20 April 2014 News/Editorial
The Rev Robert Parker, the richest vicar in the land, or so we are told, has bought the Ednam House Hotel in Kelso.
Not the opening plot line of an old Agatha Christie, crucially lacking Miss Marples’ waspish observational skills and Colonel Prothero’s inevitable demise in Murder at the Vicarage, nonetheless in fishing circles on Tweedside this is both hot and slightly shocking news.
Nothing is ever supposed to change in the Borders, more often than not it doesn’t……..so that when it does, we Borderers sit up and take note.
Many have thought of the Ednam House as one does an old overcoat; slightly careworn, not in the first flush…but somehow curiously warm and comforting, never pretentious, an old friend, still handsome, but, in the nicest possible way, has seen better days.
I had two uncles who were frequenters of the bar, both prone to slotting in there around noon for a g&t (or two) while the shopping was being done and errands run by the driver, usually a long suffering and accommodating wife…..then back home for lunch.
One, the Major Henry, had a mynah bird named Gluck, a superlative mimic. Gluck was stationed in his cage in the sitting room at Old Greenlaw and the Major was wont to pass judgement on Gluck’s random and unwarranted interjections, when nobody else was there, by saying in admonishment and to shut up the irksome fowl, “F..k off Gluck”. The inevitable consequence, of course, being that Gluck, when the Major and my Aunt Felicity were entertaining the great and the good, the prim and proper, to afternoon tea, would suddenly pipe up in the smallest pause in the conversation, for instance just after “Would you like lemon or milk in your tea?”, with a shrill and piercing “F..k off Gluck”. Old ladies were known to faint at this sudden and unexpected assault on their considerable sensibilities by the evil mynah, much to the Major’s quiet satisfaction.
I digress, back to the matter in hand.
Over many decades the Ednam House has been synonymous with middle Tweed salmon fishing, the pictures of rows of dead fish laid out in the hall (no more of course, now most distinctly non pc), the rods alongside the fire as you go in and salmon fishers, both young and old, milling about discussing the triumphs and disasters of their day, the stories becoming ever more exaggerated as the bar becomes busier….and so it would go on long into the evening.
Its position, overlooking the Tweed just below the junction of Tweed and Teviot, is perfect and only slightly spoiled in outward aspect by the extraordinarily functional but far from beautiful mega pavilion on the showground. With the bridge on your right and the Ednam House opposite, it looks its very best from across the water when you stop on the south side of the river, the Maxton road, to see how the fishers are doing on the Junction pool.
The Brooks family have run it as a hotel since 1928, four generations starting and ending with a Ralph and for most of my life run by Alistair, expert, keen and peripatetic salmon angler.
It would have been ideal had they ever owned the Junction fishing, on their doorstep, their chance coming (and going) when Roxburghe Estates sold it to the Miller family in the 1970s.
So what of the future?
I have stayed at Doxford Hall Hotel, another in Padre Parker’s stable, and you would think, if Doxford is any guide, that big changes are afoot at the Ednam House, presumably a long period of closure and capital investment resulting in something very different; we are told luxury is the aim.
So what of the current Ednam House aficionados?
They might not like it.
They go there because it is an old friend, the Brooks family know them and have known them for years, so slotting in year after year is like going to their London club, they are recognised and if they like half a slice of lemon in their g&t rather than a full slice, the barman will remember without having to be reminded.
Instead of that, everything in future will be brand new, the latest showering and bathing technology with every bedroom, all en suite, with the ultra king size double beds, wi-fi and hot and cold running sky/cable TV, air con, temperature control and carpets so deep into which only your wife’s (one hopes your wife’s) most precipitous stilettos will avoid sinking without trace.
The food will, no doubt, be c/o the Roux Bros, every morsel mouth watering and so beautiful you hardly dare eat it, and the wine personally selected by that Justerini and Brooks (no relation) scion and Borderer, Hew Blair. There will be spas, fitness, de-stressing and grooming things on offer everywhere, and wives and their exhausted CEO husbands, helicopters parked in serried ranks on the lawn, will love it
It will all be absolutely marvellous, a great addition to Kelso’s attractions, and, if we are spared, we will all go there for a snoop, if we can afford it for dinner, and say how wonderful it is.
But…. in a funny sort of way we will have lost something and I will miss the old girl just as she was, with Alistair Brooks sitting in his chair by the bar welcoming one and all, and instead we will get yet another superlative 5 star hotel.
Probably wrong, misplaced nostalgia you will say, but somehow Kelso will never be quite the same again.
And by way of the now customary postscript, if we must talk about fishing, after such a peerless few days weatherwise, you just might want to know why this spring is not shaping up at all well (unless you happen to have been fishing on the Junction or the Floors beats).
Look no further than the following four digits……..2009.
It was one of the worst springs for our salmon and these are (or, sadly, in the main are not) their children.
Despite the lack of fish, there is something about the April sun shining for fully 12 hours, as it did here on both Good Friday and Saturday, that brings to mind the musings of our hero in the Code of the Woosters ;
“ I marmaladed a slice of toast with something of a flourish, and I don’t suppose I have ever come much closer to saying “tra-la-la” as I did the lathering. I was feeling in mid season form. God, as I once heard Jeeves put it, was in His Heaven and all was right with the world.”
Amen to that.
Happy Easter.
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