Little dog Cai and I: he is my Labrador and, actually, my confidant and confessor when my fishing goes a little topsy-turvy.
We were sitting on the banks of the River Usk near to my home in Wales, a pair of dippers had just woven through the opposite willow branches, a yellow Wagtail was deftly dancing in mid-air, catching Yellow May Duns with the precision of a surgeon. We had a caught a few trout and, oddly, that was enough.
We both agreed just sitting, savouring the noises of the land and water, watching the river chuckle and occasionally growl through an unhurried landscape was probably enough.
Enough to repair a tired mind, mend a bit of one’s soul, and relieve the pressure of stacked emails, constant decision-making, meetings, and all the fast-paced demands that come with driving an initiative to even greater heights.
Sometimes the business of purely sitting, emptying your inner self and mind, and giving yourself to nature is vital and healing. No earbuds, no modern cacophony, no phones. Just being.
I am writing this fully aware that we are entering Mental Health Awareness Week, and it is important that I highlight this aspect of my life, and the very real good and salve that it offers me to come back refreshed and stronger.
This unscripted part of Fishing for Schools is as important as all the success and endeavour that students attain. The soothing quality of nature is just as important as achievement in the classroom. Indeed, the former often leads to higher attainment in the latter.
Let’s call it natural balance, as important to us as it is the natural world.
The Dog? Well, he is pretty similar: a three-year-old, super fit, poorly trained Labrador runs out of steam eventually (it takes a while...). But when the enthusiasm, lust for life and digging peters out, he will come and sit by my side, and in our own little - and very different - ways, we marvel together at the flight of an Olive Upright hatching from the surface or the electric blue flash of Kingfisher.
Sometimes, sitting doing nothing in a lovely place is enough.