Introduction page. (to be finished at some time in the future) 

This is my second attempt at writing out part two of my old fishing memoirs, this one about Fordwich  Lake and the fish that were swimming around it back in the very late 1970's and 1980's. I spent about a week setting the initial Bloggy thing out and by this time I had given it a rubbish title, uploaded many photos and provided that first said Blog with a rather overly elaborate explanation to both why I'd written yet another Blog and what it was meant to achieve both for me and for anyone that might want to read or peruse the images I had uploaded onto it. Anyhow, to cut a long story short, when it was finished I hated it, for many reasons to. For some rather mind boggling reason I settled on entitling the first attempt as 'A Frozen moment in time' too which was an awful title innit? I mean it's a Blog written by an ageing balding fat bloke about Carp fishing during a different age, it's not a spy novel or some nostalgic love story is it? Why I chose the original overly pretentious title is a complete mystery to the me sitting here at this moment in time less than a week later on? There were other reasons too, some of which I will touch upon later. Although better, this here Blog is far from being my own personal Magnum Opus ... that's not an ice cream by the way.

Anyway, taking this into account I felt impelled to re-write a lot of it out again. Some of the first attempt was deemed usable, so I ended up just cutting and pasting certain bits of it for that initial effort, but the problem is that when you do this sort of thing the text just doesn't flow as you would like and many of the newer thoughts are out of context with the old and this makes it harder to read back. Bear this in mind if you notice it during your read through, well, if you can bear reading it? I wouldn't advise getting your hopes up let's just say ... 

Photos

I hadn't looked at my photos for years. Some not for twenty odd years and some of the loose one's even longer. All were pre-digital day prints taken on film

3 large notepads - one was missing as well as various small pocket diaries written from schooldays onward. Photos set out in albums many random loose photos (still in cardboard jackets) cant find them all

Memories. Not everything I wrote was even accurate and probably still isn't. It will be better than it would have had I left it as it was as during the writing and reading process I did become aware of certain errors due to various slips in my memory much the same as I had with my first Carp fishing Blog.

Humour. Another thing that I would like to make clear here is If you do read the text then please try and keep in mind the method employed. I do use a rather bludgeoning type of humour from time to time, it is all meant to be taken in a light-hearted fashion, so if you do detect any sort of personal attack on anyone then please factor in that everyone made mention of were (or still are) good mates and this sort of banter was an enormous part of our old communication process. I am not putting anyone down, in fact mickey taking was always a warped sort of back-handed compliment in our world back then. In fact during the fourteen years or so that my fishing career lasted (eleven of them spent solid Carp fishing) none of us had a cross word and as I recall the entire period was spent as mates laughing from from its start to finish. As I say, some of us are still mates now and the only fact that we all aren't is due to us not seeing some of the old crowd for many years after we all drifted apart and went our own separate ways. I did feel the need to clarify this as we do live in a world where it appears that the human race has undergone some enormous sense of humour bypass and everyone takes themselves too seriously.

Another thing to bear in mind here is that although I use computers daily that I know very little about how to use them. I use my PC nowadays much like you used to use a TV, though of course it has the added bonus of being connected to the interweb meaning that you can watch what you want to watch when you want to watch it. This has caused me to be a YouTube addict in my later life. I also do lots of e-mailing, I also write quite a lot, keeping daily journals of my other hobbies (moths and bird migration etc) and have also started writing about places that I got to know, all precursors to me writing this and my previous Blog about my old fishing days. That aside, I know pretty much nothing about how to use a PC 'but' during the witting of this latest Blog (about Blog number twenty of my repertoire) I at last learned how to do a screenshot! Whoopee do eh?  Hence there will all sorts of nonsensical screenshot photos attached and woven into this, as the novelty about doing so was in full flow during the writing and setting out process. I was screen shotting everything, all of my old gear found on-line, all sorts. It all got out of hand to be honest, you'll see when you read the following pages how many inane though memory inducing items of gear I found on-line then screen shotted and uploaded onto the Blog.

So why another Blog? And why such a Blog about something you used to do over thirty years ago? I'm not really sure myself. It's perhaps along the lines of Descarte's quote 'I think therefore I am' sort of mentality? In my version this old line would be changed to 'I think therefore I write Blogs'? I was bored and at a loose end, deep into lockdown, very bored due to being stuck in the house and during such times, well I write as it justifies me as a human being, proves my very existence or at least sets out part of it. In June I'd usually be catching up on my early winter and spring bird migration records or setting out my moth catches or whatever but I fancied a change. Even the cancellation of Euro 2020 due to the Covid 19 wotsit didn't help, anyhow, one thing just led to another and here we are. Or at least I am? Last November (as in 2019) I dug out all of my old Carp photos after watching various Carp videos on YouTube which rather spontaneously led to me spending the next week sifting through the photos, scanning them into my PC and writing a long drawn out Blog dealing with the very start till the very end of my fishing adventure, something that I quite enjoyed doing at the time. This was to be a sequel to the first fishing Blog ... it just proved an awful lot harder to write out than I'd anticipated. When in the mood I can write quite easily but when not in the mood, well it can become a bit of a struggle.

I have many happy memories about my Carping days even though by the end of them I was shadow of my previous self. I'd lost all motivation and all my love of it. Don't get me wrong, I loved the atmosphere created by the fishing I just think by this time that my life was in such a mess that I'd made myself a bit ill? Even now, thirty years since I last cast a rod I still get the odd dream about Carping. Also, for years after I stopped, I'd go out for a walk at night when it rained. It was as if I missed being out of doors in the weather. It was all a bit odd. I enjoyed the whole thing about Carping, initially the fishing itself, the people you met and the solitude of it all. By the end of my time I was enjoying the partying too much, in fact it had taken over from the buzz of catching the Carp themselves. The actual fishing just meant less.

I'd fallen in love with Carping gradually, a story that I'll touch upon later. Once I'd caught a Carp, the world changed for me. It just wasn't to last as it worked out.

The blue van and the kid

The white van and the drumkit

the yellow van of certain death