On the road

Not so much a fishing post this one, more of a reflection on the ethereal nature of life

In my last post I mentioned that I was heading over the Irish Sea for a week to catch up with family and friends. The few days flew by in no time, indeed it feels on one level as if I was hardly away at all, but seeing everyone again was wonderful. As always, I am left pondering why I don’t go back to the land of my birth more often, surely the quintessential dilemma of the emigrant. We blame the lack of time in our busy lives, or quote the admittedly horrendous costs of travel these days. In fact it is laziness in most cases; well I now realise it is with me. There is always an excuse, some reason which can be inflated out of all proportion to make the whole trip impossible. Back home now, I’m taking time to think about how I change that thought process which has prevented me catching a ferry of plane in the past.

Aberdeen, my place of birth sixty odd years ago, looks to be a city that doesn’t know how to cope with the current economic changes. North Sea hydrocarbon extraction has been steadily dwindling as the fields are gradually pumped dry. Jobs are harder to come by and the really big spenders in oil and gas have moved on to the next big thing (If Trump gets in again it will be Alaska’s turn). On a spin down to the beach with my mam on a bright and remarkably warm day last week I passed the sites of two of the mills where I worked. Both are now housing developments, the billowing steam from the dryers and thump of the massive pumps consigned to history, replaced with cramped apartments replete with postage stamp sized lawns on streets called ‘Mill Lane’ and the like. I understand the economic and business reasons why the old mills closed down but it still makes me sad that they are gone.

My 89 year old mother is in remarkably good health and is amazing for her age. We caught up on all the news, drank cup after cup of tea with the Olympic games on the telly in the background. I have absolutely no interest in the Olympics but she enjoyed watching all that running and jumping stuff. The rest of the Aberdeen wing of the family came to see the prodigal son, more tea was drunk and stories of the old days rehashed. It was lovely and the couple of days flew by as they do when you are enjoying yourself.   

From Aberdeen I headed south to meet up with my best mate, Chris. From his place just outside Edinburgh we braved the M8/M74/M6/M42/M40 into England, heading for the Cropredy music festival in Oxfordshire. For those unfamiliar with Cropredy it is a 3 day festival which is organised by the legendary folk band Fairport Convention. The music is provided by an eclectic mix of folk, blues and rock bands playing to around 20,000 in a field next to the slowly meandering river Cherwell. We camped, as we always do, in an adjacent field, ‘enjoying’ the peculiar delights of life under canvas, chemical toilets, mile long queues for a shower and all the other deprivations of the festival goer. It has been years since I camped and it was a sobering experience for me. Just getting in and out of the tent with my arthritic joints was painful and time consuming. The inevitable nightly need to relive my bladder took on the proportions of an expedition up the Nile as I had to get partially dressed, extricate my body from the sleeping bag and tent, don a pair of wellies and hike through the darkness just to pee. I recall wandering through the flapping tents full of snoring occupants one misty night at 3am and thinking to myself ‘I am too bloody old for this’.

On the plus side, some of the bands were terrific, the taste of breakfast cooked and eaten outdoors washed down with mugs of steaming tea, chatting, laughing and reminiscing with Chris made for a wonderful weekend. We talked about fishing of course. He grew up in Somerset and fished the Bridgewater canal. I taught him to fly fish after we met up in the early 90’s and we have fished for trout all over the place ever since. My new found love of coarse fishing provided Chris with plenty of ‘I told you so’ opportunities which he heartily availed of. For decades he had been banging on about taking me out to a canal or lake to fish the float for roach and bream but I always dismissed those offers. Now, after all those missed opportunities, I am left rueing my closed mind and often think about my stupidity.

Knowing I would be sitting for long periods I brought my fishing chair with me and I have to say this alone was by far the best idea I have had in a long time. I will put up another post about my new chair. By previous standards we drank very little, an indication of either getting some sense in our old age or an inability to consume vast quantities of warm beer due to clapped out digestive systems. The crowd were gloriously mad of course, but very much old and mad. The women had traded in their mini skirts for mobility scooters and gravity has taken a heavy toll on every male and female appendage. By the end of the third day I was visibly wilting and ready for home. So Sunday was spent travelling back via endless traffic jams and a horribly busy ferry. Arrival in Dublin used to mean a quick scoot through the city centre and out on to the open road, but not anymore. Brexit reared its ugly head in the form of not one, but two checkpoints at the ferry port. First was a customs check, then once that has been negotiated it is on to passport control. These divergences added a good 30 minutes to the time taken just to get off the boat. Driving across Ireland that night I was treated to a huge thunderstorm which lasted for the whole three hour journey and intensified the further west I travelled. Sheet lightning lit the sky and the deluge of rain kept the windscreen wipers in frantic maximum speed virtually all the way home. But I made it, and the joy of sinking into bed eased me into a deep sleep.

One day at home then I was back to work in the midlands. Tuesday evening was dry and bright, so despite still being very tired I decided to go fishing for an hour. The working day had been a tough one with some difficult meetings and a full in tray of problems for me to solve. I needed to unwind so I bought some maggots and drove to the Royal canal. Inland Waterways, who look after Irelands canals, must be on a sabbatical, as the canal is so choked with weed you could nearly walk across it dry shod. Half an hour spent raking a swim barely made a scratch in the aquatic foliage, but this was going to be a short session so the trough I created would have to do. As always, any raking on an Irish canal immediately attracted every miniscule rudd from miles around. An hour of whipping out 4 inch rudd was not really what I had been hoping for but that was what I got. Doggedly feeding the swim, I prayed for something bigger to come along soon as I felt more and more tired with every passing minute.

Bubbles. Steams of those wonderful tiny bubbles around my float. Loose maggots to keep the tench interested and a major uptick in my concentration paid off when a lovely tench took my double maggot on a size 14, only to come off at the net. I landed the next one, a smallish fish of about a pound and a half. A third was hooked but it too spat out my hook and was gone within seconds of me lifting into him. Some slightly bigger rudd arrived and that put the tench off, possibly due to the fuss the rudd caused when hooked. By now the sun was dipping below the horizon and I was feeling like I had been unplugged from a socket. It was time to go so I packed up and meandered back to the waiting car, boots crunching on the gravel as I wheezed like a steam engine under the load of tackle on my back.

With the car packed up I stopped for a final look around. This would be my last trip to Ballymahon this year, what with the shortening days and weeded canal it makes no sense to make the journey back here. As with Cropredy, I was asking myself if this would be my last time ever. My semi-retirement ends at Christmas and there can be no going back on that decision this time. With that, my time in the Midlands will finally come to an end. Ballymahon is a long way from my home in Mayo and I would have to drive past much better venues to get there. I bathed in the serenity of the August evening, watched the sky turn from blue to pink and then to purple, and heard the distant cattle low as the first stars twinkled. Thoughts crowded in, images of previous days came back to me and jumbled up with my feelings of gratitude for this life. Indeed, the overriding sense of the past week and a bit has been one of thankfulness. Yes, the frailties of advancing years have been sharply in focus but that has been against a backdrop of a life well lived. They say that as one door closes anther one opens, but I seem to have held some important doors ajar. I am indeed a very lucky old sod!

Highlights from Cropredy? Rick Wakeman with English rock ensemble playing ‘Starship Trooper’ by Yes. The entire set by Focus. Three Swedish sisters called Baskery who were excellent. Of course Fairport Convention themselves were great, but the years are telling now. Gerry Conway, their drummer, passed away earlier this year and watching them on stage you have to ask how many more years can they keep doing this? Simon announced the dates for next year’s festival so they have one more in them at any rate. Is there one more in me is the question.