After much hassle the fish finally went into the Tarn on Thursday afternoon.  Feedback so far suggests that these are good fish, well finned and tailed and are providing good sport.  They should certainly help to improve the visit to catch ratio which has been declining over the past couple of weeks with one or two nil returns creeping in which I hate to see.

Now a recommendation for a little light summer reading for all those of you about to head off for your annual summer slob out.  I was lent a book last week "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" by Paul Torday.  On turning to the first few pages I got a chill of a past life colliding with the present.  The book opens with an exchange of memo's between Civil Servants including some between the Private Offices of certain Government ministers.  Some of you may know that for 25 years I stalked the corridors of power in various Ministries and my formative years in the early 1970's were spent as a correspondence clerk to a  succession of Ministers. The book is hauntingly familiar and Paul Torday must know someone in Government circles to write with such wicked accuracy about the machinations of Whitehall.  Basically the book is about a project to introduce Atlantic salmon into the Wadi's of Yemen so that the calming and beneficial influence of salmon fishing can spread a balm of sang froid over the benighted region of the Middle East.  The wit and humour are sharp and Torday has certainly done his home work on the underlying science so that the whole plot becomes absorbing and realistic enough to become believable.  It's the ideal hammock companion (apart from Liz Hurley that is).  Go out and buy a copy and enter the bizarre world of Dr Alfred Jones and the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence.

It's a great summer day here in the valley all the more so as in the last half hour our water supply has been restored.  The pipe burst down by the Crown yesterday afternoon so we have been subsisting on bottled water for the past few hours.  Newhouses looks like a refugee camp with pallets of water bottles dumped on the verges by Yorkshire water.  I have just managed to get a shower much to Sheila's relief as I spent all day yesterday cleaning out the goat house and spreading the accumulated muck. It's surprising just how pervasive the smell can be and how well it sticks to people.  My goats are now busy arranging the fresh straw to their liking.  This mainly involves seeing just how much of it you can eat whist sitting on it and trying to prevent the hens from pitching it out into the yard.

Ian