There is a time for growing up and having just turned twenty nine I don’t think this is it.
I am getting scarily grown up though. In general, I listen to radio four. I can justify this, because I work in heritage sector, so it doesn’t make me old. It makes me informed of cultural happenings. I also know the pitfalls of owning a dairy farm in the heart of an Ecoli scare. I find it harder to excuse my occasional leanings towards radio three. It’s a scary sign that today’s current hits are sounding like noise. This irks me because I used to be cool. I listened to John Peel, bought everything on vinyl and collected by record label, (Fierce Panda and Transcopic).
More worrying still, I have begun to impart my dodgy fishing knowledge on to others. Having had twenty minutes or so with the eminently excellent North Country Angler, I taught my mother how to use a nymph. I t was satisfying to see her concentrate on the end of a greased line, maintain the tension and snatch her prize. I hope to repeat this on Saturday when I take an old friend, not known for being patient, then again, he did live with my messy self for a year fishing for the first time. I have a feeling that either he will take it like a convert to Catholicism, or my Marksman will be angrily snapped in pieces. Dear Lord, please give me a beginner’s fish on Saturday.
The Grand Master denies this but it was my idea on a rainy chalk stream afternoon to twitch sedges across the current. It’s pretty devastating as a method in the late summer. As real sedges begin their maverick dances on the water’s surface a struggling participant is a devastating temptation for a greedy trout.
It’s all very adult all this symphony listening and teaching. However, I’ve been rather maverick of late in a way which is most uncharacteristic. I’m taking on rather too much in life and work which will either be the making of me or see me into an early grave. I also am still totally messy and haven’t reached that amazing stage of adulthood where it becomes second nature to put things back after you have used them.
I’ve also been spending rather a lot of time with a Physicist. He is quite insane, foreign and vegetarian. A good arts loving carnivore like myself should surely exercise more caution. I clearly have some growing up to do.
