Empty Handed

As mentioned in a previous post, I’d stopped off at this fishery to take a look at the catch returns to see if it would be worth a visit. The returns didn’t seem too bad, and Sunday afternoon presented a small window of opportunity to go and do something apart from the family, as they were going to Nana’s. Golf or fishing, golf or fishing..?

With the much vaunted, eagerly anticipated and long planned trip to Stocks Reservoir coming up in 2 weeks, I thought I ought to try out some of the tackle and techniques likely to be in use then. Looking at the catch returns and daily reports from this time last year seems to indicate that intermediate lines and mini-lures/cormorants/cat’s-whisker were topping the charts, so I got out my 9′6″ #6/7 GRX and the intermediate line and wacked on a damsel, a red cormorant and a black buzzer (well, you never know) and had at it.

It was a dry and pretty afternoon, if a little breezy, so I was fairly confident, even with the doubtful stock levels here. I’d fished this water a few times last year. The first time I went with Stuart we learned that the previous week the fishery had been opened to any method, with the intention of depleting the existing stock prior to restocking, and the restocking part of the plan hadn’t yet happened. I’m not sure how true this was, but there certainly wasn’t much happening; I caught two fish that day. The first was a beautiful hand-sized roach to a black and green buzzer within a few casts. The second was a rainbow, foul hooked - the water’s pretty clear, and I was fishing a midge pupae pattern to this fish when it came over to the fly, but seemed to turn away before it got all that close. Weirdly, the line started following it off and it had been fouled under the chin. Stupid prismatic effect. Anyway, Stuart didn’t get a thing, and it seemed pretty lifeless. I tried a few other trips later in the year with mixed results; one time I had half a dozen to buzzers and elk hair emergers in a few hours (good result for me), but a month later got nothing. I don’t pretend to really understand it, and it’s another honesty box pond, so I can’t ask the staff, or anything. Pretty much all of the anglers I meet there complain about the stocking (lack thereof), but I dunno. I’ll keep trying the occasional trip because it’s a nice little water, it’s not far away and you never have to book!

Back to this afternoon, and the result was nil points. I fished around the entire pond with my intermediate and covered every level in the water, from top to bottom and at every retrieve rate with a selection of lures, blobs, cormorants, nymphs and wets (stopping short of egg flies) and didn’t get so much as a touch. Indeed, I didn’t see a single fish all afternoon - no rises, no splashes or swirls, no signs of any near the margins (the water is clear and I was wearing poloroids), nothing. Until very close to home time, when one jumped quite nearby. Quite a big one. But that was it. One other guy did come and fish. He stayed for about 3 hours, moaned about the stocking levels, talked about flogging a dead horse and then fucked off. At least he didn’t bag up whilst I couldn’t buy a bite, that would have been too much. What was really puzzling was that the conditions later on were perfect to actually see some surface activity. It was mild, the wind had calmed and there was quite a prolific buzzer hatch. I really would have expected to see some rises, but the surface remained unbroken by anything but my flappings…

I did see some weird black cryptid hunting on one of the islands, though! Except it was a ferret, I think.

Or Chupacabra!

edit: Just re-reading the part about the trip last year with Stuart reminded me of an amusing incident from that day. The guy who told us about the any method fishing didn’t stay long, but he did catch a fish. I was maybe 150-200 yards down the bank from him, and saw him catch a pretty standard stockie, maybe a couple of pounds, obvious even from this distance; then he left not long after. Later, Stuart, who had been fishing around the other side of the water at the time and couldn’t see any of this, told me that the guy had spoken to him on the way out and had said he was leaving because it was rubbish - he’d only caught one fish, but at least it was a big one. Huh? The guy told Stuart that the fish he’d had was a TEN POUNDER!

I mainly use GMail as my mail client, and have several addresses directing to that mailbox. The spam filters are pretty good, but you do get the occasional false positive, so I tend to check the spam folder pretty regularly and clear it down each time. This just makes it easier to spot those false positives.

Imagine my surprise on returning home this evening to find an unusually large amount of spam messages had arrived in the spam folder in just a few hours since I checked it last. Most of these are bounced, blocked and otherwise failed messages, like:

• **Message you sent blocked by our bulk email filter**
• Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
• Spam: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
• Warning: could not send message for past 4 hours

etc.

Anyway, jrwi dot net is being spoofed by a spamming fucktard.

Just to clarify, I am NOT responsible for, nor do I allow jrwi dot net to be used to send, bulk email of any sort. If you’ve been spammed from this domain, it has been done without my consent, and you have my apologies.

Hopefully, they’ll get bored with it, or it’ll be blocked by every ISP on the planet, and they’ll move on. Cunts.

OK, I’ve fallen a bit behind with all this blogging lark, and I’ve completely failed to write about some real primo blogging material that I’ve been experiencing or thinking about in general. One such subject was the Sparklehorse gig I had the pleasure of catching at The Royal Northern College of Music (or The Royal College of Northern Music as was suggested by Ian, and which I can’t stop thinking of it as since he mentioned it). The gig was weeks ago (20th October as a quick glimpse at the ticket still magneted(?) to the filing cabinet next to me reveals), and I’m no reviewer even when the events are still fresh, so I won’t be able to give an objective and insightful criticism of the gig here, but I will say that it was fucking great. I’d been reading some live reviews of the latest tour before we went, and they’d been widely slated as being lack-lustre with poor sound, but that’s not the impression I got. The sound was great (as you might expect for a gig at the Royal College of Northern Music, for fuxsakes), and the gig seemed to be over before it had really got going, which is only a good sign if, in fact, it had actually got going. A time check showed that they’d probably played for a good hour and a half, giving a wide range through the back-catalogue plus a good chunk from the latest album.

The thing which struck me most about the music was how different the songs were from the recorded material in most cases, with the possible exception of the new songs from Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain. In some cases, the only way I recognised the songs at all was from the lyrics. Anyway, I’ve been a huge fan for a very long time, and couple that with the fact that I love a live gig but don’t get out much, and I’m bound to think it was great, which I did, and it was.

There’s a long story behind why we didn’t catch the support slot at the gig, but it’s quite embarrassing and the short version is that we’re incompetent at many things and in this particular instance it was cartographical incompetency which was a major contributory factor, although inability to follow simple instructions also helped (or hindered, whatever). To give you a flavour, we started badly by failing to follow the AA route which really should have taken us directly to an NCP car park about 100 yards from the venue, and ended up parking in the NCP at the MEN Arena. Ian was confident that this was the best plan, as we could then easily hoof it to the venue using his intimate knowledge of the rain-swept streets of happy town to get us through the city centre, whereas we may never find our way off the ring-road ever again if we didn’t take our chance and park there… As anyone reading this, even those who’ve never even heard of Manchester or the MEN Arena (whatever that is) will already be very aware, the NCP at the MEN Arena (the what?) is as far away from the RCNM venue on Oxford Road as it’s possible to be and still be considered actually in Manchester City Centre, so this was a bad start. Then, it turns out that Ian’s encyclopedic knowledge of the city centre is actually more wikipedic and based on a handful of unlikely adventures around Canal Street whilst, presumably, poppered off his ample tits and pretending to be a gay lord. Anyway, even once we’d found Oxford Road, which, to be fair, didn’t take any longer than about an hour and a half, could we find the venue? Obviously not. Oxford Road actually goes to Oxford, it turns out. It is the longest road I have ever seen, long enough to reach the moon and back twice. We know this because we traipsed up and down it’s length probably 4 times or so. Our friend, Dan, whom we were meeting at the venue in the original plan, was having similar troubles and had also ditched his car *somewhere*. After several phone calls and asking a police man the way, we agreed to meet him outside the BBC near the city centre end of Oxford Road, a rendezvous to which we trudged wearily after stopping for a fortifying rest-and-whisky at what I’ll loosely describe as a pub, about 4 miles from the town centre (actually, I suppose it was more like 1/2 a mile, but, you know). We’d eventually reached the BBC and waited for a few minutes (now approaching the time that we happened to know the band, that is, Sparklehorse, were due on stage) when Dan called back again.

• Dan: I’m at the venue!
• Me: Oh, right, well, where is it?
• Dan: I don’t know…
• Me: Huh? Well, how did you get there?
• Dan: I got fed up and got a taxi!
• Me: WTF?! You were supposed to be meeting us! OK, so, what can you see?
• Dan: Nothing.
• Me: Oh, Christ. Well, can you see… [runs through a list of obvious local landmarks, such as fuck-off massive hotels with blazing neon signage and gargantuan and vulgar nightclubs with slappers stood nearby - Dan never misses slappers]?
• Dan: No
• Me: Well, is it near the BBC?
• Dan: I dunno. Oh, the band are starting now!

Gee, thanks. Why the fuck didn’t he pick us up in his taxi en route you and I are asking ourselves.

So, we got a taxi, too. It didn’t quite drop us off 20 yards along the road from where we hailed it, like something out of the Simpsons, but it wasn’t far off. It turns out that the main entrance we needed wasn’t actually on Oxford Road at all, although the building certainly had one side on the road. It turns out we’d walked past it and the large sign on the side several times, but the whole Oxford Road facia was completely shrouded in scaffolding, utterly obscuring the sign to us as we walked below it. Also, and here’s the cartographical balls-up previously alluded to, as we’d been walking down Oxford Road there were the occasional local maps on the side of bus shelters, with the RCNM clearly marked - just keep going along here, past the university campus and on the left. No problem, easy, we were on the right road and everything. Erm, except that the map was upside down. Yes folks, at 33 years old, we haven’t got a fucking clue.

So we missed the support band. I have however bought their album, The Bells of 1 2, and it is frankly ace (there I go again with my skilful critique). There are one or two tracks which sound a little immature, if I was being really critical, but there are also several really strong and catchy songs in there, too. Lyrically, the feel is quite close to the Sparklehorse domain, and some of the musical techniques are quite similar too. As the MOJO quote on the postcard I picked up at the gig has it, “Sparklehorse… fans are in for a treat” and they are. Don’t let the Goldfrapp comparisons put you off, it’s very listenable. Comparisons are odorous, but here’s mine for Sol Seppy - this had niggled me since I got the album: who does it remind me of? The Delgados. They don’t sound alike, really, it just reminded me of them…

edit: I’m just listening to the album again now. You should buy it even if it’s just for the track ‘Slo Fuzz’. Seriously. Buy it.

Oh dear. Spunky Richard Hammond has had an accident and the nation has gone mental (more mental than usual, anyway). Heartfelt messages of support have been pouring in from all the nutters who think that he is somehow more deserving of their sympathy than the thousands of others who are injured or suffer some other debilitating or calamitous mishap every day, just because he’s on ver telly. The idiots. This is all the more bizarre because he was injured doing something which is obviously extremely stupid - normally people say things like ‘oh, well, the fucker knew what he was doing, he was bound to hurt himself eventually, I’ve no sympathy…’ etc etc, but in this case the fact that the retarded (huh, that may turn out to be literally true) Top Gear presenter’s engage in progressively more dangerous, reckless (but not wreckless) and inane tasks each week has only encouraged more pathetic whining about how unfair and tragic it all is - never mind the fact that each week the stupid programme sets the cause of RoSPA and Greenpeace back 10 years, whilst simultaneously blowing approximately 20% of the TV licence fee Tax payers budget so that Jeremy fucking Clarkson can bolt a bigger engine onto his knob, or something.

Somebody emailed Sky News - I caught this in passing btw - to say that they couldn’t believe how this could have happened to such a good driver! Fucking hell - he was driving a rocket car for fucks sake - that’s how it happened. No doubt Tony’s mob will move quickly to legislate against TV presenter’s being injured in stupid stunts, or something, just in case people think that it must be a perfectly safe activity since there’s no specific law about not crashing your fire-spitting-turbo bitch into a field at three-hundred miles an hour… The health and saftey executive will hold an enquiry - could this have been avoided (um, let’s see now…) - wasting time and money to come up with a set of guidelines to help protect rich idiots who can’t work out that dangerous activities differ from standard activities in one important way…

Somebody else emailed Sky to suggest that “…that Richard Hammond, he’s just like Steve Irwin, he is”. Huh?

Well, let’s hope that Richard Hammond fans take a leaf out the rabid followers of the late Croc botherer, and go out and smash up loads of fast cars in a bizarre vengeance attack on the instrument of their hero’s downfall.

I’ve just bought (yet another) wireless kb and mouse, so this is the third-one I’ve had on my desk this year and the second one I’ve bought. The Packard Bell I’d been using since christmas 3 years ago just stopped working. Disappointing because it was a lovely keyboard, nice and stylish (this is important because of all of the cool and sexy people who are constantly calling in on me in the office - I had a couple of firemen in the other week) and nice to use (which is important because I use it - see?). So many keyboards I come across (not like that, settle down (although… *hmmm, stylish*)) are actually not really well designed for actually typing anything, the keys are often so close together it’s difficult to discern a gap and the keyboards so flat that there’s little or no carry, or the keys are all rubbery like on a spectrum (am I thinking of the zx-80?). But 3 years is pretty good service for such a device, I guess, and anyway, what was I gonna do - send it back as not fit for purpose. No problem, just get a replacement. Well, actually, yes, problem. Couldn’t find even a Packard Bell wireless keyboard at any of the usual outlets I’m familiar with, let alone the same model (how optimistic was I? Yeah, they were bound to be making the same wireless keyboard 3 years later, weren’t they? And, thinking about it, I seem to remember my beloved bought it as a reduced end-of-line deal. Shit, shoulda bought 2).

Right, so what else is out there? Well, nothing. Not one w/l kb in the functional-stylish-and-cheap bracket I was interested in. Loads in the cheap bracket. None in the stylish bracket, to be honest. Couldn’t tell about the functional bracket, really. Christ, there’s a lot in the Logitech bracket though, aren’t there? Bloody hell. They’re all Logitech, except the Microsoft ones. They’re Microsoft, as the name suggests.

So, I bought a Logitech one, for about 20 odd quid. Seemed functional enough, had media keys and all that (except I had to hack them a lot to work with my music player of choice, DBPowerAMP, but that’s another story), mouse had a scroll wheel, the keyboard was ’stylish’ (well, it was black) and had an RSI-busting wrist-rest (plastic and flimsy). So that’s it, then. Forget about it and get on with things. Except that, after about 3 weeks it just stopped working. It got all jittery and started sending key strokes randomly, if at all, and the mouse got all petulant. I tried changing everything - batteries, the position of the receiver and the channel, but the only thing that worked was changing the fucking keyboard. Back to the good old fashioned brandless beige wired job. (I couldn’t be arsed taking the keyboard back to PC World for a refund, think how joyless that excursion would have been).

Eventually, though, the good old fashioned beige wired mouse has driven me mental, and the good old fashioned beige lack-of-media-keys has pissed me right off, so it’s back to the market for a proper (read NOT LOGITECH) keyboard/mouse. So that leaves Microsoft, right. And that means an outlay of at least 50 quid. For a keyboard! Something I’ve already got?! Jesus, OK then, but only because that bloody mouse is driving me round the twist (You’re thinking “so, just buy a w/l mouse then, you tit” aren’t you? - media keys, remember? and w/l mice aren’t cheap on their own either, so stretch a little further and get the kb too, I’m thinking).

So, I’ve gone on about this keyboard more than was strictly necessary, and there’s a beer calling me from the kitchen, so I’ve got to go, but I managed to get one of these Microsoft “comfort” keyboards today. I was planning to buy one like this from PC World for about 50GBP, but when I went in, they had one like this for the same price. Supposedly reduced from 85GBP, but whatever, I’m expecting to meet an old crone giving them away in exchange for pieces of antiquated hemp tomorrow.

And, wait for it, I’m using it to type this entry now. There you go.

I’ll get used to that.Seems very good. Stylish, you know? ‘End’ keys in the wrong place, but