My absence from the canal-side in the years since I gave up angling looks so peculiar to me now. I used to adore it so much, especially since my other sports tended to be at the violently athletic end of the spectrum, playing as I did rugby, football and cricket for assorted school and village clubs. Having the opportunity to get my fishing tackle, jump on a bike and cycle for the 10 minutes to go to the local fishery and enjoy a few hours quietly sat with a rod in my hand and looking at a float on the water was lovely.
When I left sixth form college, "by mutual consent" as the football saying has it, following the 1st year when it was obvious that I'd played about too much in the first year to have any chance of gaining any A levels at the end of the 2nd, would have been the perfect time to spend spring and summer evenings with my fishing tackle instead of working over some economics homework.
And because I was working, in a department store caf, I was earning and had more funds on the hip than I had ever had before plus 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 fishing with the place nearly to myself. Even better, as I was working in Guildford, visiting the fishing tackle shop would have been easy and I could have had lots of maggots to drown. This was unknown before I left school as our village didn't have a fishing tackle shop apart from a very small part of a local shop had a limited selection, and certainly no live bait on offer, and to journey into Guildford and back having visited the fishing tackle shop to get some would have taken ages and wouldn't be worthwhile.
In following years, I worked for a monolithic utility company in Staines which had it's own angling lake and yet I never felt the urge to finish for the day, get the scruffs on and enjoy an hour down there after work. Even sillier, less than 50 meters across the road was the Thames which has some excellent fishing that went completely ignored by me, especially since by then I was earning really good money and had the chance to get some really marvellous angling in the fishing tackle bag.
Later on, again I was working for a business that had it's building right on the waterfront, and very often on breaks a gang of us would go and sit on the steps on a nice hot day and watch people angling, and as every alternate week saw my shifts finishing at 4 o'clock, it would have been very straightforward to fetch the fishing tackle out of the car and see 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 life. After I left sixth form I enjoyed pubs in quite a big way. Women were never a problem of course, I don't ever recall any throwing themselves at me and beseeching me to ravish them, so that generally would not have been a hindrance to deciding on a days fishing, but it just seemed that at that moment I'd put the fishing tackle away and forgotten about it.
That's changing now though. I do have the urge to start again, I've had my fishing tackle out to check it over and see what has to be replaced, which is the majority of it, and I've been looking at places to go and what I need to do in order to have permission to go there, so hopefully I can renew some of the enjoyment from my formative days.
20110114
When I left sixth form college, "by mutual consent" as the football saying has it, following the 1st year when it was obvious that I'd played about too much in the first year to have any chance of gaining any A levels at the end of the 2nd, would have been the perfect time to spend spring and summer evenings with my fishing tackle instead of working over some economics homework.
And because I was working, in a department store caf, I was earning and had more funds on the hip than I had ever had before plus 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 fishing with the place nearly to myself. Even better, as I was working in Guildford, visiting the fishing tackle shop would have been easy and I could have had lots of maggots to drown. This was unknown before I left school as our village didn't have a fishing tackle shop apart from a very small part of a local shop had a limited selection, and certainly no live bait on offer, and to journey into Guildford and back having visited the fishing tackle shop to get some would have taken ages and wouldn't be worthwhile.
In following years, I worked for a monolithic utility company in Staines which had it's own angling lake and yet I never felt the urge to finish for the day, get the scruffs on and enjoy an hour down there after work. Even sillier, less than 50 meters across the road was the Thames which has some excellent fishing that went completely ignored by me, especially since by then I was earning really good money and had the chance to get some really marvellous angling in the fishing tackle bag.
Later on, again I was working for a business that had it's building right on the waterfront, and very often on breaks a gang of us would go and sit on the steps on a nice hot day and watch people angling, and as every alternate week saw my shifts finishing at 4 o'clock, it would have been very straightforward to fetch the fishing tackle out of the car and see 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 life. After I left sixth form I enjoyed pubs in quite a big way. Women were never a problem of course, I don't ever recall any throwing themselves at me and beseeching me to ravish them, so that generally would not have been a hindrance to deciding on a days fishing, but it just seemed that at that moment I'd put the fishing tackle away and forgotten about it.
That's changing now though. I do have the urge to start again, I've had my fishing tackle out to check it over and see what has to be replaced, which is the majority of it, and I've been looking at places to go and what I need to do in order to have permission to go there, so hopefully I can renew some of the enjoyment from my formative days.
20110114
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