Taking the Holyhead Train

I took Dave fishing yesterday, at the old ponds above Whitwell. Well, that's a lie...Dave took me, because he was able to borrow a car, but we'll gloss over that.

The weather forecast for the week looked like this:

Monday: Intermittent sun, possible storms
Tuesday: Intermittent sun, showers
Wednesday: Intermittent sun, possible storms
Thursday: Intermittent sun, possible storms
Friday: Rain

So, as sensible people looking to go and stand outside holding long sticks, we plumped for the day with a slim chance of lightning.
You know. Fishing is meant to be one of the great pleasures in life, but bursting into electric flames is less so.

There was a little rain, but on the whole the weather let us get on with the business of catching fish. Dave had never been fishing before, but mastered the basics - sitting, pointing the rod in the right direction - very quickly.

We were fishing using Spam (TM).

As for a short while when Dave was unsure of the very few skills needed to persuade a fish to come out of the water for a while using Spam (TM), I kept an eye on him, gave him the pointer on casting...and reminded him, as his teacher for the short learning curve of waving hooks around in the air, to be mindful of the living face. My living face. With the hook. Ah yes, says Dave.

A great success of a day was had - both in actually catching fish and, as is so important in these matters, playing up to the audience. Dave managed to start catching his first ever fish whilst on the phone to his sister, we caught two fish when she was actually there with her sixteen month old daughter Emma, who seemed a little confused by what she called the 'Dsh', and I managed to cast out, hook, land and put back a small tench I dubbed Bernard, all during Krissa's morning wake up call.

It hardly rained at all, which is good, because we made a right pig's ear of putting up the storm brolly.

As a young girl with blue braces walked by with a shetland pony on each arm for the third time that day, we started to pack up our stuff. I looked down the hill across the valley to the church surrounded by Yew, the houses on the road, the woodlands which spread up the downs and the slow progress of a tractor in the next meadow, and knew that it would be a long time before I could come back.

So we released the wasps we had trapped in our empty coke cans with big lumps of Spam(TM), and went home.

I'll tell you about the fantastic evening we had...a little later...