West End Farm, 1979

West End Farm is in a valley just to the North of the A44 in Docklow, just outside Leominster.

Tam and Bruce had been here before and regaled me with stories of easy to catch carp, huge breakfast, 'lock ins' and rough cider and so arranged a further weekend in the autumn and I got the nod. They also had to call Fred. Fred was a Brummie and had spent most of his life as a compare/comedian in British Legions around the Midland. He was a scream apparently.

So we set off. I had only my old 9 foot rod and had only caught 2 carp in my life. The prospect of more (and easy to catch? Not carp surely) seemed too good to be true. I don't know what West End farm is like now, but then I recall one lake, which look as if it might be the larger of the ones on the map. You stayed in the Farm and the plan was to get up with the Sun, fish until breakfast (large 'death by cholesterol' type), go fishing again, back for lunch and so on. Until the pub up the road opened. So after a long afternoon catching obliging carplets we return to the pub and cross ply ourselves with proper cider and discuss metaphysical matters such as BNWHM, fish, whether Blue Oyster Cult are a proper rock band and probably girls and then locked in, stagger back to the farm at some ridiculous hour on Saturday.

Saturday morning dawned, literally. At that time I had become immersed in Shotokan and my custom on rising was to stretch my legs in a variety of outlandish and not relaxing ways. It was cold (meaning sub zero). It hurt, trust me. It wasn't helped by a variety of sarcastic and ill informed remarks by Bruce pertaining to the activity (some would say I'm not a morning person, they'd be wrong, I'm not a person at all until 11am or so and at least one cup of fresh brewed Arabian). I stood up out of a side splits and flicked a foot jovially at my room mate and by pure fluke (or poor judgment, pick one), hit him square in the solar plexus, which ended the chatter. Sitting him on his own feet and stretching his back out to keep him breathing, I kept the 'accident' side of the incident more or less to myself…well almost.

We hit the lake all bygones and I cannot remember that much of the fishing, for the whole weekend in fact, which is not like me. The alcohol probably didn't help in this respect. One of the great things about youth is the ability to burn the candle at all ends with no apparent ill effects, save recalling it.

More carp were caught and fried food consumed. It was a new experience to me that any fish was easy to catch (except perch and gudgeon). Float fishing corn we all caught fish but I lagged well behind the others, with a shorter rod and less experience of this type of fishing. I was probably trying too hard. The Dyke carp were sneaky, wary and hard to get near never mind catch. Having carp hurl themselves at the hook was odd. But with my Angling times stick float and 6lb line I had little trouble and enjoyed myself. These days this kind of fishing has little appeal but after years of working hard for fish, this seemed a good idea - many of us think differently now, but that was then.

The highlight of the day was Fred turning up. Fishing degenerated in to a tennis match of volleyed very rude insults with occasional jokes that Mr Manning would be proud of, but these days would be met with embarrassed and muffled laughs. We laughed out loud. The day wore on and eventually with evening coming Fred announced we would go to the Legion in Leominster, because he could get us into any Legion in the Midlands. He bloody did too.

After a happy day catching carp under 6lb, we togged up and hit the British Legion for an evening of beer and bingo. After enough very reasonably priced beer that's surprisingly bearable. After a gyratory introduction a young lady asked one of ale swilling trio to dance. Tricky. Cleary you need to say yes, because you never know, but street cred with your angling mates is also an important factor. I accept, weak I know. We do a slow circuit of the floor while I studiously avoid eye contact with my friends and ignore various gestures and mouthed suggestions. I was asked what we were discussing when herself was attracting our attention. I suggested we were wondering who herself found to her taste and we had a bet on it. "What happened?" she asked all breathy innocence. "I lost". So, dancing over and story recounted, all street cred returned, getting the girl but putting your mates first. Yeah right. But I needed the lift home for sure.

Sunday, with less of a hangover than Saturday progressed gently in the autumn sunshine, with pauses for breakfast and more than a few carp, until mid afternoon and time to move back to real life.

Strangely we didn't do it again, but it was a blast all in all.