An old dog embraces a smart modern trick

Summer has arrived and the pre-season to-do list at High Park is ever-growing — but a 10-day fishing trip won’t just happen by itself

- DUNCAN IRELAND; PAUL QUAGLIANA

High summer has settled over the rough pastures and invitingly shady small woods of High Park. The meadow is waiting to be mown and every breeze sripples over a yellow haze of buttercups. The glorious tumult of May birdsong has subsided into much quieter music, with small sounds and occasional snatches of song when a wren or thrush decides to remember the departed spring.

Sometimes, especially on afternoons when the sun is bright or the heat has gathered and the air turned humid under the cloud, there is something close to silence, broken only by a chirp or two from the trees and by the gentle trickle of the beck.

LAURENCE CATLOW, A PASSIONATE SHOOTER AND ANGLER FOR MORE THAN 40 YEARS, HAS WRITTEN FIVE BOOKS ABOUT SPORT WITH ROD AND GUN

On afternoons of this (and every) sort, motivating Horsefield is a nightmare. Sometimes I even struggle with myself. I may be spraying the outer margins of the pens in preparation for putting up the electric fences; perhaps I am checking the wire for gaps or cleaning drinkers or cutting branches to turn into roosting poles. Whatever I am doing, if the sun is hot or the air heavy and close, there may come the temptation to abandon any thought of work, choosing instead to lay my head on a smoothly sloping bank in the cool shade of the trees before closing my eyes and drifting out of consciousness for half an hour.