Lazy sunday

A book review:

The invoice from Medlar Press is dated 27^th September 2011, the book A Train to Catch, today the 6^th January 2012!

 I requested of The Boss that perhaps we had times in the day when the distractions of Radio 4 Extra were given a rest, and to stop me having an excuse of not reading my books. 

An excuse that has festered, in my head only, for considerable  time, when my reading has been reduced to holidays and very early mornings when the Barbel Fisher was close to the point of going to the printer and my sleepless nights of worrying if I had enough content.

So at around 11am the digital radio on the TV was switched off, and I started on Jon Berry’s book bought solely on the basis of enjoying his previous books;

A Can of Worms and Beneath the Black Water.The former becoming, in my view, the very best reference point for anything barbel. The later for being one of the few books that I’ve read once, and then picked it up straight away to read again.

The book is primarily trying to retrace train journeys carried out in the late 1800’s to the 1960’s to fish away from city/industrial squalor, to the countryside, the subtitle being, A return ticket to the golden age of fishing.

Jon takes us, giving a little history on the way, to Derbyshire and the trout streams, the mountains streams of Wales, the seaside towns of Looe, Southsea and Whitby, the Thames, the Hampshire Avon Royalty, the Norfolk Broads , Lake Windemere and the Scottish Highlands.

He fishes, he sometimes catches, but all in all reminds us of what used to be before Doctor Beeching short-sightedly, in my view, shut railway lines and closed vast areas of the country from the pleasures of rail journeys for our leisure in favour of the motor car. 

So it was 4pm when I started this review,  it follows intermittent  breaks for me to prepare the vegetables,  make the batter puds, cook the rib of beef Sunday lunch, and drink bottles of London Pride and Pedigree and assist The Boss drink a bottle of Hermitage, some of the remains of our Christmas stock. 

Having just finished the book I may well pick it up again, but I hear Johnnie Walker with the Sounds of the 70’s on in the background, so it probably won’t be today.

So in short, a very good read of 187 pages and highly recommended.