The sun is bright and my book is dull. It’s much too bright for fish, in fact, but I don’t care. If you want me for the rest of the afternoon, I won’t be hard to find. Just walk down the river till you find a man who punctuates long reverent silences with outbursts of undiluted Desmond.
That is one small stream. Where I grew up, we fished in rivers and lakes, and then when I moved to Pennsylvania, I tried fishing in streams and was shocked at how small they were. But even they were huge compared to that stream. In southeast Texas, it’s far too flat to have any streams of that kind. On the other hand, lots of swamp.
It hold some surprisingly large trout, though. This afternoon I didn’t have the remotest touch of a fish, but I saw a heron; a kingfisher; one very strange bird which looked like, but can’t have been, an oyster catcher; and half a dozen rabbits. Still, by the end of the afternoon, I was convinced that I am too big and clumsy to catch anything interesting there.
Are you in south-east Texas? I thought for some reason you were in North Carolina.
It’s a dramatic time. Coming home yesterday from a birthday party at one of those braying suit bars in the City, I had to walk in the middle of the road half the time to get past the human spillage standing outside pubs in the late evening sunshine. I suppose it’s just in case there’s no more until next year.
I stayed over at a friend’s last night, on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Emerging at lunchtime, it looked as if a carnival had pitched up on Parliament Hill. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a nest of ladybirds emerging from hibernation: one day there are no ladybirds anywhere in the known world, the next it’s an aphid remake of the Mordor scenes from ROTK.
I guess the whole of North London woke up, saw the sunshine and made for the green bits.
I live in North Carolina, but I’m from Texas and my parents still live there. My dad is a fishing guide down there (part time anyway).