Lesley was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1953 where her father was stationed as an overseas representative for the textiles firm Coats. She spent her early years in a prosperous ex-pat community where her parents enjoyed the amiable social scene. She returned to the UK on a Cunard liner in the mid 1950s and on board is one heck of an excited little girl aged 3½ dressed in one of those frilly little dresses they used to wear way back then. During the long journey back to the UK her beautiful elegant mother began to despair at the fact that despite great encouragement, her little daughter, often dressed to resemble a small ball of pink candyfloss, didn’t think much at all of the haute couture and even less of the stylish parties on board. Instead the little girl wanted nothing more than to be carried on her father's shoulders up to the prow were she would shriek excitedly, not at the view, but at the wonderful flying fish which would leap spectacularly alongside the ship during the long voyage back to UK. This was a truly dazzling experience which was to change the course of the little girl’s life infinitely more than she could ever imagine… Anyway, having berthed in Southampton the little girl, her brother and Mum and Dad sped north to settle in Lenzie near Glasgow. Here she was to quickly shed her suntan, her bi-lingual ability (fluent in both Portuguese and English) and her mother's carefully cultivated dress sense. Instead she quickly absorbed the pleasures of woolly hats, Wellington boots and scratchy thermal underwear, and that was just for June! Her father was an ardent angler and enjoyed family days on Loch Lomond, the Trossachs, the Carron Dam and the hill burns of the Campsies. One July the family ventured north for a holiday at Brora where the little girl now aged 8, caught her first wild trout in the wee burn in Glen Loth. Little did she know then that twenty years or so later she would return to the Highlands, albeit in rather different circumstances. She became a mum for the first time in 1985, a major shock to the system, and stuck at home with small but perfectly formed infant, Andrew by name, she contemplated escape into what was increasingly becoming an apparent Nirvana, an angler’s paradise right on her doorstep! Old fishing skills were slowly rekindled and having forever wanted to write rather than do more boring things like business administration, she decided to put pen to paper. Her first book appropriately enough on fishing was published in 1991 through the local publishers North of Scotland Newspapers. And so a little belatedly that woman did manage to achieve that long held wish of becoming a writer, albeit by sneaking into it through writing and photographing something she knew about and loved, fishing. – Countless feature articles were to follow published in anything from the Scotsman to the Daily Mail (as well as that top notch paper e Groat) and her fishing books for London publishers Swan Hill Press have now become internationally known. Lesser known but better paid work has also been published on such very diverse topics as wader construction, how to write articles, environmental pollution and Caithness flagstone. In 1992 a second son Ewan was born but now having got used to the ways of infant boys, this was no deterrent to `That Woman who writes about fishing’. She continued to serve a long hard apprenticeship of few trout, lost trout or no trout at all accumulating a stack of knowledge very much won the hard way. Fishing Instructor and Guide qualifications were gained and a guide enterprise was established in 1994 approximately, one that still runs to this day. So, as you have now probably guessed Miss Candyfloss lover of flying fish, miss growling teenager, Mrs harassed young mum all grew into `that fishing woman’ who is of course me. - An oddity, an eccentric, a woman in a mans world who knows. After 2 children, 3 dogs 2 deceased, 1 husband, 8 books, hundreds of published features and photographs, thousands of wee troot and a zillion casts its been a long and glorious journey, and it ain`t over yet….