Back to the sixties, the nostalgic Oliver Kite.

[Dave]

[video=youtube;WPmSDtfVwr4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPmSDtfVwr4[/video]

[video=youtube;R3UWaVnxbnY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3UWaVnxbnY[/video]


Oliver Kite was a major in WW2, a naturalist, a fisherman, a writer, an expert of some nymph patterns, and a tv presenter in the sixties.
All around countryman.

He was renowned because he seemed to have this uncanny ability, for the wildlife to come to him.

 

[Dave]

[video=youtube;YBvKtVRElLU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBvKtVRElLU[/video]

[video=youtube;s34CD2_R9hI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s34CD2_R9hI[/video]

 

[Klenchblaize]

Just watched the Grayling Festival and it’s a wonderfully enjoyable piece of significant importance in terms of a social document.

Speaks of an idyllic way of life never to be fully recaptured albeit some will no doubt argue that is no bad thing if they are particularly exercised by our long association with and concern for class.

Thanks for posting these.

K

 

[Dave]

My thoughts exactly, it harkens back to a life, which just seems better than the ones we lead today.

And it was only 50 years ago. I'd go so far as to say we've swapped it for something far poorer. The class system if anything has become worse.

 

[Joonsy]

that brought back memories of some of the old names like Hugh Falkus (his book ''The Stolen Years'' is worth reading) and Frank Sawyer who invented the fishing method Oliver Kite used, why even the bumbling Terry Thomas of Angling Today programme in the 70s seems to have been forgotten. Another was Tom Williams who used to write in the Angling Times and made a film about his life as a riverkeeper on the Hampshire Avon, I think it's on youtube.

 

[Klenchblaize]

You may enjoy this site:
http://www.caughtbytheriver.net/

K

 

[boatman]

Great films but why is such not available today. If I want to do a bit of fishing, paddling etc I do. Inns can be almost guaranteed to do decent meals now which they certinly could not 50 years ago. We can turn the telly off and read, we can find places with no people or places where a chum enhances the day. What we don't have if deference from the lower orders towards the tweed clad. And a very good thing.

 

[Klenchblaize]

Great films but why is such not available today. If I want to do a bit of fishing, paddling etc I do. Inns can be almost guaranteed to do decent meals now which they certinly could not 50 years ago. We can turn the telly off and read, we can find places with no people or places where a chum enhances the day. What we don't have if deference from the lower orders towards the tweed clad. And a very good thing.

I chose the words "never to be fully recaptured" very carefully.

K

 

[nic a char]

even in Kite's day there were dinosaurs ranting about "not drai flai is it" = not very "sporting/cricket"
and even today some boast about catching in dry fly...

 

[Adze]

Better then than now? Just for the eradication of smallpox and polio (almost - come on Pakistan, you can do it!) I'd rather stick where I am thanks.

The 'Golden Age' we've had portrayed in the likes of Downton and the rest of the costume dramas never really happened. It was colder, damper, more ridden with disease and with precious little by way of medical assistance unless you were one of a very privileged few who could afford it.

 

[Janne]

Nothing was better then than now. The chemicals used in agriculture were dangerous. Cars were crap.
When it comes to fishing, the lines were much weaker than today, the rods too. Most reels were semi unusable, untill ABU from Svängsts in Sweden started designing quality reels.
I was there, and I do not miss it!

Just remember the injection needles of past. Thick and blunt compared to now. Painful!

 

[santaman2000]

Nothing was better then than now. The chemicals used in agriculture were dangerous. Cars were crap.....

Matter of opinion really. The 50s and 60s were the golden age for muscle cars for ordinary people.

 

[Janne]

Matter of opinion really. The 50s and 60s were the golden age for muscle cars for ordinary people.

Maybe in the US. In Europe we had VW, Renault and Fiat. On the other side of the Iron border they had Trabant, Moskvitch and Skoda.
( not mentioning the British cars, to embarassing even today!

You bread was crap. The beer undrinkablr. The diseases killed and the needles just as thick as ours!

 

[santaman2000]

....You bread was crap. The beer undrinkablr. The diseases killed and the needles just as thick as ours!

Again, a matter of opinion. We had, and still have real cornbread, yeast rolls, banana bread, and sourdough bread; back then there was no such thing as light beer, it was all full strength; and the needles are still as thick as they ever were (we've just shifted to disposable ones which are more sanitary) and new diseases have replaced the old ones.

 

[nic a char]

Better then than now? Just for the eradication of smallpox and polio (almost - come on Pakistan, you can do it!) I'd rather stick where I am thanks.

The 'Golden Age' we've had portrayed in the likes of Downton and the rest of the costume dramas never really happened. It was colder, damper, more ridden with disease and with precious little by way of medical assistance unless you were one of a very privileged few who could afford it.

Right on Adze

 

[nic a char]

"The class system if anything has become worse"
so many Scots want independence because of:
- schemes like the community buy-outs
- the un/elected posh-boy system at westminster
- the 3 main political party lies called "the vow"

 

[Klenchblaize]

I wouldn’t argue with the assertion we are better off in terms health, wealth and material possessions but when I said "idyllic" it was as much a reference to how those 4 Gentlemen may also have viewed their good fortune, mindful at least one I believe fought in two brutal wars. Grayling fly fishing with intermissions for homemade wine, tea and fruitcake may seem a little too Home Counties for some of the BCUK membership but as contrast to total recall of comrades cut down as they went forth from trenches I’ll not begrudge them their brief moment in the sunlit uplands.

K

 

[boatman]

If you want nostalgia then read Shanks's Pony. A Study Of Walking by Morris Marples. Gives a taster of those who wrote about walking and the open air from Roman times. Nearer the era of the videos we have gentleman academics who went on the "tramp". One of my favourite books but with the hazard that I had to read most of the books extracted in it. Well worth doing to follow Hillaire Belloc on his Path to Rome or The Gentle Art of Tramping by Graham Stephen Graham whose books can take you through Europe and even to Canada, he does wild camp without permission as in fact do most of the early walkers. Not walking but shooting and the country read the books of BB.

 

[santaman2000]

I wouldn’t argue with the assertion we are better off in terms health, wealth and material possessions but when I said "idyllic" it was as much a reference to how those 4 Gentlemen may also have viewed their good fortune, mindful at least one I believe fought in two brutal wars. Grayling fly fishing with intermissions for homemade wine, tea and fruitcake may seem a little too Home Counties for some of the BCUK membership but as contrast to total recall of comrades cut down as they went forth from trenches I’ll not begrudge them their brief moment in the sunlit uplands.

K

This and more. More in that they were a generation who not only enjoyed the pleasures they did have, they worked (successfully!) to provide the improvements that have been cited as making our own time better. In short, they lived with optimism and hope. I'm not so sure that's as common now.

 

[boatman]

This and more. More in that they were a generation who not only enjoyed the pleasures they did have, they worked (successfully!) to provide the improvements that have been cited as making our own time better. In short, they lived with optimism and hope. I'm not so sure that's as common now.

Not all had optimism. A pre WW2 book by Odhams was full of things to do cheaply like travel or boating, because "many boys and girls have seen hopes blighted in their careers". Another on how to make a small living includes a section on smallholding and tells the story of a man who lost all great ambitions in the Great War and contents himself with his smallholding which returns a modest income. His wife did teas for tourists, presumably extra for "An egg with your tea?". Apparently contented but scratching a living he was not casting a dry fly for fish.