This week, Patrick gets active. It goes surprisingly well. After a few mini-rugby sessions, it was decided it was best that I no longer attend.
I wasn’t having an unhappy time — quite the opposite. I’d join in for five minutes or so before heading off into my own space cheerfully to twirl my little arms around like a windmill. Churlishly, the coach told my mother that, if I wasn’t going to get involved, I should stay at home and windmill my arms there.
I never did become good at rugby, but, except when there was a foot of snow on the ground or the big oddballs from Gordonstoun came to play us, I quite enjoyed it. Last month, I was standing next to that fabled chalkstream, the Itchen, with the Editor of this magazine on a long-promised invitation to fish on his trout syndicate. The trout weren’t playing ball, however.
You could see them there, drifting happily in the clear water, but it was as if they had no real desire to feed. I’d cast out to one of them and they’d gaze up at the fly nonchalantly. Mark seemed vaguely frustrated by their listlessness, but I was having the time of my life.
The Itchen is a place of such pastoral beauty that it’s almost too much to take in: the iridescent kingfisher, the water meadows, the little fishing hut, the swan and her cygnets and the mayflies floating on the surface like confetti. As we headed upstream, a smartly turned-out gent coming the other way had a quiet word with my companion. There were fish rising further up and.
