My mate Dave Colclough, aged 61, died in the early hours of Tuesday of this week. The death certificate will probably say he died of a heart attack, but that only says what finally finished him off. The reality is that no medic ever came to a positive conclusion of what caused his illness in the first place. However, most of us who know the full story believe it could have been a bite from a
Blandford Fly. In fact it was Eddie Bibby who had read about it and realised that where Dave had stopped for a break, by a river on the way down to Cornwall, combined with the symptoms, fitted more or less exactly the scenario. Eddie told me and I told Dave and at least one of the medics agreed that it was a distinct possibility. You can read more about this nasty little creature here in an article compiled by Peter Jacobs. It started when Dave was holidaying in Cornwall in June last year with his family. His leg below the knee swelled up and started weeping; not from one particular site, but all over. They came home and the leg went worse and Dave then spent three weeks in hospital on an antibiotic drip. There were ups and downs but gradually Dave’s condition got worse. He was a big lad anyway, but in spite of losing about 100lb in weight through dieting his body filled with fluid. The medics gave him a massive dose of diuretic (water) tablets and he spent weeks going to the toilet literally every ten minutes. During that time he couldn’t go out unless he stopped taking the diuretics, and that wasn’t often. His leg never got better, it was at least twice the size it was normally and the skin degraded to something beyond description. He was often in pain with it, but had spells when he was free from pain. He went fishing only on odd occasions, and only fly fishing where he could sit or stand and cast for a very short spell and then sit in the car for two or three hours. He then had a few weeks when he had to come off the water tablets due to them damaging his kidneys, when his weight (due to fluid) ballooned up and down by ten pounds or more in a week. This was followed by a course of steroids, when Dave felt better than he had in a long time, all false of course, his true condition masked by the effects of the steroids, but during this time we made plans for fishing the rivers when the season opened and he managed to enjoy the FM fly fish-in at Press Manor. It’s ironic that the Press Manor fish-in was the last time he fished almost normally, thanks to the steroids, as it is a memorial to Andy Wright who myself and Dave worked with for years. Last week he developed a throat infection and was taking antibiotic tablets. He was feeling pretty ill again. We spoke for the last time on Monday morning and I’ve never heard him sound so depressed. His voice was slightly slurred, which was strange from Dave considering that he’d been tee-total all his life. On Monday afternoon his leg was giving him terrible pain and his other leg had turned blue. Dave’s wife Kath phoned the doctor and she sent for an ambulance. Kath stayed with Dave in hospital until 11.30 that evening and then went home. Within minutes of arriving home she had a call to return to hospital. On her way home Dave had haemorrhaged, had a heart attack and they couldn’t revive him. I’m still trying to come to terms with it. When you’ve fished with someone on an average of twice a week for about 15 years, and known them for over 30 years, it leaves quite a big hole in your life and I’ve no idea how I’m going to fill it.
Dave Colclough was one of the best fishing mates I’ve ever had. We had a lot more in common than just fishing and that made a hell of a lot of difference. We both worked for the same company in managerial roles before we retired, me 16 years ago at age 50 and Dave just last year at 60. We were both into computers and in fact ran a part time computer building and repair business for several years. We both loved gadgets, our wives commenting that if it had a plug or a battery we’d be interested. We both bought Ford Focus 1.8 diesel estate cars and then we both bought Focus 2 litre diesel C-Max’s. If one bought a particular fishing chair and liked it, it wasn’t long before the other one had one. We gelled almost 100% when it came to fishing, liking the same type of fishing and loving to vary it between coarse fishing pleasure, match and specialist, with river fishing being favourite, and fly fishing. We were committee members of the same club and ran a match between us on a club water every three weeks. We liked the same jokes, rivalled each other with sarcastic and caustic remarks, could call each other fat bastards and laugh at it. And I can say with 100% honesty that both of us were genuinely glad to see the other catch fish when one was having a lean time. There were absolutely no secrets about anything between us. Since Dave died I’ve shed a few tears, but mostly I’ve been looking upwards and silently cursing him for leaving me with such a big void to fill, and knowing I can never do it, that my life has come to yet another massive crossroads. Nobody can come close to guessing how much I’ll miss him. Dave leaves wife Kath, sons Peter and Paul, two grandchildren. And me. |
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