Scotland in September was soundtracked with falling water…

Saturated by months of rain, every knee-high tussock on the Isle of Mull gurgled with a thousand tiny rivulets, and every rocky lochside path through the rhododendron thickets chattered inches-deep like a living stream.

Mares’ tails billowed white from every crag, pouring over precipitous shelves of volcanic rock and crashing in heavy veils across waves of bracken and myrtle, while hanging bogs and hillsides belched water into rivers that overtopped their low autumn meanders with startling, sterile clarity, rushing unfishably to the sea.

My latest guest blog has just gone live on the Financial Times’ How To Spend It ezine. Art writer and culture blogger Beatrice Hodgkin has recently taken over as my commissioning editor, so please do click on over to read the full text and make her day!

Update: an extended version of this piece has now been published in the Wild Trout Trust‘s annual journal Salmo Trutta.

Raw sewage and London’s Thames Tunnel?  Crunchable data on the social and community benefits of angling, from the banks of the Wandle to the wild hills of Assynt?

You’re right, it could only be my latest guest blog for the Financial Times’ How To Spend It lifestyle ezine… click on over to read and enjoy!

Since January this year, in my role as editor and lead blogger for the Wandle Piscators’ website, I’ve been contributing occasional guest blogs for the Financial Times’ lifestyle ezine, How To Spend It.

As I wrote shortly after I’d received the invitation from PR guru Drew Benvie and How To Spend It‘s deputy editor Maria Shollenbarger, masterminds of the site’s relaunch, what could I say but yes?

Then as now, this was a diamond-encrusted opportunity to get grassroots environmental concerns in front of an audience that’s probably more accustomed to sipping Cristal at 35,000 feet than grappling motorbikes and shopping trolleys out of the urban little River Wandle.

But all that eco-social messaging aside, I’ve also reckoned that this was a chance to spin out the meaning of the How to Spend It masthead rather more literally… and explore the idea that immersing yourself in angling’s mainstream and many side-channels can mean time well spent, and maybe even add up to a life well lived.

With subject-matter ranging from riverfly monitoring to the modern artistry of fishing with vintage Sage fly-rods, the mix of guest posts I’ve written so far is listed here.

Today, they’ve just been joined by my latest: an account of a fish lit evening with Charles Rangeley-Wilson, Chris Yates, Luke Jennings and John Andrews, all organised by that cultural compass Caught by the River. Please click on over to How To Spend It to read and enjoy!