Well that’s what it should be called, whilst it is, in fact, titled less controversially ‘Diary of a Beckwatcher’, and it’s been entertaining me this last fortnight. And so you might find it too, over the Christmas break.
In short the book is an account of the highlights of the career of a guy – John Foster – who spent 31 years of his working life in the employment of the Environment Agency and its predecessors, as a water bailiff. It just so happens that for many of those years he worked on a small-but-prolific salmon and sea-trout river very close to where I live, in North Lancashire. As one might expect, many of the names of individuals and locations in the book have been disguised, but for me many of the locations were immediately identifiable. I failed to recognise any of the individuals who appeared to be the focus of the Agency’s attention, but then I tend not to hang out with low-life scrotes, ne’er-do-wells, and angling cheats, whose presence fill the pages, as they attempt to illegally net, gaff or snatch the fish that us lot pay through the nose to pursue.
The book has been self-published by the author, and is written very much in his own words. It should serve as a piece of social history, a fitting reminder of those days when salmon was a valuable, sought-after fish, commanding good money on the fishmongers slab, ensuring that there was a motive for nefarious individuals to risk a midnight ducking or arrest.
Check it out at
New Book – Diary of a poacher hunter
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