It was Charles II who apologised to his doctors and courtiers for taking “an unconscionable time dying”.

And that’s a little how I felt upon hearing that my column will cease at the end of the month. I’m sure I already hear muted cheers from many quarters and no doubt there will be louder ones when the last of my 3,000 words or so are printed. It has been an honour and a privilege to have been a columnist for so many years and there’s not an ounce of glibness in any of those words. After all, it sort of changed my life, or at least allowed me to live a life I have loved.

You see, my first musings in this paper appeared as far back as 1973... or was it ‘74? My dear mother was my typist, carrying out the initial edit on my over-long, rambling countryside pieces that were decorated with more adjectives than the word “flowery” can begin to describe. Still, both mother and son felt swelling pride to see the words on the page and I certainly enjoyed banking the cheques, always made out in guineas.

Those pieces gave me the confidence to begin a career in the angling media, which was sufficiently successful for me to leave teaching in 1989 and pursue a freelance existence ever since. What a life I have been gifted. But a little more of that in the final weeks to come.

It’s traditional for old men to become grumpy, so you’ll be glad to know I’m not going to let you down. I might have a heartfelt lament for the past in the remainder of this particular column but I promise in the couple of thousand words to come I’ll be all sweetness and light and talk about the star moments in a 60-plus years' Norfolk fishing career. I’ll write about the great times, but I’ll pull no punches and underline the mistakes we have made along the way. But for now, try to tolerate my grumblings this last time, if not least because there might be a grain of truth in them somewhere.

It’s no secret that my twin passions in life have been fishing and football and I’d take both sports back to the state of play in the 1970s if I could. I’ve recently come back from two weeks in Sri Lanka and the hotel’s TV played Premier League soccer day and night. In the steaming early morning hours I watched half a dozen recent games, and what tedium they were. Stifling tactics executed with moderate skills and muted passion sent me back to sleep, often before half-time.

It’s now much the same with fishing. Whether we like to admit this or not, in coarse angling, the self-hooking rigs used to such a saturating degree have taken out most of the silkier skills we learned mid-last century. It’s possible to build up a big fish list simply by choosing the right waters, putting in the requisite time and waking up to the sound of a buzzer when the fish of dreams finally takes. Of course, we can try to defend this new way of specimen hunting, but basically it is mind-numbingly boring rubbish. I remember showing that North Walsham stalwart of the Norfolk angling scene, Michael Robbins, how to fish a bolt rig at Erpingham Lodge around 1982 or so. He caught a couple of carp and packed up, head shaking. ”Not for me,” he said, and how right he was.

Commercials, too, have a lot to answer for. Catching stocked carp, trout or whatever is a million miles from pursing wild fish, but so many anglers have been doing it for so long they have forgotten the difference. Recently-stocked fish are inevitably less aware than wild fish and therefore indisputably easier to catch. There is a shocking amount of mystery lost as the size of fish is determined by the price paid for them rather than by the vagaries of Mother Nature and the challenge set by wild fish is largely lacking. It is a question now of how many fish will be caught rather than whether any fish will be caught at all. Otter fences simply segregate anglers from the flow of nature… but what has nature to do with fishing many anglers would now ask?

My time is pretty much up this week, you’ll be glad to hear. Next time, I’ll be less dour and begin a run through some  of the great moments in East Anglian angling these past 50 or 60 years. Believe me, what amazing things I’ve seen!