On the evening of my celebratory meal after completing my last Munro I overheard bits of conversation from a table to my rear.
There were two men talking about salmon fishing. They were well spoken and probably fairly highly placed business executives (just guessing) and very serious enthusiasts of their sport talking with an intensity appropriate to a multi billion pound takeover deal. After a while they were joined by two other gents who were again well spoken country types and from ensuing talk I deduced that they were probably agents or very senior keepers for the estate where the other two intended to pursue Salmo salar at vast expense, and there was no doubt the keeper types were operating on a very smooth p.r. basis, going along with and humouring the others.
The original two, it transpired had come from fishing The Tweed where they had had little success. They were complaining about trout fishermen who had been catching sea trout and having good sport at far less expense. They then started name dropping to the two smoothie keepers mentioning well known personalities in the exclusive world of Scottish game fishing, and a fair amount of dirt dishing followed from both factions of this quartet. I got the impression that the keepers were not confident that our two heroes would have any more success on their water than on The Tweed, and they were making veiled preparatory statements naming weather and lack of water and other phenomena as culprits that may provide them with some excuse on the day of reckoning.
What amused me about all this was that I could imagine a similar future scenario with two new “heroes” and the same keepers where the keepers were telling the new guys about the two pains in the bum that they had to nanny a couple of weeks ago.
By the way, I had smoked salmon as a starter.
There were two men talking about salmon fishing. They were well spoken and probably fairly highly placed business executives (just guessing) and very serious enthusiasts of their sport talking with an intensity appropriate to a multi billion pound takeover deal. After a while they were joined by two other gents who were again well spoken country types and from ensuing talk I deduced that they were probably agents or very senior keepers for the estate where the other two intended to pursue Salmo salar at vast expense, and there was no doubt the keeper types were operating on a very smooth p.r. basis, going along with and humouring the others.
The original two, it transpired had come from fishing The Tweed where they had had little success. They were complaining about trout fishermen who had been catching sea trout and having good sport at far less expense. They then started name dropping to the two smoothie keepers mentioning well known personalities in the exclusive world of Scottish game fishing, and a fair amount of dirt dishing followed from both factions of this quartet. I got the impression that the keepers were not confident that our two heroes would have any more success on their water than on The Tweed, and they were making veiled preparatory statements naming weather and lack of water and other phenomena as culprits that may provide them with some excuse on the day of reckoning.
What amused me about all this was that I could imagine a similar future scenario with two new “heroes” and the same keepers where the keepers were telling the new guys about the two pains in the bum that they had to nanny a couple of weeks ago.
By the way, I had smoked salmon as a starter.
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