His big beef, inevitably, is water abstraction. He fumes that the level of water which can be stolen upriver is assessed on the basis of the last calendar year, which means that 2003, for instance, was identified as wet because of what happened in January and February, despite the endless dry months that followed. In 2004, by early spring the river was at a June level, and matters have been worse in 2005. Yet Swindon was permitted to divert even more water than it was taking already – and none of this returned to the Kennet. Here is a sad and familiar story throughout the south of England, a grave threat to the future of our chalk streams. Whitehall planners continue to approve massive housing developments, heedless of how much water our modest river systems can spare for diversion to ever-growing conurbations. If the countryside of southern England loses its rivers – and several are desperately depleted – then a vital artery of rural life will be severed.
I suggested to Stephen that almost all the mistakes people make in life are things they miss out on, not things they do. He nodded. ‘There was this chap who had a rod here – very successful businessman. In five years, he never got to the river once. He was just too busy. Now’s he’s dead. It seems such a waste, not to have done something you really like doing.’ For himself, he says unhesitatingly that he has the life of his choice. He revels in feeling master of his own destiny: ‘This is good. The world comes to you, rather than you having to go to it.’ And those of us who fish with Stephen feel lucky that we should have the privilege of his company and his wisdom for many seasons yet.
EVERY REAL HUNTER, shooter and fisher accepts the weather as part of the game of chance that makes up sport. If we get soaked walking hedges in pursuit of a pheasant, the experience doubles the pleasure of lying in a bath afterwards with a whisky and a book. If our rivers and lakes were forever in perfect order, where would be the thrill and surprise about hooking a trout or salmon? G.E.M. Skues wrote a salutary short story about a man who died and found himself on a river where the fish were rising continuously. He thought he was in heaven, netting trout after perfect trout, until he grew to understand that this was an exquisite form of torture devised for the other place. Most of us practise field sports because we love to commune with wild things in wild places. The whimsy of the British weather is inseparable from the experience. Shooting high pheasants in a gale is difficult, because the target is usually travelling in two directions at once, but the thrill is doubled if you hit one of these superbirds.
The elements influence fishing even more decisively. William Blake observed wryly: ‘The weather for catching fish is that weather, and no other, in which fish are caught.’ One July Monday, I found myself plying a small double across a Scottish salmon river. The gillie frowned gloomily and observed: ‘It’s a fortnight since we had rain. We need the water up a couple of inches.’ On Tuesday a fierce upstream wind made casting difficult even for experts. The gillie shook his head: ‘The two best fishers I know go to sleep on the bank when there’s an upstream wind.’ On Wednesday, heavy thunderstorms stirred the current into cold chocolate soup: ‘It should be great tomorrow if the rain stops and the river starts falling,’ said the gillie in real excitement. The river rose a trifle on Thursday. On Friday, at last it was steady, though highly coloured. We caught some fish on big, bright flies, and thought eagerly of Saturday, when we would have the best beat on the river. But next morning there was more rain and more colour. We landed the odd salmon, but never reaped the sort of grand harvest that on Monday we had been sure must come.
Now, do not interpret this as a fisherman’s whinge. We enjoyed a wonderful week on wonderful water and caught a respectable number of fish. I am simply making the point that ours was the sort of climatic experience every angler knows. Only once or twice in a lifetime do most of us get the chance to fish through several successive days of weather when fish and gauge marry, to yield a bonanza.
Shooting is a bit more reliable, but not much. About one day in three, conditions are the way we want them. The wind is blowing in the right direction, rain is holding off, the sun is not too bright. By contrast, there are those mornings in August when the sun is blazing magnificently, making it a pleasure to walk the hill, but young grouse receive no help from a breeze to lift them forward. After being flushed for the first time, they drop exhausted into the heather well in front of the butts, and refuse to get up again. September and October grouse are stronger and much more challenging, but by then the threat of mist or rain is never far distant. Few sporting experiences match the misery of receiving a priceless invitation to shoot grouse, then spending two days at the foot of the hill waiting for a ‘clag’ to lift.
Come pheasant-time, most of us reckon that a perfect December or January outing means an overcast day with some wind, when in Patrick Chalmers’ phrase ‘the snow-powdered stubble rings hard to the tread’. Yet a white landscape looks more romantic to guns than to keeper and beaters. It is a tough challenge, to persuade birds to leave patches of snow-covered brambles, to keep a beating line tramping a wood in which white lumps of wetness are flopping off the branches onto every beater’s neck. On such days, the sight of dead pheasants precipitates in some of us a spasm of squeamishness. There is a pathos about a bird lying limp amid a cluster of feathers and pink spots of blood on the snow, which seldom troubles the senses in other conditions.
Yet in modern British winters, rather than snow we are likely to get mild, muddy, still, sunny days on which birds drift low over the guns with wings set, or others when torrential rain causes the water to run in streams down the barrel rib. Few of us can fib convincingly enough to make ourselves believe that we like competing in such conditions, when the stock of the gun is slipping in the hand and we are struggling to see coveys or flushes through the squalls. Gene Kelly may have enjoyed singing in the rain, but how many of us, deep down, like shooting in it? On a Saturday morning not long back, the phone rang in Hastings Towers at 8 a.m. Glancing out of the window at a torrential downpour, with more of the same promised all day, I experienced a surge of hope that my pheasant host was ringing to cancel. Not a chance, of course. Already some guns had been in their cars for half an hour, while beaters and pickers-up were congregating from all over the region. Shooting dates are fixed six or nine months before they take place. Not even a death in the family is likely to change them.
About here, hardy veterans of the Norfolk coast, the Northumbrian hills, the Cornish valleys, start muttering to each other: ‘Not much of a sportsman this chap Hastings, is he? Doesn’t like getting his feet wet!’ Yet my purpose in these jottings is sometimes to suggest sentiments which lots of people secretly share, but don’t like to admit. Of course we are all out there doing our thing, even when cats and dogs are plummeting down. But most of us, in such circumstances, wish we were at home in front of the fire. The only case for shooting in the rain is that, like looking at other people’s holiday snaps, it is so wonderful when it is over.
Modern clothing is much more effective than the kit of fifty years ago. Encased in thermals and Gore-Tex, it should be possible to avoid ever being cold or wet again. That is, if one stays perfectly still. The problem about shooting is that it requires moving our arms and legs, sometimes quite energetically. Every extra sweater makes it marginally harder to swing a gun. On a really rough day, those of us who affect enough clothing to impress a moon-walker find it difficult to raise a flask to our lips, never mind take aim at a rocketing pheasant. A majority of shooters perform best when wearing least – no, I don’t mean quite that, but shirtsleeves anyway. We become slower and clumsier with each layer of protection.
Unless it is very cold, I never wear gloves in the rain, because they become such wretched things