Gunner’s Mate Lance B Johnson: “It’s pretty hairy in there. It’s Fanny’s kitchen.”
Colonel William Kilgore: “Fanny don’t fish!”
But Keith Floyd did.
We have the honour of offering for sale the landing net we made for him in 1996.
This net is a particularly good example of its kind. It’s in exceptionally fine condition. I’m not always able to maintain my usual air of modesty and diffidence, so you’ll forgive me when I claim that the Bernard Venables landing net is the best ever made. This unique example is a practical memento for lovers of cooking, good food, wine and fishing. Please click here to find out more.
We were going downstream on the ebb tide to Tuckenhay. There were twelve of us in the canoe and as we neared the ancient village, something caught my eye on the right bank. A fox crept stealthily into to a pool of water left behind a waterlogged tree trunk at the river’s edge. It dipped suddenly out of sight and a moment later, reappeared with a live flounder in its mouth. We watched in silence as it ate its catch. The soft light of autumn, the sea trout that leapt close to the left bank, the turning leaves, the village by the creek that could have been painted by Pieter Breugel the Elder- quietly we paddled to the landing stage by the Maltster’s Arms.
Someone mentioned Keith Floyd, the recently departed former owner.
‘Eddie knows him!’ Tina said. There was an uncomfortable silence, broken by ‘How?’ from a fellow paddler. I told my companions, locals all, that I knew Keith Floyd, had made fishing tackle for him and that sometimes he came to fish in the river by my workshop. ‘Did you get paid?’ someone asked suspiciously. I did, in cash, on the nail, I told them.
I had been, I was assured, very lucky. One way or another, everyone else aboard had been less fortunate. Keith Floyd had left in a hurry and the pub had become known as Floyd’s Folly. He was, by his own admission, not very good with money.