I was at the lake by seven. Too early for anyone sane, but the light looked good and the air had that cool stillness before the insects wake up. Coffee from the flask, bread already drying at the edges. The float sat clean in the water, just a faint ripple. Nothing for the first hour. …
I was just looking for a sandwich. That’s all it was. Took the wrong turn off the CV-something-or-other near a lake I hadn’t fished in years. The sign was bent, maybe hit by a tractor or just neglected. One of those villages where the shutters are always halfway down, even when it’s not siesta. There …
Trevor turned up wearing a sunhat big enough to shade a caravan and holding a rod tube that looked like it had been nicked from a skip. Hadn’t seen him in years. He used to come out every now and then with the lads, but life happened — dodgy hip, some drama with his daughter, …
I don’t like to admit this, but I screamed. Not a little yelp. Not a manly grunt. A proper full-throated squeal. Like a goat falling off a cliff. It was a bee. Not just any bee—a mutant, sunburnt, Spanish demon bee with wings like bin lids and the attitude of a nightclub bouncer. It dive-bombed …
You ever gone fishing for a quick afternoon and ended up sleeping in your car because your mate left the radio on for six hours? We didn’t mean to. Honest. It was supposed to be a short one—pop down to Embalse de Mequinenza, chuck a few lures, maybe spot a zander if the water was …
I’ve made some dreadful decisions in the heat. Once welded a hull in Seville in August wearing jeans. Another time I tried to sleep inside a zipped bivvy with three mozzies and a gas stove. But that Saturday on Buendía—me, Glenn, and Rafa—takes the flan. The sun was mean. Not cheeky, not “ooh grab a …
It started with a pub bet and ended with a sunstroke-induced hallucination involving a talking carp. Summer of ’96. Maybe ’97. Back in Sunderland, we’d just had the wettest June since records began, and we were sick of dragging our gear through ankle-deep mud for a shot at a single sad tench. Then someone—I think …
I thought I was doing alright, y’know. I’d nailed “una cerveza” years ago, long before I even moved out here. Throw in a few confident nods, a thumbs-up, the odd gracias… job done. Fluent-ish. That illusion collapsed on a humid Tuesday morning in June, when I accidentally told my Spanish neighbour I’d like to adopt …
When I packed up everything in Cornwall and legged it to Spain at 60, most people figured I’d lost the bloody plot. “You’ll be back,” they said. “Miss the pubs, miss the rain, miss proper bacon.” I mean, yeah, maybe. Even I wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t making a complete hash of it. Barely spoke …