Day 90 …Generation X and selective mutism..

As a species we are vile and I cannot see an end to it. Everyone hoped after lockdown that the planet would have chance to sigh and catch it’s breath, but no we are straight back out there, even from the smallest things like dropping litter. Destroying the only home we have. There is no plan B.

As anglers we get lots of stick (and rightly so) when some of our number drop litter on popular marks. These tend to be piers, promenades and other areas where lazy bastards don’t have to walk too far. I say our number for this is the public perception, if you have a fishing rod you are an angler not just an idiot looking for an excuse to get out of the house.

In our parks and open spaces it is exactly the same. The more effort or physical excursion required to get to a place the less litter there will be because the lazy bastards just don’t go there. Whilst pedalling this morning I went through a woodland, a nature reserve which is gateway to the Brecon Beacons, one of Wales National Parks. I did not have to get off my bike to enter as the metal railings of the fence have been pulled down and thrown in the river. The whole of the first hundred square yards was covered in small campfires surrounded by sweet and crisp packets, tins, bottles and take-away wrappers.

It was at this point I remembered  Greta Thumberg’s rant about my generation destroying the planet. Well listen girlie, our milk came in glass bottles which were recycled, this was delivered by an electric vehicle. When we went to the shop for our mum we had to hide the bags under out coats when it rained because the paper bags would go soggy and everything would fall out. Takeaways and fast food were non-existant. Ready meals were what your mum wrapped in tin foil and left in the oven if you were late home (if you dared to be late home that is) Vegetables were not wrapped in plastic and you bought how much you needed (in paper bags) Pop came in glass bottles which kids loved to return for the 5 pence deposit. I could go on, the list is endless but the moral of the story is –

While Generation X may have created a monster, today’s snowflake generation embraced it and took it outside to play.

Not a personal attack on the poster girl for climate change, just an observation. I can’t help admiring anyone suffering from Selective Mutism, in her own words “she only speaks when necessary” I have been doing that for years and get called an anti-social stony-faced bastard for it. Who would have thought I have been suffering from another medical condition without even knowing it?

I wish this Selective Mutism affected more of the population. To quote the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz “Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking”

I feel the litter is a result of a lack of consequence and downright laziness. Surely if you can carry the weight of something full it will be easier to take it back empty? From the information available the average fine for littering is around £75. I know someone I worked for got an on the spot fine of £70 for flicking a cigarette but into the River Cleddau. And rightly so.

What are the chances of getting caught? Dropping rubbish at night in woodlands, probably close on to zero. If you are caught you can plead poverty and adverse childhood experiences and get away with paying the fine over the next twenty five years.  If this was ramped up to three or four hundred pounds and lets say 180 hours of community service, litter picking maybe the lazy bastards would think twice before throwing their Kentucky Fried rubbish box away (other takeaways are available and disposed of equally irresponsibly). I quite like a new idea being banded about that your registration or address gets printed all over any takeaway wrappers. Get rid of single use plastics and replace them with refundable deposits on glasses and containers. Then if you decide to throw it away irresponsibly someone else can pick it up and claim the refund? hordes of kids would roam the streets picking up rubbish!

Forrester’s are next on my list. I get the cycle of life, trees are planted, they grow and they are harvested for timber. It is the way of things. A shame that the next generation will not experience the views in the same way as me for at least thirty years but it is life. How are you going to plant the next crop of trees? you don’t clear up, you don’t pull the stumps? how will you harvest the next crop without those four wheel drive mounted grab and saws? You cant drive over what you have left there. Just another corporation raping the planet ?

Believe it or not I don’t have any more moaning in me today.

 

 

 

Day 88…. stick to what you know..

For all the normal family feud reasons I have not spoken to my brother for years.. too many years but stupid arguments tend to do that to even the strongest families and like hillbillies and rednecks we are good at holding grudges. Even our unborn children would continue the resentment.

Recently I have been getting odd message from him, not the ‘did you know uncle fred has died’ type because they are already all dead. No these were fishing questions and as we are now allowed to meet a member of another household we arranged a quick beach session.

Stay local, easy fishing?

The last time I was at Aberavon I saw fish in the water in front of me and assumed that they were Golden Grey Mullet. I have never caught one so thought I would have a go.

Two things no three things, firstly I do not know anything about them. Secondly bait. This seems to be Harbour Rag, maddies or mudworm which are all the same thing. I thought they were just small ragworm but they are tiny ragworm.  I found some in All About Angling in Port Talbot. Thirdly hooks, very small and probably smaller than I used which were about twenty years old and left over from Sole fishing in St Brides many moons ago.

I have had a look at a few videos since fishing and I would have been better off using my barbel gear than the three to five ounce bass rod I ended up using. Ended up because I got out the Yatley Angling Sabre Imposter carp rod that I have used in the sea before only to find that the eldest spawn had knocked an eye out of it last time he borrowed it. I know it was him because he wrapped it in electrical tape which his one off cure for everything he breaks.

I wished I look at my phone a bit more often because I would have seen a message from my brother asking if it was too windy…. bloody right it was which was evident but the flocks of kite surfers cavorting along most of the beach. So the lesson is don’t fish Aberavon in a twenty mph Westerly. We walked down to the left far from my usual area and set up.

I opted for a watch lead of indeterminate weight but it was probably around four ounces. This was free running, clipped to the leader on a Fox low resistance ring and stopped with an oval bead. Hooklength was 14lb flourocarbon  and finished off with the 1/0 hook covered Kebab style with so many tiny mud worm that it did not take me too long to get pissed off with baiting up, what with the little worm and howling wind and rain.

I opted to hold the rod rather than put it in a stand and I was surprised that I found this ok. Bites were instant and frequent but micro bass.

Perfect miniatures of proper fish.

I never landed a mullet, the weather got worse and the fish got smaller so we packed up about three hours into the rise.

If the remaining worm survive I may have another go at them later in the week….if there are no proper fish showing ‘locally’

On my bike ride into the mountains this morning I tried to get a few shots of the young Wheatears, Larks and pipits but even the 200mm Tamaron couldn’t get me close enough for any clear shots. Maybe if I didn’t wear the bright pink red and black biking jerseys I might get a little closer.

Day 85…. seeking positives?

Friday 19th June and the Welsh Assembly announced it’s next steps in the fight against covid 19.

I should have known the outcome when the girl behind Mark Drakeford who was translating his speech into sign language appeared to be making the ‘wanker’ sign as he spoke, and not the BSL or Makaton one.

Why go to the trouble of a televised announcement when so many leaks have already prior released the limited changes and that there will be no change to the five mile recommended travel limit to fish?  I say recommended as this is not enshrined in law and therefore not enforceable by a police force with better things to do with their valuable time that chase anglers whose right to carry out their pastime was set out by King John in 1215. The Magna Carta stated the common man had rights to access resources such as sea fishing and this is one of the few edicts which has not been repealed.

Sadly (or maybe not) this document does not give us the right to roam and do as we please. Later legislation states Jettys, piers, harbours, ports and marine conservation areas may be off limits. Fish can only be taken when they reach an acceptable size(for which we should be thankful) and local councils have the right to restrict bait collection in certain areas.

The closure of car parks is likely to uphold the no travel recommendation as we are forced to park illegally and render ourselves liable for parking fines as traffic wardens are deemed essential key workers?

To many of the general public the Labour Welsh government appears to be contradicting Bojo for political point scoring rather than basing decisions on hard medical or scientific evidence, I wonder if the same public will remember this during the next election?

It is infeasible that bureaucratic lunacy prevails and inconsistency can be sustained for so long. I guess I will still be allowed to ride forty miles on my bike though? Retail parks are set to re-open, non-essential shops can carry out there trade, let the chaos ensue.  Most shoppers cannot follow the simple one way system in Tescos, how are they going to manage when the get to peruse and fondle garments and the like?

My kids are back to school on the 29th just a few hours a week so I have ten days to reverse their sleeping pattens. The Girl Child has been told she is not to bring a back pack or lunch so I cannot see that lasting very long. The Galway Boi suggested he has done enough primary schooling and won’t be going back until High School in September. The school have counter-suggested he might like just to come in on a Monday for a few hours, sounds like a winner to me.

On the bright side a suggestion of July 6th has been muted for the lift of travelling restrictions. So the mackerel should start to come in and tope fishing down West is on the cards? The long range weather forecast (guess) suggests seasonal averages which isn’t much help when year on year the weather for July is shit. According to TWO, (theweatheroutlook), the seasonal forecast suggested increasingly unsettled weather during the second half of July.  A dry and settled month isn’t considered the most probable outcome. So the weather is not colluding with my intentions of happiness. But I will try anyway.

Day 82…June 16th

What next?

After years of Brexit related anxiety, for and against, dividing the country into camps of remainers and leaver it took a virus to wipe it off the news. No longer will we have to worry about Brexit destroying the economy because Covid 19 will wipe it out and what ever is left will be mopped up by a race ‘war’ between ‘the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slavers’. Everyone has an opinion and social media is fraught with who is right and who is wrong. People set their stall and further fan the flames while the media vultures circle overhead looking for the next morsel of decaying society.

Me..I am fed up with it all. I just want to go fishing and ride my bike, our time on this planet is too short. I no longer want even to read about the world afflictions. Give me the mountains and sea.

I am thankful my childhood was spent before mobile phones and games consuls. When telly had three channels and a disembodied voice reminded you to switch the telly off around midnight when transmission stopped and a little white dot appeared briefly on the screen. The woods were our playground and entertainment and nothing had a greater draw for me than the local pond or river that skirted the common.

Growing up in the woods in a leafy part of Surrey June the 16th was like a birthday or Christmas. Some may no see the relevance in this but June 16th was the first day of the new coarse fishing season. After queuing up at the common keepers cottage days before to get a permit we could now fish again, not with handlines hiding in the reeds during closed season but with rod and line out in the open.

Preparations would start weeks in advance, stealing tins of sweetcorn and cans of luncheon meat from my mothers cupboard. There was no hair rigging or bolt rigs at the time, we used running Arsley bomb or coffin ledgers, a cube of meat with a hook poked through it, twisted and then a small piece of reed would but stuck under the bend of the hook to stop it pulling back through.  Loaves of crusty bread from the bakers were acquired days in advance, the freshest bread did not have the right hooking quality. In the days before boilies and modern carp fishing one of the favoured methods for taking carp would be off the surface with free-lined floating crust and as school kids all we needed was a rod, reel line and a single hook to take advantage of the carp’s habit of feeding on left-overs from duck feeding time.

Bunking school would be a must to get the best swim and from what would now be an unacceptable age I would walk in the darkness half a mile through the woods to be ready for first light. In school holidays I would not go home for days on end, my mother would bring dinner down to me on a plate wrapped in tin-foil. In times of extreme hunger we would eat sweetcorn and luncheon meat sandwiches made with unused bait.

What was this all for…. the chance, the take, the run and this has never left me even though I have not been back to that pond for nearly thirty years. From what I have heard the fish were netted many moons ago and angling is now banned.

Future generations of village kids will only get a virtual childhood.

Maybe this is what is wrong with the world? Their online actions have no consequence. When they fight and lose they get another life, no bloody knees, no bloody noses, a throw away generation.

Mornings exercise was a ride over to the quarry. I have a constant debate with myself about carrying a longer lens, not that the one I have is a birding lens but it would have allowed me to get closer to the Wheater’s nest, the warbler in the willow trees and the Lesser Spotted woodpecker in the old stand of oaks. I do not need any other lens to catch the modern shepherd working his flock, the 18-55 is compact and perfectly serviceable.

I headed out towards the Naughty Stone but half way there the clouds were darkening and gathering and using the landmarks realised it was much further than I remembered it. Four hours is enough pedalling for one day.

I had told herself that I might go fishing and rightly she realised that meant I would be going.

In the spirit of the guidance misgiven by the Welsh Assembly I am still fishing my local marks and as low water would be running into darkness Aberavon was worth a go again.

I got there around an hour before low but could have left it another hour and arrived for the fill as nothing happened except my crab stock dwindled.

There was a police patrol on the beach. As far as I could see they never spoke to any of the anglers who were there but they moved on the kids who were drinking and lighting fires above the high water mark. They didn’t even give me a ticket on the car for being registered too far from the beach. Too much other stuff to worry about I presume.

As the light faded fish started to move. Aberavon is one for the few beaches Golden Grey mullet can be targeted and I think that the numerous swirls in ankle deep water were GG’s feeding on what ever the tide dislodged.

Movement of water is key to fishing Aberavon I have decided, no tide action no fish.

One of the lads off to my left hooked a fish first and that was the start of a hectic half an hour. The interesting thing for me was this took place around two hours into the fill, a time by which I would usually be losing interest and thoughts would be of packing up and heading home.

The first run on a squid and crab cocktail was dropped after an initial burst of line taking. The second was a dogfish type tap and produced a dogfish sized hound.

I had four runs, three of which hooked up, nothing special nothing remotely worth weighing but an enjoyable way to spend June 26th. The fish were still feeding when I left but by this time I had run out of crab and squid and nothing was remotely interested in the sandeel or bluey.

Although I have now spent 82 days practicing selfies I only learned last night that I cannot stand at night in front of the camera with the flash on and use the self timer. The auto focus picks up what is directly in front of it at the time and the image becomes out of focus as you move back into frame.  also a headlamp is not enough to illuminate the shot without the flash. More work definitely needed on the night time selfie then?

 

 

 

 

Day 77….. and today everyone is offended

What is wrong with the world ? One bunch of racists screaming at another bunch of racists. Ethnic minorities thinking they are the only minority and excluding the other minorities  from their battle slogans.

Cries to pull down landmark statues of long dead slavers and even Winston Churchill, arguably the greatest British political leader of out time, who also happened to be responsible for many racial atrocities?

History cannot be changed but it can be learned from… unless we stick it away in a shoe box and pretend it never happened because some people find it offensive. I want to say that no one of my generation or three generations before me owns a slave and no one of my generation has been a slave but I do not feel this is  totally true so I will restrict it to Africans are no longer pulled from their native land en-mass and taken to the New World to work on plantations, chosen over Irish slaves because it was  easier to transport them and Africans did not succumb to tropical diseases as easily as their Irish counterparts and therefore were better value for money.

Modern day slaves are in debt not chains.

Get that chip off your shoulder and get on with the short life we are given. Be nice to people and they just might repay the kindness.

The Galway Boi surprised me this morning when he called me to help him with his home schooling, proper home schooling not the lessons I have been teaching him. “Get on with it your self it isn’t rocket science” I shouted up the stairs only to find that it was actually rocket science as taught to eleven year olds. Forces of thrust, drag and gravity and how they would affect the flight of a rocket. Tomorrow we get to follow up the theory and make our own rocket from a large bottle of coke and a pack of mentos.

The sandeel slugs duly arrived from the Ebay seller, in both the right colour and size. The two used ones in the image were originally the same dirty silver colour but thrown in a bag with other used soft plastics the dye soon bleeds to them. Just a warning if you intend to store them with others of a stronger colour.

I liked these from the first promotional video by Savagegear  for which I am not responsible for the music.

If you watch the video on the savagegear link I will have no need to explain how to use them.

I have not yet tried twin rigging them. this is done by using two swivels. The first of which is tied on to your leader with around eighteen inches of hooklength down to your jig head and eel. The second is free-running on the leader above the fixed swivel. the hooklength on this must be shorter than the eighteen inch length on the bottom. In the video it looks awesome but I cant help but think I would get tangled on every single cast.

The 140mm is too long for the average mackerel to take even though they hit them time after time but they are lethal for wrasse, bass and pollack off the rocks.

Day 75…. Dear Diary…?

An I phone essay……

Apologies, nothing fishing based today other than to say I suffered a small slip or trip by my computer and hit the keyboard on the way down. This triggered a chain of events that will lead to the 140mm Savagear sandeel slugs in dirty silver that I have looked for to be delivered to my door. As these have become so elusive I am wondering if they will send a ‘replacement’ size or colour instead? In Ireland these were my most reliable soft plastic and I have been unable to find any in the last year.

Now I just have to plan that trip home to use them.

I touched briefly on racisms yesterday and as a little bit of social commentary though I would share my observations: I was born in the sixties and things were different, Gollywogs advertised jam. The black and white minstrels performed for the Queen. Peak time telly featured a program called Love thy neighbour where the main characters  greeted each other with names like sambo, nig-nog and honky.

Where I grew up in the stock broker belt of leafy Surrey there was no racial or ethnic diversity. The nearest ‘foreigners’ was a Chinese take away about six miles out. Except my house, my parents cottage was full of noise both laughter and crying. My parents were foster parents to anyone who needed it, often to kids removed from their own parents in the middle of the night or other wards of court from the South London Boroughs. Colour (because at the time that was the in phrase, coloured people) was never a bar and the three Nigerian kids that grew up with us were like brothers and sisters. My mother always got odd looks in supermarkets when three little black kids were screaming ‘mum’ at her as they hung out of the trolley.

Nigerian church blew me away. I haven’t dabbled much in the world of churching or organised religion and still only enter for births, deaths and marriages but the difference between my local hellfire and brimstone church and a black baptist church where people danced and sung and acted like they wanted to be there was massive, so much so that I remember it forty years later.

I tell this tale to illustrate that I am not a racist but would like to point out that the most racist people I have ever met on my travels are some of the ethnic minorities screaming for change and some of the inhabitants of the West of Ireland. Some of them hate ‘me’ just for my accent, not the colour of my skin. Test my DNA and it will be the same as theirs, my surname is a Wexford name, listen to my accent and its unmistakable, but not Irish.

Who would believe that a late middle age white fella would be the butt of racist abuse? yet every day on site I would hear “where’s the Tan ?”  or  “your the English Fekker” Building site banter from a grand bunch of lads, no harm ? I have walked into builders yards on the edge of Connemara where people would be having conversations in english and as soon as I spoke they would switch to Gaelic.

This isn’t because of me but the sins of the land of my birth.

The english on the whole would be ignorant of their own history and would, in modern days denounce the atrocities inflicted throughout the ages on their nearest neighbours. Statues of historical leaders wold be torn down as we speak. Winston Churchill would be damned for his actions. For those of you wondering about the Tan reference have a little internet search for the actions of the Black and Tans around the Easter Rising of 1916. They don’t teach you that at school do they ??
I though we were passed all that shit now, we live in a relatively peaceful part of the world, no mass starvation, most of us have running water and electric and relatively easy lives. Time to give ourselves a shake?

All lives matter? Respect people who treat you with respect and earn your respect.

My day started with a video doctors consultation. Should be easy? Well, here is the thing first you phone the surgery for triage. Then you get a web address that takes you into the virtual waiting room. Only it doesn’t if you run a six year old Mac because the system is incompatible, and it doesn’t in firefox because it only works with chrome.  Still these are teething problems and I was I lucky enough to have the mac, my works windows lap top and my daughters laptop all booted up at the time.

Virtual waiting room, no coughing, farting or sneezing from anywhere else other than my own kitchen, no idle chat or reading out of date ‘Look ‘magazines or ‘country life’. I even had time to get up and make a cup of tea… or three… and some toast in the hour and ten minutes I was waiting. Then I got to speak to Mr Magoo…. not his fault the system was glitchy and made him look like a cartoon but all in all it worked very well and could be the model going forward after the pandemic is over. The Girl child got her prescription for super strength hay fever tablets and nasal squirt. This would have been perfect if the pharmacist wasn’t on the same site as the surgery and I had to drive down there anyway.

Did a bit of home schooling although the Galway Boi said knife throwing, ten self defence moves to use in a phone box and fire starting are not on the school curriculum so we moved on to bicycle repairs and cooking breakfast which should be on the curriculum.

I still have two hard-drives full of photos, many of which are uninteresting, many more are similar to stuff I have already resurrected so today no camera and just an old i phone I took a few snaps of a short ride past the river. Shortened even further because I forgot my backpack with my drink and bike spares in it.

The first image is of one of the numerous stone cut culverts that give the trail its name, puncture passage. There is very little chance of hitting it at any speed without getting a flat.

Further up the river I saw an old countryman with a couple of working spaniels looking at the river through binoculars. I hung back until he he put the glasses down and we got talking about the river. He said he had fly fished it for the last sixty years and I asked in turn about the changes he had seen. Litter and poachers, they come at night he said, steal the fish, light fires and leave rubbish. When I asked him who it was he just said ‘Them’

Further up the trail I found a new gate has been fitted to one of the trails we ride down. I would be happy with this sign if it wasn’t for the fact that the left hand fork of the trail comes out ten yards further up and has no gate on it and there is no wire on the ancient fence posts for the next seven or eight hundred yards. The livestock roams freely as it likes. Just another person not wanting mountain bikers using the trails. The idiocy is truly staggering.

The next stop was the end of the trail and a lovely little limestone gorge. Not a trout in sight.

Back over to the quarry where I saw one of the most brightly coloured Stone Chats I have ever seen but well out of the range of the phones camera. I will come back with a proper lens that I generally don’t carry when out on the bike because of the weight.

I left the wild strawberries for what ever wildlife feeds on them.

Lastly to the hollowed out tree which I managed to climb inside, truly amazing and Tardis like on the inside.

 

 

 

 

Day 74… Or there about..

“I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those wreckers of all but the best laid plans.” ~ J. K. Rowling

Surprised?

I am not.

I did go to work, twice and very briefly. There was a miscommunication, meaning was not co-constructed between the involved parties and as a result I may be moving on. I am not going to elaborate any further until supposition becomes fact.

Back to the daily grind.

What once masqueraded as lockdown has all but collapsed. Anyone is going anywhere at any time, except the pub, hair dressers, nail salons and car parks by the coast. Inconsistency and apathy fuel the decay. Business sneaks out from the sick bed, at a social distance of course.

Mc Donald’s has a three lane queue and traffic marshals. In the time it takes to order and collect a Big Mac I could light a barbecue, slaughter a cow and fashion two all beef patties from a slab of rump steak. Maybe even knock up an artisan brioche roll to wrap it in.

Black lives mattering has become more of a hot potato for the media. One black criminal who was unlawfully killed and the lawless rioting which it gave an excuse for is now more important than the hundreds still dying of Covid 19. Surely if this was racially motivated and demanding equality the protesters should be marching under an All Lives Matter banner?

I wanted to do the early high water on Sunday morning but it was early and after over forty minutes of work earlier in the week I opted for afternoon low water and a lay in.

Big tide, it had to be the Sand Spit, not wanting to take the piss on travelling or heading out West.

The car park was busy and you can see anglers vehicles, pick them out amongst the dog walkers. They will be the vans, the estates and those with something covering the seats to protect them from sand and mud.

Even from Lavernock Point I could see a number of people waiting to get on the now cresting sand spit. I walked straight past the lads already setting their gear up but assured them I would not be going into their chosen spot and they would get choice of where they set up. This broke the ice and we chatted bout the mark as we hopscotched across the islands of sand through the shallow water. Evidently the mark has not been producing well in the past week.

When I got to my chosen spot I unlocked my seatbox to set up. It was at this point I realised the error I had made. In order to defrost the herring, mackerel and bluey (Pacific Saury) I had put them in a carrier bag and not in the box. This bag was now sweating in the back of herselfs car, making it stink, baking in sunshine. Oh well at least I had squid crab and sandeel, that would be enough for the four hours fishing.

It hasn’t taken long for my reels to get filthy again and the first cast screamed like sand grinding between the mag plate and spool. The brisk head wind cut down the distance that I would have liked to achieve but the baits were in the water.

The wind was driving and produced the kind of conditions that bounce the rod tips making small bites undetectable.

After a few bait changes and recasts I couldn’t help but notice some activity either side of me. Mainly dog fish but the odd ray. Was I doing anything wrong or just in the wrong place and out of luck. My spirits never dipped but my rod tip did, just the once and produced a nice little blonde ray. The only proper bite of the day. I had a couple of big thumps and slack liners on the flood but others around me were suffering the same thing and it appeared to be clumps of weed driven by the rising tide.

The only bite came on a cocktail of three sandeel wrapped in a large calamari and my offerings of peeler crab were ignored.

after a long trudge back, which seems to get ever longer I was happy to find that the car was in the shade and there was not explosion of stench to greet me when I opened the hatchback, hardly any smell at all really.

 

 

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Had Aesop been born two and a half thousand years later and in the Welsh Valleys he may have penned a contemporary fable such as  A gentleman goes into the off-license and asks not for his regular service but for the finest bottle of gin the shop has, the shop keeper says yes I will do that for you and scurries away to bring back a wondrous bottle of high value. The gentleman then says ‘yes I want that bottle, that is what I want you to give me but I am only going to pay the standard rate that I paid for the lesser bottle last week’. The shopkeeper returned the bottle to the shelf and told the gentleman to fuck off.  In this way neither of them profited and ill-will hung heavy in the air. The shop-keeper no longer had the custom and the gentleman realised  he no longer had what he had hoped for or what he had demanded, he had even lost what he had before and in this life you are unlikely to get more than you pay for, despite what you expect.

Day…..?

..69 Dude…….

Apologies for the Bill and Ted Reference but strange things are afoot.

A disaster has once again befallen me…….I have been asked back in to work to plan my return tomorrow… so this will be (probably) my last fishing picture a day post.

No more idle ramblings, no more daily grind, no more selfies from mountains, rivers and beaches. No more will it be the loners time to shine. Those of us happy with our own company will have to get used to constant phone calls and winging clients and trades once again. Car and plane emissions will build back up and the insects and birds will once again be silenced. The bin men will pass my house un-noticed  and dialogue free, packages will build up on the doorstep, no more neighbourly chats when I am foolish enough to get caught out in the open.

Stay local, that is what we are told. Drakeford is quite insistent that I go no further to fish than five miles but he will be smiling on me tomorrow when I travel forty miles to the office and back, and the forthcoming weeks I will not be a threat to anyone when I am travelling hundreds of miles a week up and down the M4?

The United Kingdom? I think not. This little pandemic has only gone to show how divided we are and I have no clue why the peoples of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland get to vote in a General Election when the chosen Prime Minister doesn’t get to call the shots on what is a National crisis. Political squabbling has prevented a unified approach.

I have seen my view point turned, a full U turn based on the divided politicians. I was a staunch stay at homer, thinking that those who dared to venture out were placing us all at risk but as it transpired we were never locked down. You must stay in, unless you need to go out, or fancy a little walk or run or to ride your bike in the country. Only do essential shopping. None of the countless delivery vans have dropped off food or medical supplies to me. Am I at fault for ordering non-essential items? or did Amazon, Ebay, Veals and the like collaborate with me to put drivers at risk? The one way marker system at Tescos has been a joke, No one will wait while over-ripe housewives block the cheese aisle to have a chat, no you will go the other way to minimise exposure. People clambered over each other to get the last litre of Litre of Pink Gin, the last bag of pasta or bogroll, and when you reach the till you are standing two feet apart from the next person as you both pack plastic bags with you weekly shop.

Panic buying brought on by the hysteria of social media…. that which does not kill us makes us stronger only it appears that the news feed and daily posts which have kept many of us together have done so through a diet of shit.

I know there are those who have suffered loss and there are those who have not made it through and those families have my condolences. Herself lost and elderly relative who had both vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s but will her death be attributed to Covid-19?

God help us if there is every anything really nasty out there.

I only wish the call to work had come hours earlier? It would have stopped me putting in my Evil to the bike shop for some massive attention. I don’t know when I will get time to ride it next now.

I suppose I should be thankful to have a job to go back to really? It had to come sooner or later but I had planned another few weeks of lockdown leisure time. I laid in stocks of frozen crab and cheap leads all purchased click and collect from a responsible retailer a mere forty minutes drive away. I lovingly toiled the days away knotting 4/0 hooks to 80lb mono and 8/0 BMX to twisted wires in anticipation of days to come.

If I a thought about it a little at the start I would have retained some of the better images to go out with a bang but hey ho I am just going to rehash a few of my favourites again.

Stay Safe but life goes on

Neil

 

Day 68…. Crepuscular creeping to no avail..

Blanked…again

Once again I feel that early morning accomplished glow. Last nights tackle is cleaned and hook lengths replaced.  I have mopped and brought the bins in. I even jet washed the big bin because it smelt like someone had thrown old squid in. (I don’t remember doing it, maybe someone broke into the back garden and threw old bait into the bin). Five minutes of furious scrubbing a particularly stubborn stain which turned out to be part of the marble pattern. Wash on, drying hung out and I am clear for the day.

The eldest chiId is up showered and off out to meet some of his butties, and before 2 o’clock. He  has not taken part in the lockdown at all, it just didn’t apply to him. Part of the snowflake generation that never found the fucks Generation X discarded years ago. However neither him or any of his crew have had so much a a sniffle. I have been called irresponsible for allowing him out but he is eighteen next month and I have to sleep. The days I have tried to talk reason he forgets our talk  and slinks out when I am asleep. Why can’t he be this quiet during the day?

He went down to my garage and borrowed his brothers bike and sneaked out. I know this because neither the bike or the child are in the house and I presume alien abduction is not in play. I don’t know if it is an act on his part but I do not understand a word the he says. Is it the result of my diminishing hearing ability or his incessant muttering? Even when he stands right in front of me it is an experience similar to learning a foreign language online and then facing someone for who the language is their mother tongue. If I am lucky I pick up one word in five, yet when I overhear him on the phone to a girlie he is almost coherent and can string more than three words together without saying fuck!

The girl child is visiting her Grandmother so it must be pension day. I do not think she is quite mercenary to check if the pension is in yet before she goes but I would hazard there is latent intent. She did make the call first to check that granny hadn’t check out overnight, but this is unlikely as I am sure the Witch will outlive me.

I am captive to the Galway Boi who is not really old enough to be left alone. I have already won round one. Every morning I ask him what he wants for breakfast and he tells me he isn’t hungry. He will then find me a couple of hours later and tell me he is starving because I haven’t fed him. He even facetimes herself to tell her I am starving him. So before waking him I cooked him some vegetarian sausages, well nearly vegetarian they are  ‘Heck’ chicken, vegeterians eat chicken don’t they?  I put it on the elephant table next to his bed along with a drink. Check mate.

Two things occurred in my world of bike riding yesterday one amusing and the other a total act of stupidity that almost defied words. Firstly following on from the schoolboy scramblers wearing surgical masks I witnessed a grown man wheelying a large motor cross bike across a field and down the road.. full face helmet and spongebob pyjamas.

The second was a moment of terror that left me shaken if not shaking. There is on the way to the mountains a castle ruin and a limestone quarry. The castle perches on sheer rock faces which at a guess would reach around 80 feet from the rocky quarry floor. I was resting, taking more selfies which I have now become prone to do. From the precipice above I heard voices saying they would have to get down. A group of three. An overweight mother, not a monster but probably carrying five stone more than her frame should be, an older daughter, non-descript and in her early twenties and a rake of a young lad of around ten, about the same age and size as the Galway Boi. I moved my bike because it was across the only sensible way down the rocks but they had disappeared so I moved again and I could see the boy walking the cliff edge, oblivious to the drop, he slipped on scree but did not go over the edge and the whole probable scene ran through my mind, I would have to go to the bottom to find him probably smashed at the foot of the cliff. In a calm voice I called and told him to go back over the other side which he did. The mother then came down the easy path and said ” We always get lost” I do not think she could possibly comprehend how close she came to being really lost.

Low water was 9.30pm so I left in time to fish two hours down. Again Aberavon was the destination because there is no reason for any confrontation with the law and I can hide the car in the MOT centre until we are allowed to travel more than five miles.

The road past the Naval club was rammed, I have never seen it so busy, but these were not anglers, they were roaming youths and families enjoying the beach on a sunny day.

Lockdown, what lockdown? social distancing my arse, these people we sitting in tribes, groups of thirty or more clustered around scorched sand which turned to fire pits as darkness dropped. and where they out of the way? no when the footpath ended the throngs began. To access the beach I had to walk through them.

I started of with a couple of squid baits and sat in anticipation of that screaming ratchet that never happened. In fact there was not even a little nod.

The tide dropped away and then started to fill again but no change on the fishing front

I waited and waited. As darkness fell a galaxy of head torches fill the beach to my left. I hope they had a bit more luck than me.

Two dozen frozen peeler later and not a hound in sight.

The lack of activity did not inspire me to stay longer than two hours into the fill and I have scanned web reports to look and see if the fish came on the feed after I left but they did not.

There was very little movement in the water, more big ripples than waves. The wind was offshore and I cannot help thinking that maybe the water needs a bit more movement to fish well?

As I trudged back to the car I walked through the tribes of youths, all grunting inaudible sounds which lacked vowels, consonants and discernible syllables and pondered on the Eldest child….. teenagers

 

 

Day 67