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Hooks? Cor, dear, oh dear - so many.

Sealey, Chapman, Alex Martin, Allcock, Redditch-made Hardy, Albert Smith of Redditch (nice hooks), Partridge of Redditch, of course, old and new - fly and coarse. Many, so many.

Happened upon them along the way - for fishing, not whilst post-event collecting (I don't do collecting) - plus the fact that, for nearly twenty years, I counted Alan Bramley of Partridge (its owner) a personal friend, until he was moved on by some of his own employees who'd done a done a deal with the makers of some Yankee fly rods he was selling in Britain and was duly commercially shafted. Good guy, and extremely bright with it - I had at least six job interviews with him - his invite, not my "gizajob"chasing - always to get: "The problem is, Paul, you'd want to run my firm, and I am not ready for you to do that..." Pity, Alan, coz I'd have run those rats off. Or, better still, never employed them in the first place. I remember telling him at an "interview" (at his home, over his tipple, Scotch) in the early 1980s: "You must run a range of chemically sharpened hooks, both coarse and fly, a la the newly appeared Kamatsu, beside your hand-made traditional stuff, Alan, or you'll be eaten up..."

He was. The sexy foreign rods that he had introduced to Britain and that changed British fly-fishing did for him, not hooks.

I spoke with a few days before he died - phoned him post-Partridge, as a pal, at his Cumbrian home, my first call in a year or two. He sounded "down". Not only business had gone sour on him awhile back, but his personal life, just a few days earlier, too. He died from the massive stroke that hit him a few days after my call, and with him British hook-making.

Damned shame.

Alan Bramley: a very generous man, indeed. Like one of the great Pop Music impresarios of the 1960s, he spotted talent, let that talent be just who it was, knowing that it would almost certainly "do something special" eventually - he had a "good eye", yet expected little back in return.

I realised today that I knew Alan for rather more years than my "nearly twenty" of last night. Back in 1980 or thereabouts, Alan phoned from his Redditch factory one afternoon: "Paul, a big favour. I have to meet an American fly-fisher (mega-name angler, though he made no Big Deal of it to me) off a flight at Heathrow, but I have a problem: I will also have my 96-year-old aunt / great-aunt in tow ... would it be possible to dump her on your mother for an hour...?"

Done, Alan.

I briefed my Ma that a fishing pal of mine would be dumping his elderly aunt at her home (close to the airport) for a few hours the following afternoon. We sat, my Ma and me, with a delightful, fine-boned lady of another era, drinking tea and chatting, till Alan re-appeared.

Not so long afterwards Alan phoned to ask me if he could name a mahseer treble hook that he was making for the Pall Mall carriage-trade the "Paul Boote 6X Extra-Strong Mahseer Treble".

"Yeah, go ahead, Alan. Just chuck me a hundred or so of each size for my own fishing."

Done.

Another time, he phoned me asking to entertain him and a world-famous American fly-tyer and author "On that bit of lovely club water you fish in Berkshire. For two hours maximum, after picking him up at Heathrow, Paul, then we're away..."

Done.

That's how Alan did "business", how I did business (not business as it is known today).

Some, but not a Huge, Profit. A lot of Fun along the way. Above all :- Angling for Angling's sake, Respect for others, no Human Casualties.

We lost the plot somewhere, and not that long ago, I reckon...