news/editorial

24 July 2016 News/Editorial

It was bound to happen, I suppose, after 56 years of it not happening.

My father was the same.

After over 50 years of shooting every gamebird in sight, in his 60s, his shooting prime, he shot a grouse way out in front with his first barrel, and immediately turned his attention, and his second barrel, to one of its companions in the rapidly oncoming covey. But before he could shoot it as well, the first one, dead but falling fast, got him squarely in the chest and laid him out in his butt.

In retrospect, we all laughed, “biter bit”, “about time one of them got its own back” etc etc…….but at the time it could have been serious. I have no idea what the impact of a dead grouse, whatever it weighed, falling at 50mph downwind would be, but one would think it could deliver a near fatal blow.

In fact, he was shaken and severely bruised, but lived many more years and always told the story against himself, with the accustomed twinkle in his eye.

The Learmouth Stream late in the evening is a joyous, quiet place to fish. And so it was last week that I was there, 9.15pm, casting a long line as you must, down by the point from the north side, when a sudden unexpected gust of wind, mid cast, whacked my no10 cascade treble, at some speed, into my right temple.

I expected blood, and lots of it, but there was none, just one of the three hooks well and truly embedded.

I drove myself the 40 minutes to the Borders General Hospital, arriving shortly after 10pm, checked into A & E, apologetically saying what a fool I was, to which the standard reply was “no need to apologise, you should see what some of the idiots we get in here manage to do to themselves!”

I suspect I was one of those idiots, but they were kind enough not to say so directly.

After some pulling and tugging, the doctor decided that cutting it out was the only option, the barb refusing to allow the hook out any other way. And so the charming young doctor, half way through his 12 hour A & E night shift, took a knife to my temple and after a number of small incisions, succeeded in pulling the hook out, much to my own, and I think the young doctor’s, relief.

He offered me the fly, but the offending hook had been straightened in all the pulling, so it found its way into the hospital’s bin.

After inserting a stitch or two, I bade a grateful farewell to A & E, and made my way home, eventually getting to sleep around 2am, resting the left side of my head on the pillow, to avoid the mildly painful throbbing on the right.

At the end of it all, I couldn’t quite get out of my head “what if it had gone into the corner of my eye?”

You and I should wear those wrap around safety glasses, especially in a wind, but will we?

Probably not.

Once in 56 years of fishing, at the age of 66, I should be long gone before I do it again…….

... as the young doctor, my saviour, kindly, if slightly unnecessarily, pointed out.