The Secret Angler

You sometimes hear say you need a holiday to get over the holiday you’ve just had. Travel is often the worst part of it, even on British roads, what with the tailgaters, speeders and assorted arseholes who at some point managed to fool a driving examiner. But apart from the getting there, a holiday in the Yorkshire Dales should be peaceful, you would think. That’s where I’ve just been, not so much fishing but walking and looking at the rivers that flow across their rocky beds.

Alas, the Dales are not so peaceful thanks to numerous motorbikes that rumble and scream around the narrow roads, audible wherever you happen to be, even at the top of the hills. What’s this to do with angling? I’m thinking of the enthusiasm for old bikes expressed on fishing forums, the kind of machines that sound like a herd of flatulent cattle on approach, and smell like a petrol spill as they recede. There are plenty of examples on the Yorkshire roads, as well as the rumble of the big European bikes and scream of the Japanese two-wheelers, preferred by the younger riders who still believe they have a spare leg to lose.

The majority of riders, however, are old men, red-faced, bandy-legged, who only dismount to visit a greasy spoon to refuel their considerable bellies. In the little Yorkshire towns I watched their top-heavy waddle in leathers for the few yards of which they’re capable. Most are singletons; I wouldn’t be surprised if their little white beards have been repelling women for years. They like to ride around in small groups or gangs, which seems pointless considering they cannot talk to each other for many miles. I saw a bunch of riders with insignia on their backs, death’s head included, reminiscent of the criminal gangs on two wheels. Looking them up I discovered they are all service veterans offering a ‘true brotherhood’, although it takes ‘a long time’ — overtones of initiations. Regimental camaraderie insufficient? Unable to form relationships with partners?

The older leathermen do tend to ride at a slower pace; they’ve held on to four limbs all these years and want to keep it that way. The noise they make is still much louder than cars but not so much as the rising and falling scream of the yoof who know only two throttle positions, fully open and shut. Like children in kindergarten, they love the racket of a noisy toy. The dangers in this kind of riding show up in the statistics and I once witnessed the aftermath. The rear pannier was still rocking in the road when I drove up one winter’s night. The bike lay on its side, engine screaming and sending a pall of white smoke high into the air. The rider lay on the tarmac, one leg tapering to nothing. A thick pool of liquid, black under the sodium street lights, oozed from under his body. We called an ambulance and competent first aiders were quickly on the scene, but his motorcycling days were over.

Of course many people are unable to learn by example or have the imagination to think it could happen to them. For the walkers, the cyclists, the fishermen, all the mechanical noise pollution is ruining the Dales. Locals rejoiced during the lockdown when the biker tourists, literally touring with nowhere to go, had to stay home. They despair now the bikes are back on the quiet roads where their racket has the most impact.

All this motorised frivolity is an anachronism. Time they got off their arses and took up walking or cycling. That’s the way to see the landscapes of the Dales. They’ll live longer and look less ugly. And if you’re an angler indulging a passion for petrol consumption, keep in mind the disturbance you’re causing to other anglers in the river valley you’re roaring down. The rest of us can look forward to when the combustion engine is past and motorbikes in the country, outsized 4-wheel-drives in supermarket car parks, dumb blokes driving cars on the telly and all the rest of it are banished. Then we really can study to be quiet.

One day I may read a bad review of a fishing book but it could be a long time away. Nearly all reviews are favourable, not to say gushing. Many new publications are hailed as future classics, a bit like how some unimpressive pop stars are labelled geniuses. In this year’s issue of Salmo Trutta, the Wild Trout Trust’s annual, Neil Patterson goes wild in a review of David Profumo’s book on his fishing life, The Lightening Thread.

Now Profumo has never been a writer I’ve cared for, what with a tendency to overwrite and clutter his sentences with verbosity and archaisms. Patterson it seems has been infected with the same problem. He pours on the praise in a display of wordiness that matches Profumo’s. The book is a ‘collection of crafted essays’, ‘a deeply intelligent, virtuosically exuberant exploration’ of his extensive travels. Apart from wondering whether there is such a thing as an uncrafted essay, the rest of the hyperbole suggests to me that Profumo must be half great thinker, half great artist. And when the review suggests he is smarter than Chomsky, famed linguist and philosopher amongst other things, one feels that Patterson has gone so far overboard he is drowning in his own enthusiasms.

So can Lightening Thread live up to its billing? Unfortunately not. A fair chunk of the book’s opening can be read online. It begins in typical Profumo style with plenty of long winded erudition on the history of fishing, showy writing with Latin phrases and uncommon or even archaic words. His descriptions that are meant to show his love of angling become so cloying that his love for Roget’s Thesaurus is more obvious. In fairness there are some interesting historical points new to me, but to get to them there is a lot of stodge to push through first. In the second chapter the author calms down a little and writes about his early fishing experiences which coincide with the period of the Profumo Affair, the great Sixties scandal which forced his father to resign his ministerial post. Potentially of some interest, Profumo’s perceptions of his father’s problems are only briefly referred to; but then he was young at the time and has written about his family elsewhere.

Patterson enlists the support of ‘literary giants’ who apparently endorse Profumo’s book. Stoppard is a significant playwright, and McGuane has written probably the best fishing book in recent times, but Prue Leith and Loyd Grossman? It makes it impossible to take this overblown review seriously. I’m certainly not persuaded that this is a good book, let alone a classic. There are no doubt points of interest in Profumo’s global wanderings with a fishing rod. Like his father, who was able to live off his inherited wealth post-scandal, David Profumo presumably has never needed to earn a living. All that time to go fishing and write books is a privilege. Whether it is worth wading through the treacly prose to follow his adventures is a matter of personal taste.

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