CARPING ASIDE: DON’T WRITE ME OF! by Bob Morris is published by Fishing Book Sender. Edited and designed by Mike Starkey with cartoons by Jerry Thornton-Jones. It has 200 pages, 235 x 155mm, in a limited edition of 450 hardback copies. Here’s an extract:

So what about the rabbits I hear you ask?

Well, one year when we were again fishing at Darenth on the Big Lake, Derek announced that he had seen rabbits playing about on the main island that sits out in the centre of the lake. Just to put this in perspective for those who have never seen the place, this is a long island of some three hundred yards or so that actually runs down one side of the largely rectangular, thirteen acre lake. It is a strip of gravel, probably nowhere more than twenty feet wide from front to back, and at its nearest point, at the top end, is probably a forty yard cast from the bank. Over time, this island had become covered in foliage of various types, brambles, elderberry shrubs, grass etc.

Having spent much of our time at Darenth over the years and, speaking personally, I had been a regular visitor there since before this pit was dug, we could honestly say that rabbits on the island we had never seen!

Derek, of course, came in for a terrible ribbing over this claim, as it was an unparalleled opportunity to indulge in our wicked humour.  Many suggestions were put to Derek about how this apparition might have occurred, with aspersions being cast about his eyesight, along with some helpful possible explanations concerning how they might have got there.  Tunnelling under the fifteen foot of gravel was popular, along with swimming to avoid a fox or other predators etc.

My contribution was that a bird of prey, probably an eagle or a buzzard, had unwittingly started the colony by accidently and simultaneously dropping a male then a female rabbit onto the island, whereupon they had just got on with what they do best and bred like, well, castaways! It was all part of the evolutionary process according to my mate Charles D.  This was met with the phrase “leave it out will yer”.

I must say that we perhaps kept up this denial for a bit too long, even after we had actually seen these furry fellows ourselves.  I thought that Derek’s tour of duty as the butt of our jokes was over one day, however, when Fred arrived on the scene and announced that he had actually seen a rabbit around the far side of the island. “Thank God for that,” said a relieved Derek, “what was it doing?” “It looked like the breast stroke to me,” replied Fred.

The following winter all was revealed when the big lake froze over and numerous rabbit tracks could be seen in the snow covered ice on the lake!  You have to have a laugh, don’t you?

Carping Aside: Don’t Write Me Off is available from Fishing Booksender price £32.95 including Post and packaging.