news/editorial

5 April 2020 News/Editorial

First, let me tell you that head ghillie Malcolm’s wife Sally, one of the many thousands of extraordinary NHS staff who keep the rest of us going while they put themselves at risk, has contracted coronavirus.

Many of you will know Malcolm well; so far Sally is having reasonably mild symptoms, albeit with a terrible cough, and Malcolm is clear, and I am sure you will all join me in wishing them both well and Sally a speedy recovery.

If ever there was a demonstration of how this ghastly bug is reaching every part of the country, even sleepy little Coldstream, this is it.

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My old friend Tom Fort has written, and just published, a truly excellent book entitled “Casting Shadows” about fish and fishing in Britain. I recommend you buy it online at waterstones.com (also amazon but apparently they are temporarily not delivering books) and read it over the long days ahead. https://www.waterstones.com/book/casting-shadows/tom-fort/9780008283445

He writes beautifully and you will spend many happy hours learning all about what ingenious and often nefarious ways we humans have found of catching fish over the centuries, until quite recently, almost exclusively, so that we could eat.

I hesitate to give Tom a plug, if only because it was he who once described my bowling at cricket, in print for all to read, as “metronomic”, an example of damning with faint praise if ever there was one. But then, unlike yours truly, he has no first class cricket record (albeit very brief, I became an accountant instead of gracing those green swards long term) that speaks for itself.

Happy reading.

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My very kind correspondent advises that the Daily Mail, that fount of all knowledge, had an article in Friday’s edition bemoaning the decline in numbers of so many of our riverine birds, while at the same time noting the remarkable exception of the cormorant, whose numbers have swollen to 62,000.

Just imagine, once you have taken your daily blood pressure pills, how many fish that lot will eat every day? And, of course, I do not believe those numbers. With thousands of miles of coastline and islands around our shores, to say nothing of those birds that increasingly come inland, you should seriously doubt the accuracy of any counting method. There could be 100,000+ and nobody would be able to say yea or nay with any confidence.

Meanwhile, I can report very regular sightings of kingfishers here, as well as our normal strong population of those charming, chirpy and surprisingly tame reed buntings. And yesterday I first saw, and then heard, a curlew, with that most evocative and haunting of cries.

It quite lifted the spirit in these dark times.

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Will the RTC be able to rebate or reduce its annual levy on fishing proprietors in 2020, will it maybe furlough some of its employees until this is over, to keep employees safe and reduce cost? While, you might think, little in the way of normal business can be done, certainly not much by staying at home, and when that “normal business” outside is hardly “essential” in national terms (is smolt tracking really essential in national terms?), furloughing must be a possibility. What can the bailiffs do when there is no fishing, no netting and is coronavirus compliance, on the river and elsewhere, really within their jurisdiction, even if some other rivers seem to think that it is? All very difficult questions to be confronted at short notice and in wholly unprecedented circumstances.

You would not envy the Chairman of RTC and TF, and his Committee and Trustees, their job. Of course, there are numerous other considerations in deciding what to do. It just seems a bit odd that many, if not most, proprietors have furloughed their ghillies, that the river is shut, that all proprietors are having to deal with the damaging, possibly dire if this goes on for months, financial consequences of cancelled fishing, if at the same time the RTC and TF were not to change their activities, and expenditure, somewhat.

But we alI know things are never that simple, and in particular we are all guessing as to how long this total lockdown will, or can, go on.

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And finally, the sun is shining, it is warm and we are so conscious of our good fortune in living somewhere where we can be outside in our garden as much as we like, because the garden is classified as home.

I will miss going out for a cast in these long April evenings (typically every time I dog walk by the river now I see a salmon jump) not because I would catch anything, but because I would be alone with nature, nobody else about and, as Robert Browning put it, and the young Wooster used to echo, “God’s in his heaven, and all’s right with the world”.

A small price for us country dwellers to pay when you consider those stuck in high rise flats in London or Birmingham or any other town, where this hellish bug is more rife and more dangerous, and when they can only go out for exercise once a day

Those living in cities like London and Edinburgh tell me that they do not think joggers are safe, as they rush up behind walkers in the parks and on pavements with all that heavy breathing and panting, one imagines, whether true or not, spreading germs hither and yon.

Until next Sunday, wherever you are, stay safe.