This wonderful, evocative film popped up in my youtube feed today. Back in the early seventies my mates and I used to have a couple of weeks in the close season fishing Pisces (I think?) Lake for rainbows using any method. Our chosen approach was floatfished luncheon meat and we were plagued by tench .
Every evening we'd walk along the bank past Ernie's cottage (although I didn't know it as such back then) to the Lamb and Flag for a sneaky pint or two. I clearly remember the pike on the wall along with the assorted rural ephemera of eel spears, sheep shears and mole traps. The old boys in the bar upon seeing our fancy flared trousers and tank tops would gently take the piss, testing us on the aforementioned ephemera little expecting that as a fanatical Out of Town viewer, I would get most of them right.
I remember well the snipe drumming overhead and the wigeon whistling across the wash and it still makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Thinking on, I probably remember the whistling wigeon more from my winter forays after pike and I was so enamoured of the whole place that I tried to move there once but never made it. When I look around me now, being hemmed in by development and the way life has become so frantic and superficial, I can't help but feel that something is missing. I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
