Chris Avery | Wednesday, 14 February 2024
An excerpt from “The Confessional of a Dry Fly Expert” by Prof.Smedley ‘Rolly’ Wallop:-
My eager anticipation is such that the first train of the morning delivers me early to this beautiful valley. I look upon the pristine waters from a distance and decide the best option is disturb nothing and wait. I smoke my pipe and write my journal for a fruitful hour when the first few Iron Blue duns lift of the water and I reason that the morning hatch is upon me! Wasting no time I tie on a Wallops Iron Blue, always a particularly killing pattern of mine, now made murderous with the body improved with a wrap of hair taken from near the Scrotum of a Gallway/Angus Bull and ribbed with the gold thread from a button of a Grenadier Guardsman.
Crouched, casting side armed under the low boughs of a magnificent Hawthorn tree where the fish were feeling secure and confident for their morning feasting. I gently cast the fly a few feet ahead of a particularly fine looking trout and allow the current to drift the fly back down exactly so. This early season Trout puts on a fine fight before finally surrendering to the net and the inevitable priest. I carefully dry the fly and repair its wings, then studiously redress it with oil. On the second cast the first fine fish is joined in the creel by an even bigger fish from under that same tree.
The Wallops Iron Blue was in a Murderous mood that morning, I spotted a lovely fish cunningly rising just under a low bough that was devilishly close to the water and on the second cast I connected, but the large Brown trout jumped clear of the water and the Gut caught fast in the Hawthorn and the fish and heroic fly was lost. “Oh well, nothing ventured nothing gained!” I gently consoled myself with this most honest philosophy.
As I withdraw a freshly Glycerined Gut from the case, I notice the hatch was over, as is the way early in the season, the morning hatch, usually around mid to late morning can be so fruitful but most terribly brief. From experience I know now that the next hatch will be in the afternoon, so I retire to the nearby Dairy to share some kind words and hearty fayre with the Dairy maid and her delightful daughter, whom welcome me back to this heavenly vale year after blessed year.
Refreshed and reinvigorated; returning to await the next hatch I turn to my pipe and journal in which I study the plants and insects around the waters. It is of vital importance in this pursuit to fully understand one’s quarry and its prey in all their guises, and I entreat the gentle reader to such pursuit. Through these endeavours I am armed as it were, to be constantly considering new improved killing patterns in the pursuit of this most worthy and noble foe; the Brown Trout!
The afternoon hatch started with the Blue Winged Olive for which I employ Slips from a Water rails wing, a hackle from the Furnace Cockerel; the dubbing of dark Ermine; and some Cuban Macaw breast feathers, the wrappings held in place with silver thread from a garter of a dancer of La Folies Bergère in Rue Ricard, Paris, of which I singularly tie in counter clockwise. This exquisite collection creates the ‘Rollops Ever Faithful Blue Dun’. A particularly peerless imitation of this essential pattern in the armoury of any Dry fly fishermen worthy of the title. I am simply at a loss without it!
I espied a particularly fine specimen stationed up stream of a rock awaiting its fayre. Such was its exposure that it required a stealthy low approach and I dropped to one knee behind the cover of a convenient boulder, breaking up my outline on the horizon. And though he was intent on watching what was drifting ahead, I knew only too well his deceitful eyesight could espy in every conceivable direction with the utmost clarity and cunning.
And it was a he! A magnificent cock Trout of some 3 pounds or more I measured thus. The diverse currents were tricky, and required that I place the fly precisely 18 inches ahead of the fish slightly to the right of his head to select the correct lane in which to make the drift. This requires a particular artfulness and accuracy in the casting.
I have people enquire often of my abilities in the fine art and nobble sport, of which rod I favour in such pursuit. “Is there perhaps a certain manufacturer or artisan whom I employ and would recommend for such task?” they constantly ask.
I’ve become lately of the opinion that any fool can fashion a fly rod , its takes a master to cast one. And a lifetime of practice to master that art. The rod makers that claim otherwise are charlatans and of little consideration in the high art and noble pursuit of which you, the reader, enquire here to pursue, as you peruse these pages. We will say no more about them, these rod makers, than I find most to be cads and bounders with no place in polite society and are to be avoided if at all possible.
Any rod will do!
May I sagely add that Trout neither rises for a rod nor desires it. It is the fly that deceives the trout and my philosophy is to make the utmost effort to procure the finest of diverse materials in your endeavour to make perfect representations. And; quite simply, to angle for them, only when those Trout are feeding . Failing to observe this simple etiquette ruins the stream for yourself and everyone else, leaving it disturbed and ruined for the subsequent visitor, who; diligently addressing the river when the insects active, find the trout feeding but in a manner of caution and suspicion and the sport ruined!
My first cast landed somewhat short and yet so gentle its delivery it created not a ripple , yet still the leviathan turned and considered it, but dismissed the intrusion as nothing untoward and continued to feast un-abashed. My next cast I extended precisely the required amount and it presented within an inch of where I predicted the correct current would propel the fly of that particular dressing in these particular atmospheric conditions towards my quarry..
It rode the stream like a natural insect, such is the skill of the fly tiers art. Full of confidence and lacking any suspicion at the exquisite deception presented thus, the leviathan rose and met the fly swallowing it at once. I in turn arose from my cover and approached the water’s edge to subdue my worthy opposition and bring it obediently to the net and the priest.
I then wandered up stream carefully watching for rising fish and subdued a further four before realising that The Blue winged olive hatch was now ceasing and some Medium Dark Olives where starting to drift down, I changed the fly immediately in anticipation. Two slip wings of Oriel; cream Japanese silk Kimono thread, heavily waxed; ribbed with copper Cocker Spaniel ear tuft hair; a generous short hackle of Badger Cockerel; Two Galena Cockrel fibres, dyed light brown; all go to make up the ‘Rollops Galloping Lancer’.
The new fly immediately got two work on a further brace of fine brown Trout picking off the new duns that where drifting down the lane of water close beside the opposite bankside, where too long a cast by a few inches spelt disaster. And then the afternoon hatch was over and a knew I had a good few hours wait for the evening rise. I took a few brace of Trout to the mill to be presented to the milk maid and her daughter to repay the godly women for their hospitable charms.
As the evening sedges and caddis appeared around 7.30 I knew I had precisely one and a half hours activity at the is time of year before the water cooled and all activity on the river ceased until the midmorning sun again warmed the waters the following day. As I ………….
This book was mostly given to friends and acquaintances : or as they termed themselves, ‘Associates’. It was barely ever opened, knowing who the author was and his reputation for ‘spinning a line’. Nobody in their right mind, it seemed, was prepared to believe a word of it. Numbers of it were sent to the colonies past and present and donated to lending libraries, but it almost entirely vanished from existence unread and forgotten.
It was however studied diligently twenty years later by Lord ‘Jessie’ Jessop Bracegirdle. A young wastrel at the time who couldn’t be bothered with his hereditary seat in the Lords especially when there were Trout to catch, and japes and hi jinks with the chaps down the club to be had.
When he stole his copy of Rollops ‘Confessional’ from a relative’s library it would never be missed by the owner who had in fact never opened it, but it was a life defining moment of epiphany for young Bracegirdle.
He desperately wanted to believe it to be the work of lost genius and containing the missing ‘secret’ of the old legendary masters of the Dryfly. He was always convinced there was a genius at work behind Halford, Marryat, and Francis Francis, and now he’d stumbled upon this, the defining work. It had to be, in the mind of Jessie, the fountain that the ‘greats’ had dipped their toes in as duffers, and had come away as enlightened masters! Young Jessie was determined to be considered also in their ranks.
If only he had bothered to look up the publishing dates. And seen that it came out later than all Halfords works and even The Francis Francis book on Angling , from which Rollop heavily borrowed; he would have saved the world of fly fishing from the unhelpful nudge off course he was about to dispense.
Bracegirdle was about to become the Flyfishing worlds insignificant Butterfly wing flapping in the rain forest of angling knowledge.
Rollops ‘Confessional’ was the model for his major act of plagiarism and cod theoretical tomb, published as ‘Setting My Watch By The Trout’. A misnomer as actually what he was proposing was that the hatches of the ‘flies’ occurred strictly by the clock at elevenses, afternoon tea, and supper time and the Trout’s feeding activity, adhered to these periods .
( if your Australian that’s the times known as, Smoko;’ ‘late arvo;’ and ‘crack us a Tinny, mate!’)
Stating that these insects were actually, despite being wild creatures, terribly civilised; from which he borrowed much of Wollop’s experiences and theories as evidence. He kindly even named the Old Major General for his ‘slight’ contribution. While also claiming to have been personally at the river’s edge daily through many seasons logging carefully the occurrence of each hatch and of the precise species.
To summarise: these three time periods were not just a mark of polite society in the tea rooms of the Savoy and the Ritz, but are a ‘constant’, a natural order, for all creatures throughout the natural world. And for proof he cited his patient field work and extensive studies of the Tasmanian Lesser Duck Billed Platypus, Bolivian Green Eyed Yellow Tree Frogs, and Siberian lesser lemmings as compelling evidence. Despite them being creatures that nobody else realised existed, nor any of his chums at the club remembering is absences, or him ever leaving the country.
He also surmised that “lionesses that miss elevenses in the Masai Mara are usually simply ravenous by supper time should therefore be diligently avoided! However. they are usually quite amicable to an approach at the completion afternoon tea”.
This exhaustive and globetrotting works of personally researched data that he cited as evidence, if considered by a logical enquiring mind, would have taken a few lifetimes worth of work. That he published it all, at the tender age of 27 stretched credibility somewhat.
He generously passed on to many of his readers some of the old major generals fly patterns which had materials that were easier to precure and less outlandish, lest he stretch credibility too far, “You need to break them in slowly to these revelations”. he reasoned, and knew he had plenty of books left in him yet to do exactly that .
‘Jessie’ Jessop Brace girdle died tragically after an indignant exchange with a chap at the club over his Lioness observation had got somewhat overheated. In a drunken bet, one late afternoon he scaled over the newly constructed walls of Regent park zoos lion enclosure. His cries drowned out by the laughter of the pals who’d come to support him in his challenge, “They really are a terrific bunch of chaps” he thought as he dropped down the last few feet into the pen and observed a snarling orange and black stripy beast about to pounce, “Gosh some binder changed the name signs. What a cracking wheeze, bet that was old pongo”.
His last thought was wondering if she’d had her afternoon tea? She hadn’t… until then.
A flurry of interested morbid fascination was created by the obituary in the Times newspaper that drove sales of the book, to the relief of the publishers.
Legend has it that ‘Setting My Watch By The Trout’ was the book discovered on a shelf, unopened, in the flying club, and was then ‘liberated’ by Squadron leader Derek ‘Titty’ Flinch at the outbreak of world war two.
He distracted himself daily for long sessions of reading and re-reading it whiling away the hours, sat fully kitted in his flying gear beside the hanger, it distracted his thoughts and helped him day dream while daily risking his life in the Battle of Britain.
Ever alert for the signal to “Scramble lads” as the sirens blare when those Luftwaffe turned up for a ‘sortie’ and a bit of sport. He’d then run across the tarmac to the waiting cockpit, “Chocks away chaps” and off he sped up to the billowing white clouds high above, and if the mood took him and there were rounds and fuel to spare, he’d occasionally chase a few of the blighters back home dropping a few in the drink, just to keep his numbers up.
“Flinch by name, but never by nature”, he muttered and slapped his thigh, as he sent each Messerschmitt and Junkers spiralling downwards to an uncertain ending. It was a silly thing that some wag said in the Officers Mess and had become his private joke.
On one of these chases, distracted by trying to bag a brace of Focke-wulffs that were being particularly evasive, he thought it would be a terrific wheeze to let them think they’d out witted him, then planned from a height to go down on them both just as they thought they were safety home. He ran out of gas however, ditching his Spitfire in the channel, a little too close to Dieppe and was spotted as he went down behind the pair of Fockers.
He had his copy of Setting My Watch By The Trout forwarde on to the Colditz castle where he sat out the rest of his war as the leading lady in the concert party.
His version of “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß” ( Falling in love again. I cant help it), dressed in a split skirt and fish nets, shaved eyebrows, an extravagant blonde wig and long cigarette holder( fashioned from a radio antennae they’d stolen from an irate escape committee, who simply didn’t appreciate ‘great art’). Flinch was a Wow with the German officers and he spent the latter part of his war avoiding the unrequited attention of the camp Commandant. Who was last heard shouting his undying love for ‘Titty’ while being escorted away by the liberating Yanks, also to an uncertain ending.
Traumatised by his experiences; when de-mobbed, ‘Titty’ bought a stretch of the Test near Mottisfont and let his eyebrows grow back, although he found trousers more comfortable for fishing, he did maintain his fondness for the high heels though, that hampered him in some of his later adventures.
He’d spend the rest of his life dedicated to the books of Bracegirdle and miraculously discovered an original Wallop complete with all the original fly patterns and material lists . Studiously studying and copying these patterns now and setting his clock for the hatches as he had re-read hundreds of times during his war, and could now finally put into practice. Often he saw nothing at all and consequently questioned the accuracy of his clock rather than dispute the original research by these two venerable old masters.
He never was by the water any other time than the anointed periods, you could in fact set your watch by Titty Flinch!
He became briefly a renowned expert of the techniques and wrote an updated and combined version of the two great works, exploring also his radical ideas of upstream nymphing along the same lines. Despite this hideous ‘faux pas’ the book found an audience and a small following a few years later.
In his own fishing he mostly stuck to Wallops original methods however, and followed the patterns to the letter whenever possible, convinced his failings with the fly rod and of actually catching any Trout at all, were much down to his lack of the right materials, essential for the ‘Killer’ patterns and set about to remedy that situation.
He also firmly believed it was the fault of the charlatan fly rod makers who blighted the nobble science of fly fishing in the new times of peace, with their ridiculous claims, and whom he continued the tradition to poor scorn upon.
Life out of the RAF remained full of incident for Flinch however. He was fined and deported from France for molesting a dancer from la La Folies Bergère in Rue Ricard Paris while she was on stage in mid Can Can mode with her legs firmly akimbo. It was his second offence in as many days, despite being banned from the building after turning up in fish nets and high heels trying to audition for the chorus line and being found backstage attacking a wardrobe mistress. The authorities did consider an asylum request but thought it best to let England deal with its own peculiar fruit cake in this instance, After all incarcerating a decorated war hero who had recently helped liberate their country seemed to be a bit ungrateful, even for the French.
He was deported after being briefly jailed in Costa Rica for molesting wildlife, MacCaws in particular, and then found himself on the end of a thorough beating behind Buckingham palace by an off duty Grenadier guardsman who took offense at a man in high heels attempting to grab him by his buttons and misread poor Titties intentions.
His life ended In tragedy under the feet of an irate Gallway Angus cross bull. The unusually gentle creature for its breeding was startled by the fearless ex fighter pilot stretching under its undercarriage to snatch away a handful of hairs from its scrotum while shouting “chocks away.” It misread Flinches intentions and objected to this course of events in the only way it knew.
It was an inglorious end to a thoroughly brave chap. One of the famous ‘Few’, owed so much by so many , but that debt was owed in the field of conflict and definitely not, in the fly fishing world.
His obituary in the Times made a brief celebrity of him; The second world war fighter ace who was dragged and trampled to death by an irate bull, while he was grimly hanging onto its scrotum and wearing high heels shoes, was not something you expected to come across in the Times every day, and so sales of his only published work in which the kindly and generous soul recognised and shared the credit with his two peers ‘Wollop, Bracegridle and now Flinch’ ‘The Lost lessons In Fly Fishing’.
The books sales briefly rallied from the mawkish fascination for more insights and smut of this excentric character. But on reading there was no further sleaze to be uncovered and it never went to a second edition.
The pebble of “three daily hatch times” tossed into the lake of fishing knowledge (due to the personal peccadillos of Wollops slovenly life style) over time sent ripples out into the fly fishing world where they lapped on the shores of inexperience and gullibility , snapped up and adopted unquestionably as the wisdom and fishing lore of past masters and became established fact for all. All that is, but a few insomniacs and social misfits and people of little faith in conventional thought.
Thankfully his fly patterns were now ignored as most of the species required to construct them, were long extinct or just incredibly violent and best avoided . (Though the dancers la La Folies Bergère in Rue Ricard Paris still do wear the same garters to this day).
But ‘times of the hatches’ is such an established ‘observation’ that people forgot the source of this knowledge or questioned its wisdom and just came to accept it as a fact. And the names and the works of Wollop, Bracegirdle and Flinch faded from memory far before the ripples they created lapped on the distant shore.
That was until the late nineteen seventies when a young northern lad, Malcolm Dumpling, with a love of fly fishing born out of envy , stumbled across a used collection of the bullshit triumvirate.
Coming from a town with only a polluted canal and hatred of privilege classes. Having a god given ability to write, but nothing whatever useful or original to contribute to his passion, the knowledge of Fly Fishing, he was primed and ready, but needing a trigger ….and some bullets.
He also, being northern, had developed to a fine art the ability to use withering put downs and bluntness as a protection in groups of boys in which he was never the hardest, best looking; best sportsman; funniest; talented; brightest; or most popular; He was just mundane, artless, ordinary and somewhat inept in nearly every way. But he could hold his own and protect his place by this ability to use words to defend, and to attack with sharp barbs and withering put downs. Which when employed in the playground or the office with an audience had the the effect of leaving the victim, ridiculed; suddenly isolated from the pack, and incapable of a credible retort.
The tactic was simple, to eruditely and calmly assert something as factually true that couldn’t be easily disproved and deliver it with an insult with enough bite to unsteady the victim; it was in effect a double slap down.
Without his Northern accent he would have been a devastating barrister, or if he was engaged in the subject, a political analyst, but his passions were for two things completely unattainable to him, being successful and adept at fly fishing and with women. The former he would use his ability with words, and very little knowledge to write a monthly column in a magazine, the later he just developed an unhealthy disdain for which rendered his urges more unnatural as he aged.
He discovered the three books while on a day trip, in second hand book shop near Soho’s red light district. As he read them on the train on the way back, distracted from the new pile of magazine he’d been buying down there, he realised much of Flinch and Wallops work was now forgotten about, and therefore was ripe to re-word and re-fashion as a novel new theory that he then had serialised over two years in monthly articles in The Salmon and Trout magazine. Some more astute knowledgeable fishermen protested into the letters pages or wrote their own articles in rival magazine. But he had the better of them as a wordsmith and some wicked original put downs and set about discrediting not just their replies but all of their life works. They became the enemy that required putting the boot in first. Facts be damned this was about his credibility. He would tackle them with both feet up and the studs showing.
Should some bright young inquiring mind appear from say the international squad writing a refreshing new way of skinning the cat, his presence was acknowledged with a back handed compliment and witty character assassination to put them in their place. Should they retort in print they looked both churlish and unbalanced.
His favourite attack was the USA competition casters getting infeasibly long distances that, with his inabilities he could only dream of. So he naturally thought they were up to the same game as him, Bullshitting. What was worse in his eyes was that they were using this as a basis to design and market new fly rods that achieved even better results.
He himself had fallen for the Bullshit he thought, and was feeling very foolish at being duped at his own game.
He had ordered one of these new ‘fast’ rods at much expense for a ‘bit-part’ journalist, and as he waited for its journey to his door he imagined the extra 30 or 40 ‘ it would add to his cast, and dared to dream it would at last, give him some credibility to fish where people knew him.
He was paying top dollar to buy his liberation from being confined to fishing only in places no one had a clue that the idiot blanking on the bankside was the journalist with such elaborate claims in the glossy magazines. And the day that rod tube arrived he set off to secluded spot to unleash the beast and realise his dreams at last.
But in his hands it made him actually worse. He was crushed and he was bitter! So knowing that nobody in the USA read or gave a damn about what was written in English Magazines, except the rod companies who bought advertising, he set about undermining the abilities and claims at every possible opportunity.
After two years he had run out of steam of credible nonsense lifted form the old books, his once amusing put downs were getting tedious for readers who were starting to see him as the bully, and he now needed to rely on original thoughts, of which he had none, and he virtually vanished from view.
His most impactful contribution to Fly fishing was the novel new twist of green egg balls on Grannoms, that required complete fabrication of the life cycle of these insects which he invented in exquisite illustrated detail over three issues outlining, like Jessie Bracegirdle before him, his extensive field work and studies actually made in his imagination from the comfort of his dingy desk .
But there was only so much bullshit he could produce for the demands of monthly copy. And even his capacity got constipated.
Anglers forgot him largely, but still fished to the mythical, specific morning afternoon and evening rises that he perpetuated, and they kept finding new and elaborate ways of sticking completely superfluous green egg balls to a caddis dry fly pattern adding more ripples to the confusion.
That is until the internet and flyfishing forums, where again with more time and even less care who he offends, Malcolm Dumpling again had an audience of gullible beginners to preach too and he chose the self-deprecating moniker of “Wind knot”!
Should anyone with knowledge and reason come along, his deflection techniques in arguments and witty come downs discredited any opposition. With Google at his finger tips he could be an expert on everything and find a counter argument for any logic.
He became a self-proclaimed expert on fly lines; on casting; on fly rods; on tippet material; on rubber crotchless waders. And much like Wollop in a muddy cow meadow, he set out to discredit the rod manufacturers based on his inability to cast their products and blamed them for his inadequacies. Especially ones that had ‘expert’ casters contributing to the design process. Two birds with one stone for the two footed tackle..
“Oh how it made me laugh” He would start his latest rant. “How the renowned champion caster makes these silly unrealistic claims to be able to do things with his rod, that we all actually can do, as a transparent marketing ploy for his own overpriced rods”.
“Oh how it made me smile” ….. “The claims of the manufactures that they have found a better technology or techniques of production. It’s lies, all rods and lines are exactly the same as the ones mass produced in China only an idiot or a marketing exec’ would claim otherwise”
Oh how it makes me smirk… The gullible idiots who spend more than 50 quid on a rod, and expect it to be any better than the cheapest on the market.
Oh how it makes me laugh…. So called instructors who quote the five essentials as a truth, I’ve already fully discredited the works of Bill Gammell on my “Casting expert thread” as utter rubbish,
Wollop would be so proud of his modern prodigy. A bullshitter for the modern age tossing not a pebble, but handfuls of gravel to disturb the lake surface of knowledge.
In a small town in Wales, on the high street and around the houses and farms in the valley, where the usual businesses trade their wares, or wear their trade clothes even, you will find Jones the butcher; Jones the shoe maker; Jones the undertaker; Jones the baker; Jones the plumber; Jones the blacksmith etc.
This particular sleepy valley also had Jones the caster, also known to many as Jones the boffin.
If your name was Jones the caster and you were the British distance champion with a first class honours physics degree, a Phd in Wave function or some such other mind bending physics , then guaranteed boyo, you’d be first in line for a pre-emptive strike from Windknot to discredit you and publicly humiliate you if you dared to raise your head on his forum.!
This was his bloody patch and how dare you show up on it and contradict him with your knowledge and experience. From the safety of a keyboard, where he can afford to be even more insulting than his school playground days, and less worried about litigious content than his journalist days, to take on anyone with any level of fabrication and face no real consequences.
It’s like the internet was developed for his own creature comforts.
On a particularly basic flaw in the understanding of the laws of physics, which Wind knot was using to, as usual, misinform beginners by discrediting perceived wisdom with his own crackpot theories and inability to grasp basic facts. Gentle Jones the Caster politely corrected the assertion, using his knowledge and greater understanding, believing he was adding a valuable contribution to the debate for which people might actually be thankful, and eagerly expected some respectful response.
Little did he realise his every word would be ridiculed cruelly and unreasonably. And despite his international standing in the field, he would be accused of having a woeful misunderstanding of basic physics and his naive interpretation of the 2nd law of motion and told that he should maybe try reading up Newton before make any more stupid comments and making an even bigger ass of himself.
Nobody had ever be so publicly disrespectful of Jones the physics. No one ever had cause to, he was a gentle soul.
And so now Jones reads the bullshit occasionally and bristles at the misinformation being peddled to learners but decides not to get involved. Casting instructors, guides, international competitors, talented and knowledgeable amateurs have all tried to stem the flood of misinformation but realised it’s a battle that’s not worth picking as Wind knot will never back down even after 20,000 posts he will keep pedalling rubbish while delivering insults.
It is no longer “the truth will out” in this age, but it’s the Bullshit that usually gets through. Despite the world wide web and information super highways and open access to all, sadly it is the ‘truth’ and ‘facts’ that suffer and the ‘New Narrative’ that sticks. Information delivered by egotistical narcissists who care nothing for the quality or accuracy of the content. Later day Wallops!
And the moral of the tail, is forgotten, I did have one, honest, but its completely slipped my mind.
Oh…. and the reason Fly fishermen the world over, fish at stupid times and miss the best bits on the day , Its all to do with a randy old fantasist, who overslept, and his obsession with an enormous pair of jugs.
True story that!
Chris Avery is currently in hiding in the Lake District but will be wader’d up and back in the Willowbrook with a post driver next week.