Have you heard of the latest buzz acronym ‘TLTR’? It means Too Long To Read and probably describes many a blog that I’ve written. The attention span of the Internet generation is diminishing rapidly, hence the popularity of Twitter with its 140 character limit and, to a different degree, the God awful text speak (txt spk).

Folk don’t read any more, they scan and jump. Everything has to be instant. X Factor and BGT are prime examples, you give an act 10 seconds and Buzzzzzz! They’re off before they even get warmed up. Novels are starting to reflect this and short, say 70-page books, designed to be read at one sitting are becoming increasingly popular. Fits perfectly with Kindle and the cheap download prices reflect this.

Thinking back, Readers Digest pioneered the abridged novels, didn’t they?

So many visitors will start to read this blog, scroll down, read snippets and move on to their next fix. Good luck to them, but I ain’t for changing. It would be so much easier to broadcast in snippets, one-line tweets with no content or substance, but that simply isn’t me. I write essays rather than simple ‘me-me-me’ blogs. If it was just about me going fishing I’d die of boredom long before you nodded off.

It is what it is and I simply hope you enjoy it…

The Tomb Raider Returns

Do you believe there’s an afterlife, a place you pass over to when you die? Seems to me there are lots of folk around who must do because they make precious good use of their present one. But don’t get me going on the wastrels, the underclass, the lazy, good for nothing folk who are only interested in where their next joint or can of cider is coming from.

I’ve just been to Egypt, land of the Pharaohs. They certainly believed in the afterlife. Spent half their life appeasing Gods, building temples and preparing tombs for the next step on their journey. I have to say it’s all rather impressive stuff when you’re own life began in the front room of a terraced house in a mining village. The temple at Karnak, for instance, is incredible. Such vision, craftsmanship, skill and dedication was, or rather I should say still is, remarkable.

Two thousand years ago these people built, carved and decorated monuments that still stand today despite all manner of efforts to deface and destroy them. They had no cranes or cement, no power tools or computer aided design. Just basic tools to work sandstone and granite.

I looked at the balustrade around the sun deck of our cruise ship, the MS Viking, and practically wept to see the efforts of modern tradesmen. With every power tool known to man at their disposal, they cannot even create a flush joint between two pieces of wood. The welding and paintwork looks as though it were done in a comprehensive school CDT class.

How does a nation fritter away such skill and talent? The modern domestic city buildings are thoroughly depressing, too. Practically every inhabitant of Egypt lives alongside the Nile in a rich and fertile land. The other 95% of the country is barren desert. Inhospitable. Uninhabitable.

Many remain self-sufficient, working the fields diligently, but approach anywhere that tourists can be found and you must steel yourself to run a gauntlet. Beggars galore, ‘English pound. Give me one English pound!’Folk selling yesterdays newspapers, imposters pretending they work on your ship, ‘You don’t recognise me, do you? I’m the cook on your ship!’

Aye, and I’m Lawrence of Arabia…

Hawkers constantly harass you, stepping in the way, invading your space to offer statuettes, T-shirts, galabeyas, rugs, carpets, money exchange and other crap. The activity is frenzied and every single tourist attraction is constructed in a way that you must negotiate the bazaar to get in and out.

The recent uprising has decimated tourist numbers so the pressure on the brave few who have returned intensifies. The upshot is you end up pushing folk out of your way, glowering and offering some ‘constructive suggestions’ involving fornication and travel. And of course you don’t even pause to look at the goods, never mind consider buying anything under that kind of duress.  

One day, I’m sure, they work out that they’re destroying any chance of making a sale when the tourists just huddle together like Roman Centurions, shields raised in every direction to ward off all threats and then just rush through the pack at breakneck speed.

But how was the trip? Well, no-one tells you that you can’t take a camera into the Valley of the Kings before you’re outside the entrance, do they? Or you must not take photographs of the inside of the tombs in the Valley of the Queens. I do think that kind of information should be displayed prominently in all the glossy advertising brochures, don’t you?

But these are minor issues in the grander scale of things. Visit Luxor Temple, Karnak, Hatshepsut, Kom Ombo or Philae and you can actually stroke the carvings and statues if you like, never mind take pictures. The freedom you enjoy is astonishing.

Visiting the great dam at Aswan brought back fond memories. The last time I was here it was to fish for Nile perch. A great experience and one I’d dearly love to repeat. Sadly the perch numbers have diminished dramatically from the days when John Wilson’s TV programmes might show him knocking out ten great lumps in a morning. Nowadays you’d probably consider ten in a week to be a right old result.

Commercial netting is killing the place and, as happened on the gigantic Lake Victoria, the days of viable perch fishing are probably numbered. Didn’t stop me yearning for a return trip though.

Late on in the week we planned a hot air balloon trip over the Valley of the Kings. It seemed a great idea at the time and you tend not to think about getting up at 3.45am when you book but the chance of a desert sunrise and spectacular views would make it all worthwhile.

And so it would have had we actually got off the ground. Despite watching the inflation of half a dozen or so balloons, and some folk actually making it into the baskets, all flights were cancelled due to what they called ‘poor’ visibility.

That’s the second balloon ride I’ve had cancelled in 5 months and I’m wondering whether I’ll ever make it off the ground in one!

Despite the niggles already mentioned I have to say it was a memorable trip with an abundance of highlights but I’ll close with one word of advice to anyone going out there. Think long and hard about whether you want to invest £32 on a ticket to see the Sound and Light Spectacular at Karnak Temple (as was supposedly featured in the James Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me). It’s a rip-off. Well worth a fiver, for sure, but £32 a head? They were having a giraffe Monty!

Overall the trip was very educational (as in lots of teachers and assistants on the ship – it was half term after all) but one unexpected factoid emerged. I thought the guy with the gold and blue mask was called Tutenkhamen. Turns out (according to the sign at his tomb) he was actually Tut Ankh Amun. Not that anyone reading this will be remotely interested!

Luxor is not quite Benidorm, certainly not yet, but it’s clearly aware where the tourist pound is generated. Take these two signs, shot through a moving coach window so I do apologise for the quality…

And I guess they heard I was coming, too…

But enough of my jollies, what about the fishing?

Time’s been pretty tight to tell the truth so it’s been a case of snatching any and every opportunity. Fortunately the weather has been glorious and that has meant a few carp having a munch on surface baits. Why folk seem so reluctant to fish on top or go stalking I have no idea . They seem happy to while away the day behind motionless indicators waiting for something to happen along and spring their carefully laid traps even if that means spending the whole time blanking. Guys, get on the top or at least zig a bit of black foam or a pop-up near the surface because the fish just aren’t on the bottom when the sun’s shining.

Anyway, after an afternoon diligently being led aroud garden centres and topping up with coffee and cakes, the boss and I somehow managed to find ourselved just round the corner from Alderfen Fisheries. I explained it would be rude not to drop in and say hello to ‘big Dave’ and anyway, I just happened to have a floater rod in the car and a few chummies…

Well, the sun was shining bright and Sue did have her Kindle so she didn’t need a lot of persuasion. Fish were showing on the road bank where no-one was fishing so I made sure she was comfortable in a low chair and set about my business.

The first pouch of floaters brought a fish to the top within minutes despite quite a stiff ripple. Last time I was here Dave said he was going to tile the bottom so anglers wouldn’t complain about a bit of weed. While he’s at it I wonder if he wouldn’t consider building a few hills because even the slightest breeze tends to whip across the surrounding flat peat moors.

Never mind, this was going to be a doddle. I took my time and trickled in the mixers steadily and it did appear a few fish were willing to play. Unfortunately a pair of nosey swans wanted to play more than the fish did and the next hour was a right old nightmare. How dumb is a swan? Really? They pestered the life out of me.

Eventually I managed to cast out and up came a carp. Unfortunately I somehow managed to miss what was a really positive take that left a huge angry boil on the surface. Things quietened after that, but not for long. I soon had another up and this time I made no mistake.

As I trudged back to the car Dave asked how I’d got on.

‘Had one, missed one. Bit frustrating really.’

‘Hey. Just think on. Tha’s never failed here!’

And you know, he was spot on.

Fancy Getting Your Hands On Mark’s Big Roach?

In the last blog I mentioned that John Wilson and I both named the roach as our favourite species during a forum Q & A. Despite the virus that is carp, which in its various guises has spread to practically every lake and pond in the country and the introduced infestations of barbel in almost every moving watercourse, the roach still remains supreme as the finest challenge available to all, cormorants permitting, that is.

Mark Wintle’s imminent book, Big Roach, may well prove to be the last on this much loved species bacause that love will become marginalised, the love affair will end as surely as the fishing we knew in our childhood has gone forever. I’ll tell you more about the launch and release of the clothback version nearer the time but for now there’s a chance for collectors to get their hands on a short-run leather-bound edition. That there will probably only be 30-40 copies speaks volumes, not about the author or the book, but about the demise of an iconic species.

If you want one then you should contact Calm Productions on 0845 408 2606. The price is likely to be in the region of £150.

Another Day, Another Show…

Good Friday should have seen me cheering on the Rovers against Crystal Palace at the glorious sun-kissed, packed out Keepmoat Stadium but alas I had to be in Peterborough manning the Daiwa stand at yet another shop open day. At this rate there will be an open day every week of the year before long as every retailer tries to pull a few more customers through the door.

Sheltons is a fabulous, modern fishing tackle shop, a million miles apart from the ones I grew up with. It used to be that a tackle shop was about the size of an average front room but the trend is towards supermarket shopping with anglers taking their selections to the tills in a basket. Everything is discounted and it has to be the way forward, I’m afraid. The corner shop era is all-but over. The shop where the proprietor was always off fishing somewhere and the back room was the haven for the in-crowd, huddled round drinking tea and smoking fags, glaring at the noddies who dared approach the counter. And heaven help anyone who had the temerity to ask for advice…

Oh well. The new stores certainly offer choice, not to mention value, but you probably have to travel because there’s no longer a little shop on every street corner. I wonder just how many tackle shops have ceased trading in the past 20 years?

Again, it was good to meet up with old friends. Who says the camera never lies? I look positively trim, slim and yes, a proper short arse in this picture whereas I’m well over six feet tall in real life, as many of you know well. Perhaps it’s me age – don’t old folk start to shrink in their advacing years?

Jan raised the subject of forum and Internet idiots in general – he’s been pricked on a few occasions by barbed comments. Gary claims he’s only just learned to email and keeps away from all the crap so I trotted out one of life’s great maxims passed onto me many years ago by David Hall. ‘Bob,’ He said, ‘It’s a fact of life that if you put yourself in the public eye 95% of the people will like you. It doesn’t matter what you do the other 5% will always hate you, so just rub along with the majority and have a happy life.’

‘Ohhh, Nashy can beat that easily.’ Chipped in Gary. ‘He’s got loads more than 5%!’

Have We Over-Egged The Barbel Pudding?

It used to be that barbel were a special fish, quite a rarity and you had to make some kind of effort to catch them. Nowadays they’re everywhere and it can be a case of trying to avoid them rather than catch them.

Take Stu’s latest trip. He went fly fishing for trout – quite legally – but apart from a couple of out-of-season grayling all he had was this lump.

Bet that’ll go down well with the barbel police!

Not that it’ll bother Stu. He’ll probably be more concerned that sucking on a fly rod makes him look like a chipmunk.

Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now

I find it completely bizzarre that there’s a bidding war over Morrissey’s upcoming memoir. Faber have tried to woo him with an open letter, ‘You deserve Faber and the love we can give you. History demands it; destiny commands it.’

Penguin are Morrissey’s prefered publisher but only if they accord him the status of being released in the Penguin Classics pantheon alongside Ghandi and Malcolm X, William Burroughs and Andy Warhol. Some are suggesting he might even command a fee similar to the £3.5m that went to Keith Richards for his Rolling Stones memoirs.

Err, I’m sorry, but Who? Who exactly is this Morrissey? Did I miss something? I can understand that the Stones, a worldwide brand through 5 decades, are serious contenders for most influential ever rock act. They were up there with Beatles and anyone else you care to mention. But Morrissey? Crikey, his most successful album ever only reach number 11 on the Billboard chart while the ‘Best Of’ album failed to chart in a single major territory worldwide.

I’m guessing here, of course, but the Nolan Sisters have probably sold more records!

Seems it doesn’t take much for someone to regard theirself as a legend these days and it’s all quite rich really, coming from the man who once sang, ‘And if you have 5 seconds to spare, I’ll tell you the story of my life.’

Perhaps it’s going to be a very short book.

Barbel Spawning Survey – Seriously, What’s The Point?

On the subject of bizarre happenings I note the Barbel Society is appealing for information pertaining to its annual spawning survey. Okay…, but perhaps someone would first care to share with us all the findings they made last year?

Did they not ask for the same info a year ago. Where’s the feedback please?

Or would revealing the data possibly expose the closed season for what it is? A hopelessly mis-timed excuse to do gardening and decorating, or the best excuse for not catching anything ever invented? The closed season began almost five weeks ago and despite the hottest April I can ever remember I’ll stake my conker collection on the fact that not one single barbel has yet spawned in the Trent, Dove, Derwent, Idle or any of the Yorkshire Rivers I fish.

The fact that the appeal wasn’t even announced till now is probably a clue, don’t you think?

As we know the Barbel Society vigorously supports the closed season so I wonder how many dedicated barbel anglers are patiently dreaming about the glorious 16th when they’ll be out in force targeting both pre- and post-spawning fish?

I’ve said it before and I’ll happily repeat myself. The timing of the current closed season is a joke.

Before volunteering any information I’d love to hear some straight answers to seven simple questions:

1. What scientific reasoning is there for having a 93-day break?

2. Why does it start on the 73rd day of each normal year?

3. Why is it okay for this to change to the 74th in a leap year?

4. On what date were eggs first fertilised successfully- resulting in reared fry –  in 2010? (Groups of juvenile fish going through the motions of chasing each other around because the sun is shining counts for nothing – sustained minimum water temperatures are an absolute success requirement for eggs to hatch)

5. What date (ignoring false starts and regional exceptions caused by micro climates or artificial influences) did widespread spawning commence in the UK in 2010?

6. Was spawning completely concluded throughout the UK and had all gravid fish completely recovered before June 16th?

7. What was the latest recorded instance of a barbel spawning in a UK river in 2010?

Why do I suspect I’ll struggle for straight answers?

Top Marks For Innovation

Hats of to the same Society for a bit of innovative marketing. This Extranormal clip is aimed to promote the upcoming show on the 5th June. Simple, hopefully effective and a nice change to see the facility used in a positive way rather than to extract the urine.

According to the hit counter I was viewer number 7 so there’s a distinct need to plug it through the vast array of Internet angling sites.

Shock Horror – What Do We Do Now?

It has to be the ultimate conundrum. What on earth do you do when Mastermind isn’t getting any applications from black and ethnic minority populations despite overall numbers increasing substantially due to online marketing?

Fear not, the PC brigade have an answer. Let’s dumb it down and see if that works.

Hang on, the BBC is charged with representing the whole population, I accept that, but surely that includes white intellectuals as well. If the solution to Mastermind’s problem is to replace two minutes on the operas of G&S with the life and works of Cheryl Cole do we not simply create another disatisfied minority?

Some people, like me, choose not to listen to the Asian Broadcasting Network on BBC Radio, but I don’t expect them to throw in a bit of Chas and Dave to balance the appeal. It’s no difference, surely, when some viwers choose not to be competitors on Mastermind. After all there’s a whacking great clue in the title of the programme. It’s called MASTERMIND. I bet there are millions of white folk who never consider applying and millions more who don’t actually feel any need to watch it. Race isn’t the issue, education is. After all, no-one seems concerned that you never see a tattoed Burbery-capped chav on there, do they?

Or is it that anyone with a modicum of intelligence, or maybe a linage dating back to the Crusades, should feel thoroughly ashamed of themselves for denying the immigrants and our own ferral population of 30 more minutes of dumbed down crap?

Maybe it’s time to dumb the show down completely. I know, let’s just ditch the tough questions and bring back the gong. Yes, that’s it, bring back the Yes/No interlude…

Dale Winton for compere?

 

Man from BBC: ‘Err, we’d better have a black man banging the gong. No, hang on, that might be interpreted as racist. A black presenter will be better. Or maybe Chinese. They never get much coverage, do they? How about a muslim woman wearing high heels and a burka to demonstrate the star prize…?’

And just in case anyone thinks I’m being racist, do get a grip on your life!

On the other hand we could bring back Take Your Pick Monty Python style, of course.

 

See you next time.