The gift of spring

I remember hoping, in the concluding sentences of my previous article, that by the time you found yourself reading it I should have caught the first trout of the season and that for a time at least it would have made me feel young again (Catlow’s notebook, 21 April).

Well, I managed one part of it. Something like a week before the article appeared, the first few trout of another season had indeed found their unwilling way into my net; in fact, a round dozen of them had done so, but the truth of the matter is that not a single one of them made me feel a year, a