SOUTH ISLAND VALLEY

The freezing wind blowing up the valley is broken by the hillock at my back as I sit and watch the fishing guide trying to get his Thermotank to boil some water for tea. The trouble, he tells us, is that there is no dry kindling - hardly surprising after three days of drizzle.

Mike, my fishing companion, is troubled by the weather. We have been battling all morning against the gusty conditions. He has caught and released a couple of trout. I still have to hook one. He desperately wants me to land one. I wonder sometimes if he is a true fisherman. Because fishing is not about catching fish. Fishing is revelling in your surroundings and having the time to contemplate, to think, as I am now.

For me the weather is perfect. High mountains tipped with snow look better, I think, viewed through the odd rain squall, with some cloud to lend them perspective. The instants of splendour which are snatched when the clouds part are more thrilling than the picture postcard look of this scenery on a bright sunny day. The glimpse of a thigh or the swell of a bosom are infinitely more titillating than the bare breasts and high cut panties of a topless barmaid.

The steep sides of this glen were planed millions of years ago by the sharp cutting edge of the glaciers which left their moraine like sawdust on the floor. The smooth stones and boulders vary from valley to valley. Here they are shades of grey, with striations which whorl and twirl like ossified candy. In some, the shell of some metazoan shellfish have left their mark which even millennia of rubbing and sanding cannot remove. One small chip is heart shaped and I pick it up to give to my darling when I get home, as a token of how much I still love her after all these years.

I sit and watch the changing patterns of the mist, the shimmer of the river flowing over the shiny stones. As is so often the case now alternating bouts of elation and depression buffet me. Events of the past five years have left their marks on me. Maybe time will remove them, or cover them with an impervious layer. But now I feel that to be too happy, to rejoice in the glory of this magnificent place, to warm myself in the companionship of a good friend, is to invite the stalking nemesis which will seek some awful price.

Mike mistakes my silence for gloom and tries to cheer me up with the promise of a fine day and plenty of fish tomorrow. I try and explain the euphoria of the moment, but all he sees is the greyness of the day.