographer being recruited to oversee the next stage in the development of Fallon’s Angler. …
If you exit through the back door of the house I grew up in, walk past the sloping field and along the driveway, over the rattling cattle grid, then turn left, you will see, at the end of the road, two large, imposing stone pillars—guardians of a hidden realm—in between which hangs a solid, wide, …
My late father was a prodigious purchaser of fishing books: H.T. Sheringham, G.E.M. Skues, Charles Cotton, Frederick Halford, Zane Grey, BB, Dick Walker, Bernard Venables, Chris Yates and so the list goes on. But the one that stuck out the most was The Domesday Book of Mammoth Pike by Fred Buller. I was a teenager …
Words and photography by Stuart Harris It was the sudden flash of blue that brought me back to earth and out of my daydream. It happens a lot you see, lazy, hazy spring days where the sun’s rays warm my shoulders, I slip out of reality and into a faraway land where nothing matters and …
“No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” Samuel Johnson The close season allows the river angler a chance to explore without the temptation of casting a line. With my life currently following a frustratingly urban routine, I could …
Garrett had mentioned many times before the huge shoal of bream that swam up and down the canal near his home. He had seen them during the spawning season where they congregated in vast numbers on the stretch of water between an aqueduct and a road bridge, a 60 yard shoal. He had watched them …
Henri Bresson (1925-2011) was a celebrated French fly fisherman, known best as creator of the French Tricolore fly. Jack Sellen has put a short extract from Bresson’s biography into English with kind permission from the rights owners and he hopes to translate the whole book, ‘Le Sorcier de Vesoul’ (Vincent Lalu, 2nd edition, La Vie …
Written by Matthew Tanner For too many years I suffered from a prolonged bout of naivety, the sort normally associated with the folly of youth, turning down multiple requests from my Mum’s friend Steve, that I accompany him on a days fly fishing. In the end it became a running joke between us. However, I …
This was first written in 1994 It had been a strange week indeed, with so many things of a different nature spinning frantically around me as to make me dizzy and tired of the hectic way I was prone to live. Too often I allow myself to sink so low, so far down where …
The River Test perks the ear of any angler. My late father would often talk about it in exalted tones, referring to its glorious brown trout. In later years, I learned of its grayling, and as my circle of angling interests widened, its big roach and dace. To have the chance to fish it was …
For as long as I’ve fished, I’ve wanted to catch a big perch. I caught a lot of stripeys when I was young, from the rivers and canals around my home in Ireland, but they were all small fish, with nothing much over a pound. The closest I came to snaffling a monster was finding …
By Michael Comyns Where can you get a conker match, a cello recital and a crack at a double-figure barbel? Well, I don’t know where or when they might occur together again, but on a recent weekend at Llanthomas, where The Sheringham Society held its Autumnal Equinox Meet—dedicated to the memory of a recently departed …
The Royal Canal in Ireland was a white elephant. It had been built by an over-zealous entrepreneur who intended it to compete against the nearby Grand Canal, but it went disastrously over-budget and he was nearly broke by the time it was completed. Then the railway came to Ireland and didn’t so much eat into …
I hit the road early but got gridlocked in the Blackwall tunnel, so was suitably late when turning up for my days fishing at Walthamstow reservoirs with the angling writer Dominic Garnett. Thank heavens patience is a virtue often found in the heart of an angler. Fallon’s Angler was launching the next day, and Dominic …
I have twin seven year old nephews, Tom and Fred. They are energetic dynamos, indefatigable creatures of havoc, as entertaining with their ludicrous antics as their devilish double act is testing to the patience of the most tolerant of adults. A day with the prankish pair requires deep reserves of many attributes, most of which …
There are many things about print that are beautiful and out of reach to the digital world. The printed word is a tangible thing, real to touch, hold in one’s hand, turn the pages with one’s fingers. But print has a harrowing and unforgiving side. If a mistake is made, it will last forever. And so I owe …
