There are trout in the Glen, fish that have thrown up on the bank and speculation about how. We can hardly believe we have trout, it’s a good sign the water is clean. But our trout are dead. So good – so bad. The water odor has been acrid, a parched mean smell sharp in the cavity of the skull, less cloying than that other one that tickles the palette, of laundry detergent that flows normally through the Glen’s course, and of course there is also the sewage, so often reported from Banduff where it rises beyond the gorse. Our tiny river rises only a mile away, where once we got stuck in the bog and laughed ourselves silly, and now, just downstream, has a whole new school of children (and not fish) learning…
A fish in the grass, a river course
Silver springs is the name of an area on the north east of the city…Stream Hill falls down into the Glen and Spring Lane falls away from the Glen down into Blackpool.
It’s Monday and I realise I forgot about the last Sunday of the month of September and a promise to the Bride. Feeling neglectful and regretting the creeping business of life out of the pandemic pause that kept me free in the valley, the fish is speaking in tongues and I am hearing white noise.