Freshly caught fish.

 Freshly caught fish.

Sunday morning.  My son Colin and his family have gone to Euro Disney for the week.  I select a frozen trout from the freezer and place it on the windowsill on a dish to thaw.  For the first time it's just me for Sunday dinner. 

It's at times like this that I picture Simon and our son Colin as they were 15 years ago.  It was a Sunday morning ritual, they were up before daybreak making sandwiches, flasks of hot coffee, collecting apples and cheese from the refrigerator.

  I'd lay abed pretending to be asleep and Colin would creep silently into the darkened room, peck me on the cheek and leave a steaming cup of tea on my bedside cabinet. 

"Were going to bring you home a fine fish dinner mum," he'd whisper.

 They would sit or stand at the side of the stream casting flies across the water, to be taken by eagerly awaiting trout. When they had caught their quota they would head for home.  Cars weren't in common use those days so they would cycle the five miles home down the country lanes, passing through Grantchurch village.  If their catch had been small, or if the trout weren't biting Simon would stop off at the Grantchurch's fishmonger and supplement their catch.  When they'd caught nothing Simon would buy sufficient for us all.  We always had fish for dinner on Sundays, it was our ritual.

Simon is no longer with us.  We laid him to rest two years ago.  

Colin is now grown up and has sons of his own Peter 7 and Jason 3.  They still go fishing but travel by car now.  The fishmongers closed down when Tesco opened a superstore on the outskirts of town.

They do have a fish counter but don't stock trout, so sometimes we have some mighty strange catches from that river. 

Last Sunday Jason appeared at the front door with boil-in-the-bag smoked haddock. 

"I wonder who caught that?" I said.

"I did!" said 3-year-old Jason.

"And, who sealed it in the bag with a pat of butter?" I asked?

He thought for a moment, "Don't be silly Nanny, that's how I caught it from the freezer at Tesco's."

Sure enough, they'd left a hook in one corner. How could I not believe?