As regular readers will know only too well the fishing hut at the Tarn has been much in my thoughts just lately.  I suppose that there is a time honoured tradition about blokes and sheds (or huts), that quiet often secret place where you can go to escape the hamster wheel of every day life, free from the tyranny of more mundane tasks such as decorating the kitchen.  Free to think loftier thoughts about trout and salmon and put a fractured world to a semblance of rights.

Now, coincidence is a strange phenomenon which, when it offers  favourable portents, gives one a little buzz of exited anticipation. You get to think that just maybe this is meant to be.  Possibly there is a current flowing in the scheme of things that will push aside the detritus of doubt and buggeration and confirms that what you plan is come of its time.

On opening the Weekend section of the Telegraph yesterday and turning to the Country pages imagine my surprise to find an article on fishing huts.  It would seem that Jo Orchard - Lisle has been roaming these isles seeking out those little havens on a bank. tracking down the ancient, modern and often quirky little shelters where anglers retreat to sink a dram or mull over just why the fish are being so uncooperative today.  Jo has compiled a book called simply 'Fishing Huts' which you can have in your Christmas stocking for £25.  He missed our own small haven at the Tarn, but seems to have found hundreds of other huts of all shapes, sizes and ages from Isaak Walton's temple on the Dove to a Nissan hut decked in flowers at Broadlands and an old bus on the Isle of Lewis.

This all leads me to the conclusion that the time is right to give our hut a bit of a lift and make it a place where members can sit out a sudden squall or turn their minds to lofty thoughts in comfort.  In short a place which the ancient institution of the MAA can call home.  Plans are well advanced, I have a budget and this week I will turn my mind to making the plans happen, ready to put to the next Council meeting on 15 November.

Ian