Tuft love for duck and duckling

THE OTHER day Andrew and I went fishing down at the lake. The wind was from the north-east and tradition has it that fishing is hopeless in an easterly wind. The sun was also glaring down, another bad sign.

We stuck it for an hour or so but we not only failed to stir a fish, we didn’t even spot a single one rising to a natural fly. It was obviously hopeless so we went back to the hut that we grandiosely call ‘The Lodge’, pulled out two chairs and opened a bottle of wine to drown our sorrows. We were joined by a number of ducks.

The land-owner permits a local gun club to stock mallard on the lake. A consignment had just arrived and, because they had been reared on a game farm, they were quite fearless. In fact they had contributed to the fishing difficulties because whenever they spotted a human figure on the shore they swam over in a tightly-packed flock in the hope of getting fed.