My nonattendance from the waterside in the years since I ceased angling seems so weird to me now. I used to love it so much, especially because my other endevours tended to be at the extremely strenuous end of the spectrum, playing as I did rugby, football and cricket for assorted school and village clubs. Having the chance to get my fishing tackle, jump on a bike and ride for the 10 minutes to go to the local fishery and spend a few hours quietly sat with a rod in my hand and looking at a float on the water was a joy.
When I left 6th form college, “by mutual consent” as the football parlance has it, subsequent to the first year when it was obvious that I had mucked about too much in the first year to have any likelihood of passing any A levels at the end of the second, would have been the best time to spend spring and summer evenings with my fishing tackle instead of slaving over some economics homework.
And as I was working, in a department store restaurant, I was earning and had more cash on the hip than I had ever had ever and a day off during the week which would have been useful to get out to the water and have a few hours if not an entire day angling with the place nearly to myself. Even better, since I was working in Guildford, going to the fishing tackle shop would have been easy and I could have had loads of maggots to drown. This was unheard of before I left college as our village did not have a fishing tackle shop apart from a very small part of a shop had a limited selection, and certainly no live bait on offer, and to get into Guildford and back having been to the fishing tackle shop to get some would have taken a long time and wouldn’t be worthwhile.
In following years, I worked for a big utility company in Staines which had it’s own angling lake and still I never felt the urge to draw stumps for the day, get the fishing clothes on and have an hour down there after work. Even dumber, less than 50 paces across the road was the Thames which has some brilliant fishing that went utterly ignored by me, especially as by then I was earning really good money and had the opening to get some really excellent fishing in the fishing tackle bag.
Years later, again I was with for a company that had it’s location right on the canal-side, and quite often on breaks a group of us would go and sit on the steps on a nice clear day and watch people fishing, and as each alternate week saw my shifts finishing at 4 o’clock, it would have been very straightforward to pick the fishing tackle out of the car and finish off the day with a couple of hours fishing. I might have enjoyed the job more too, thinking about it.
Naturally other priorities appear as you go through the years. After I left sixth form I enjoyed pubs in quite a significant way. Ladies were never a challenge of course, I don’t ever remember any throwing themselves at me and begging me to ravish them, so that generally wouldn’t have been an obstacle to deciding on a days angling, but it just seemed that at that time I’d put the fishing tackle away and forgotten about it.
That’s changing now though. I do have the urge to go back, I have had my fishing tackle out to inspect and see what has to be changed, which is most of it, and I’ve been looking at places to go and what I need to do in order to be allowed to go there, so hopefully I can renew some of the enjoyment from my formative days.
20110114
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