Before, during and after, part3

These expeditions I generaly set off on reluctantly, my dad would say, 'we're going tommorrow come wind, come snow, come hail, come blow' and we would. He had a mantra to remember his fishing tackle that began , 'Rods, reels, lines, floats, hooks, shot, bait, weights...', which he always used to ensure we didn't forget anything, he didn't like any distraction as he ran through his list. It would be still dark, I'd be dragged from blissful sleep to his brutal combing of my hair to shock me in to wakefulness. I never quite took to it like my brother. He is now Doctor David Wainwright and works in butterfly research and conservation. He always had an eye for nature and disregard for appearance, a love of the wild and still can be found in freezing conditions at some ridiculous hour of the night with a rod and reel. As a child he kept a variety of animals, toads, sloe worms, lizards, tadpoles, frogs butterflies, all sorts of freshwater fish in tanks, he had a squirrel for a while that had fallen from the drey too young to fend for itself. It grew up hopping around our bedroom. It went out one time and our neighbour, thinking it had escaped and was tame, tried to catch it . She was bitten badly and the squirrel was returned to the wild in the woods behind Moortown Water tower. Our neighbour on the other side was terrified by a 'snake', while gardening, that had escaped one time. I remember one of his sloe worms, a good year after going missing, being found alive and well, living under the carpet. He was friends with Marco White, who lived on the estate below us, and remember going out with them one morning at about 5 am after Marco called round, climbing a birch tree to get magpie eggs.I can't remember if we were successful though he is now as a famous cook 'ont telly. Wheres his accent gone? Has he no shame? No pride?