Removing the large items from around the box I found a fine layer of various detritus and dust on the bottom. And there in one corner was an upwing spinner, decayed as far as to leave just a paper-thin body shell. Heaven knows during which season it came to find itself there. It might have been an olive upright, but I wasn’t sure. Feeling that warm and slightly intangible connection to the river one still feels when not actually there, I dug out the camera and photographed. I then picked it up, examined it closely, and gave it a gentle tap. It disintigrated into tiny pieces, joining the rest of the dust and detritus in the bottom of the box. I wondered how it had managed to stay in one piece for so long, hidden away from all the random junk that lives in there.

I couldn’t help consider how long it would take for the rest of the box’s contents to reach a similar state of decay, poised between form and dust. Let’s hope at least the shiny aluminium reel has a few years left.

Well, and I do love the true randomness of this, I was contacted the other day by someone who’s blog I linked to in that post. She kindly took the time to inform me, and I’m now passing this on, that the Cube can be purchased again online. Find it here. It’s a neat thing actually, although truth be told I’ve since migrated my storage solution to new pastures. May all your Cubes dominate.

River Tweed plea to kill humpback pink salmon.

Not sure the whole ‘humpback’ thing was necessary in the title but it does add a certain medieval, get-them-in-the-stocks sort of feel.

Had to happen really, things were getting out of hand..

Catching the Impossible, a wonderful piece of fishing program making, shown last Sunday morning on Channel 4.

Catch up using the 4OD service.

But I think there comes a time when enough is enough. The left boot is in a particularly bad state, with the entire upper boot now threatening to come away from the remaining sole unit.

Both boots are currently held together with 2.5″ nails which I’ve hammered through the soles and into/out of the uppers. I feel I’ve had pretty good mileage out of them, particularly given that friends of mine with the same boots used them for barely a season before replacement.

So I’ve been on the lookout for a replacement pair which don’t cost the earth. On Sunday I made an misfortuned visit to an unnamed giant fishing shop in Glasgow. Due in large part to my own absorption in choosing tapered leaders I overshot the closing time and ran out of time to try new boots. So now I’m looking at mail order, or one of Edinburgh’s few tackle shops.

I quite like the look of the Orvis Clearwater boots (I have the same line in waders), but I’m not sure about sizing… Perhaps this week I will have to get down to the local store and try some out. The much-touted Orvis warranty seems like a good idea with items like waders and boots.

Many anglers seems to view items like waders and boots as completely disposable, only expecting a season or two out of a pair at best. Mr Corporate over at urbanflyfisher.com and I have discussed this before, both agreeing that anglers should expect much more of their often overpriced gear. A season or two for a £200 pair of giant plastic socks? Barmy if you ask me, but perhaps I’m already becoming a tight old git completely out of touch with the ‘modern way’.

About three quarters of the way across the field I finally noticed the peaty bogs. Unfortunately it was somewhat ex post facto, as I discovered one of them as part of the act of falling into its deepest corner. During the process of becoming embedded thigh deep in the goo I managed to roll backwards, sit down hard on my rear end, and thus reshape the curvature of my (rather expensive) fancy weigh-net. It was a graceful moment.

I like my weigh-net, and before last May I particularly liked its nice rounded shape, which makes landing fish an easy task. After crawling out of the bog, I sat down to survey the damage. I’m not sure what the probability is of landing precisely on the wrong part of a landing net, at precisely the wrong angle, but someone had obviously rolled the dice enough times. That or I’ve got a wide ass.

I now own a landing net which looks like its been in an altercation with John McEnroe. It has a buttock-shaped indentation along one of its sides which acts to somewhat reduce the beauty of that curvature I mentioned back there. Fortunately the weigh-bit of the weigh-net was not damaged during its rough and tumble with my rear end. Let’s just say things could have been a lot worse.

So the question I’m now posing myself, as I sit and contemplate such important matters in the middle of winter is, can what is bent be unbent? That is a deep question. Thankfully not as deep as it could have been, but still quite deep. Half way towards the deep end I’d say, before being rescued from certain disaster.

I’ve thought about clamping it in a vice and using pliers to try and reshape it, but I’m afraid I’ll never get back that smooth, circular curve. I’ve thought about just hitting it with a hammer and hoping. But I’m no salmon angler. Finally I’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing that can reliably reverse a buttock-shaped problem is another buttock. An anti-buttock. The main issue posed by this solution is where to locate an anti-buttock.

Over these past months I’ve been discretely on the lookout for an anti-buttock, but so far I’ve not made a confirmed sighting. I’m not sure what the problem is, but I think it might have something to do with bosoms. No I mean bosons. Easy mistake to make. Where was I?

Ok, so I need an anti-buttock to reshape my dented landing net. Hope that makes sense, it does seems simple enough.

What does an anti-buttock look like then? Given that anti-particles are kind of like a mirror image of particles, I reckon that the closest I’m going to get to an anti-buttock is a buttock reflected in a mirror. So what I need to do now is to somehow conspire to fall on my landing net, purely by accident, landing the right way, on the right part of the net, and all while looking into a mirror. I know this sounds like it could end up as part of a Channel 5 late-night program on bizzare A&E cases (I don’t even like hamsters), I’m sure that with the right execution I could be onto a winner. Well, hopefully not onto a winner, but you know what I mean.

So at the end of the most innuendo-clad Tamanawis post of the decade, I shall head off and position the mirror. Oh what do you know, it’s already positioned.. How did that happen?