H.E. Bates Companion

The narrator goes fishing with his Uncle Silas, excited by Silas's tales of pike "as big as hippopottomassiz;" while Silas consumes large quantities of "neck-oil," the boy is urged to keep quiet and not be "a-ompolodgin' all the time." Eventually a large fish appears but, all the bait gone, Silas falls in the river trying to catch it by hand. In the Evening Standard (August 17, 1956), Sugar for the Horse (1957). Reprinted in Country Bunch: A Collection by Miss Read (1963), Best Fishing Stories (1965), Great British Short Stories (1974), Gone Fishing (1995).