Coming Home to Story

Captain Midnight here relaxing after a hard day’s fishing.

This week, Himself taught me everything he knows about Carp. It didn’t take long, a) because I’m a fast learner, and b) it turns out that he doesn’t know that much about our noble quarry. Not enough to catch them anyway.

We went in Rosie the Campervan to a secret location for a couple of days: a farm with a private lake, not far from the River Severn. It looked promising to me, not least because the lake was so small that there didn’t seem to be anywhere for the fish to hide.

It was a team effort. His job was to sit on his bottom by the water all day holding a fishing rod and staring at a tiny float; mine was to dig up tree roots, chew sticks and bark at anything that moved.

I did my job rather well

Himself got off to a decent start by landing a fish (which with typical hyperbole, he called a whopper) at the close of play on the first day. He was so pleased with himself that he insisted on photographing said beast before returning it to the water. I’m surprised he didn’t attempt a selfie although it was wriggling somewhat.

I’m sad to say that things went downhill the next day with only a handful of carp, whose proportions were so modest that one might more accurately call them bashful. For some reason, this was deemed to be my fault and I was obliged to spend hours on end tied to various trees to stop me running around on the bank.

Outrageous!

My only consolation is that, as you can see from the following clandestine snap on my spy camera, Himself spent nearly as much time tied to a tree as I did.

Serves him right, I’d say.