So, 'ere in the country we's mebee a bit slow on the uptake. Loife is a bit slower an' we don't hold with all these new fangled city ways an we don't much like outsiders.

Or at least many journalists from the broadsheets seem to think so, there is more than one regular column written by very witty journalists who delight in laughing at rural sterotypes. Me, I'm totally pissed off with sanctimonious twats from papers writing columns that bemoan the slower pace of life in the country, people who have made the move to a rural idyl and found it wanting. They blame the yokels being unable to give change in a shop speedily, they blame dull neighbours, they blame everything but themselves. If they took a good look they may just find that the reason they had their move to the country fail had nothing to do with the country, those of us who live in the country or the country way of life; It was purely their own petty, vain and intolerant life that was at fault.

You know what, Kensington is welcome to them, they can use their new hunter wellies in Richmond park at the weekend and exercise their black lab from the boot of their ever-so-clean landrover discovery. Certainly Daisy Waugh from this Sunday's Times seems to be a good match. I'm sure Chelsea misses them terribly when they go abroad (that's past the M25 to you and me).

Daisy, along with the rest of you oh so superior city people, have fun, don't let the gate hit you in the ass on your way out if you please. Leave us in peace to enjoy the fact that we've realised that there's more to life that Starbucks and the kings road.

Yes the country has some intolerable bores, and many of them have moved to join some sort of rural idyl that is only perpetuated by themselves. Our love of the traditional image of country life is deeply instilled in us, but I hate to break it to you, the country isn't just filled with wealthy landowners and the odd scruffy-but-posh Fernley Buyitall. Everyone poor person won't doff their cap at you and call you m'lord. If you move to that tumble-down barn in Dorset and do it up with swimming pools and tennis courts I don't doubt that there will be noone good enough to play with you. Lets face it, I don't imagine there are any people you would think are good enough for you outside of other city ex-pats. You might try running a village shop and handing out change yourself, running a business and paying a fair wage, not what you think cash strapped country folk deserve. You could also realise that rural poverty is a real thing in today's Britain and all your failed jaunt to the country has done is mean that there is one less housing opportunity available to local people. One more house that has been escalated out of locals price ranges by people using London levels of equity.

I also hate to break it to you, but I don't own a pair of plus fours, I don't own a check shirt and nor do I posses a flat cap. Me and the rest of the great unwashed, rural bleeding heart liberals living out here are just happy to dress as we see fit, and enjoy the life that we find on our doorsteps. We don't get bored because there aren't dozens of restaurants on our doorsteps, the fact that people do get bored when out of the city shows an overwhelming lack of creativity and imagination.

Now I'd just like to point out at this point that I am not in fact an angry man. I seem to have ranted a little there but I'm allowed to do that, this is after all my chaotic brain-storming word dump. My landfill for ideas and scribblings.

Catch you later Bill and Ted.









~ malcolm

Well, the trout season is once again nearly upon us here in Wiltshire, another few weeks to go. Rather than resolutions in January, my new years resolutions come just before the season. Some hardy souls have already been making the pilgrimage to fish the Welsh waters that have already opened, discussion forums are busy with people arguing about definitions of dry flies and tattooing their hearts on the sleeves of their simms fleeces. Making sure that people know whether they are purist, realist, pragmatist or just prejudiced when it comes to their angling preferences.

Me I've discovered a new way and I'm sticking to it. Perhaps I've been hanging around our coarse brethren too much but more and more these days I'm seeing the lure of the light float rod and the worm, I'm being pulled to a branch of angling where innovation, for the most part, is expected rather than frowned upon for being 'new' and somehow dirty.

In 'how to fish' Chris Yates writes
"The art of angling, as opposed to the mechanics of angling, simply involves observation, appreciation and improvisation; everything else follows behind."

Trout fishing, in particular on the chalkstreams of Southern England has got too hung up on mechanics and divorced itself from art. Seriously, life's too short to argue that some dead bloke was right and another dead bloke was wrong, dry fly, wet fly? Arggghhh. Give me a break. 90 million years ago, or thereabouts, the chalk was being laid during the late cretaceous period, it seems that at about the same time, Halford was busy writing his trite dogma and his followers are preserved in time with the chalk and are still at it today.

Definitions over what constitutes a fly are as pointless as arguments over dry or wet, emerger or nymph. The word 'fly' has been used to indicate an artificial imitation made from fur and feathers for hundreds of years;

"The term fly is applied by sea fishermen to a certain arrangement of feathers, wax, etc., which I am about to describe the manufacture of, and which may be used with considerable success in mackerel, basse, and pollack fishing. I am not disposed to think, however, that such baits are ever mistaken by the fish which they are intended to capture for flies; but the number used, the way in which they are mounted, viz., several on one trace, and the method of their progress through the water, rather leads me to the belief that they are mistaken for a number of small fry, and treated accordingly"
[Lord, W. B. (1863). Sea Fish and How To Catch Them. London: Bradbury and Evans]

So the word fly has been used to refer to any number of things for at least the last 150 years, why do we insist these days on going with the Halfordian rules? He was after all only one man, and by all accounts actually not that good an angler, tending to blame the fish rather than himself when things didn't work out.

This year you'll find me roaming our 'non premium' waters, avoiding tackle tarts, purists, rules and historical dogma and fishing for fish, not just for trout. I'll also use the most appropriate method for the conditions rather than trying to impose self held beliefs that I'm right and you're wrong. If it's just off dark and I know there is a big cannibal trout in that pool, then a woolly bugger may well be called for and I won't feel a twinge of guilt as I reach for my fly box.

I'm going to be as happy with a chubb or a jack pike as I am with a trout and if I catch perch then I will smile more than for all other fish put together. I've had it with rivers full to the gunnels of stocked fish, as artificial in their own way as still waters be they coarse or trout waters.

Don't get me wrong though coarse waters are as full of prejudice in their own way, stories of lure fishermen being chased off canals, fly fishers frowned upon at carp waters. But our underfished rivers outside of the premium stocked trout parts are for the most part as free of rules, or shackles as they can be. If you get your kicks out of fishing within a narrow band of boundaries then more power to you, enjoy it. I'm just tired of it now.

I'll be working on my new seasons resolution; being an angler. An all-rounder, a generalist and as flexible in approach as I can be.

See you out there, and I can guarantee that I'll be smiling...











~ malcolm