Take control

Tips to help you keep weight off

In these times of emergency Waffle and I have been anxiously watching the weather forecasts. For days the temperature refused to nudge much above five degrees, a freezing wind came tearing up the east side of the country and yet the sun blazed away. All in all, unpropitious conditions for brown trout. What we were waiting for was a rise in temperature. Or at least enough to rouse a semi-comatose trout and boot insect life into action. And then, somewhere around 1 April, the sun shone a bit harder and the wind dropped, albeit not much, and the temperature crept up a degree. It seemed silly not to give it a go. Wherein lay a moral and legal dilemma.

Did driving from a house surrounded by nothing but fields, to a river bank with no one else on it constitute my one-a-day “exercise,” or was it a flagrant breach of lockdown laws?

Following consultation with Waffle over coffee and Bonios, we took a view that biking, rather than driving, three miles to the river was, on balance, within the spirit of the moment and certainly more acceptable than performing a dance of death around rival shoppers in front of Tesco’s reduced shelf.

Once we got to the river I was not to wade for fear of falling in – we didn’t want to bother the emergency services in a time of crisis – and I was to take the girlfriend (an intrepid cyclist locked down with me for the duration – result) as lifeguard, when not wrestling with Hilary Mantel in the fishing hut.

Waffle, who is not good with bikes or roads, would, unfairly, just have to stay at home and be walked later. Anyway, I had nearly brained myself the same week by standing on a rake, something that only ever happens to Benny Hill or Oor Wullie, and nearly removed a big toe trying to start the rotary mower, so biking and fishing appeared less dangerous than gardening. (Six thousand accidental deaths occur each year in or around the home. Better out of it.)

And come to think of it, fishing is part of my job. The bicycling was hell but, like cod liver oil, good for us. As it happened, the wind actually increased and the temperature, if anything dropped, so casting became unpleasant and I lost two Orange and Partridge Spider flies, one in the gorse and one on a rock.

So it was back to the hut for soup and a sandwich, hard-boiled eggs and Kit Kats and wasn’t Henry VIII a bastard? Where is climate change when you need it?

More to the point, where is a cheap electric bike when you need it? ■