Fishing

Fishing, it’s said, is the number one participation sport in the world. To me that accounts for a lot of bored husbands, searching for an ongoing excuse to stay away from home for an entire day at a time. Sitting on a muddy river bank at 5am in the rain? For hours on end? Count me out thanks.

Dynamite fishing sounds fun in principal. It’s not though. The shockwave damages the environment and kills loads of animals the fisherman isn’t even interested in. When I say environment I don’t mean it’ll dislodge shopping trolleys and kick up some mud. I’m talking about nations with fragile eco-systems, supporting coral and numerous habitats under the water. This is the reason it’s banned in many places. That and the fact that it erodes the, frankly shaky, argument that fishing is a sport. I can buy into it as a hobby, but a sport? No chance. Lots of people have hobbies but I’ve never heard anyone claim that flying a kite makes them a sportsman.

Anyway, in a comparison that I refuse to believe is coincidence, fishermen have often told me that you can get drunk (in the same way as cricket fans cite it as one of the primary lures). Once again I’m forced to point out that these activities are surely designed with nothing more in mind than escaping the house and ‘the wife’. Surely getting a divorce would be easier in the long run?

Yet, because it remains so popular, a trip to the shops reveals magazine shelves which are awash with numerous fishing magazines, each adorned by some middle-aged hairy bloke, wearing far too much plastic, proudly holding aloft a fish of three feet in length. What is there to write? Once you’ve got past the opening sentence what can you really write about? “I caught this beast in a local lake, mainly because it’s too stupid to understand the concept of not eating something which is impaled by a metal hook.”

I’ve never looked, but I can guess what else is in them. People think that geeks are confined to comic books or PCs, but it’s not true. Geeks exist everywhere, they just have different chosen fields. I imagine these magazines are chock-full of the latest titanium fishing rods and next generation string (or should that be ‘line’? I don’t know). The fisherman can impress his friends with his new lightweight rod, costing (probably) hundreds of pounds because it weighs three ounces less and bends just the right amount when you’re trying to haul the kraken onto the side of the bank (next to the box of empty Budweiser bottles).

Seriously, I understand fishing less than just about any other ‘sport’ on the planet. Nothing happens, for hours. Cricket spends a lot of time without anything happening but at least there is a bloke with a big bat trying to smash a ball into orbit. With fishing, people will catch a fish, study it for a couple of minutes and often lob it straight back into the water. Aquariums would save them a lot of time in this pursuit. On one hand, I can’t say I blame them for throwing their prey back. I’d be perplexed if the fish didn’t come out ready battered with a side order of chips too. At least you’d have been rewarded for getting up so early and freezing to death. It’d certainly be more appealing than mucking about with a tin of maggots; that’s not any kind of breakfast.

Parenting, I think, has a lot to do with this. Invariably when you talk to a fishing type and the origins of their interest, their eyes glaze over as they reminisce about watching the sunrise with their dad, on the side of a bank, fishing rod in hand. These memories are flawed. The human brain likes to remember nice things. It’s why every old person in the world claims things were ‘better in their day’. There was no crime, the air was clean and they could leave their front door open. Apparently.

Rubbish. They just don’t remember the bad things. It’s the same with fishing. In the real world these people (when they were kids) were probably sat, huddled, on a muddy bank while sideways rain hit them in the face. They shivered with the cold as their father swore loudly, slipping over in the mud and dropping his beer. They had been told to stop moaning when woken at 4am to pack the gear into the car and things wouldn’t get any better for the rest of the day. The father wouldn’t concede defeat to the weather and was not about to give up his day of self indulgence to return to the wife and demands of assistance with the house work. Worse than that, the father saw the whole experience as a time to bond with his half-frozen son. And then, once in six years, there was a lovely sunrise, and all was well. That’s the memory the son retains, years later, when he drags his son out of bed before dawn and the cycle repeats itself.

On any given Sunday I reckon you’ll find thousands of fathers on the banks of our rivers regaling their disinterested sons with tales of beautiful mornings and hauls of fish that would make a Spaniard proud. Meanwhile, the son would much rather his dad just bought him Fisherman Pro 2017 (or something) for his Playstation so that he could stay in bed and choose to have the beautiful sunrise at a more sensible time, say, at around 2pm.

The Many Irritations of Flying

I like travelling except for the actual travel part. I suspect I’m not alone, but let me explain. I love heading abroad to new and exciting countries but the whole getting there part drives me insane. I’ve travelled a fair amount and I’m sure I’m well into triple figures in terms of the numbers of flights I’ve been on. I’m also sure I cannot remember the last pleasurable one.

It all starts with the airport. There isn’t a close one to me, so I invariably have to get up at some ungodly hour and drive eighty miles in the middle of the night to be allowed to check in three days before the flight’s actually due to leave. Once there you’re also presented with the privilege of paying almost as much as the cost of the flight in order to park the car a 20-minute bus ride from the actual airport. Of course, at 4am the buses only pick up every fifteen minutes too, so you’d better hope it’s not raining.

I perfectly understand why airlines want you there early because if they said “It’ll be fine if you turn up ten minutes before your flight” you would still get simpletons who thought that ten minutes was two minutes. However, don’t make me turn up three hours early and then think you can use it as a cost cutting exercise by only opening one check-in counter for five flights. If I wanted to queue for an hour I’d try and get out of Wembley after an England football match.

Here’s some advice; when asked whether you packed your bag yourself, it’s not original or funny to quip that a Muslim gentleman kindly helped while you went to the toilet. It’s also not original for the purveyor of said joke to be dragged away to have a fist shoved up his arse either, but the staff will find that part funny at least. Sensibly, you should stick to a rigid ‘yes/no’ answer formula and head through to security... where you have the pleasure of queuing again.

Since the rise in terrorist attack attempts at airports it’s fair to say that security take their job seriously. I can’t say that I blame them, although it’s always a minor irritation to be asked to remove random articles of clothing. When was the last time you heard of an AK-47 being concealed in a belt? Anyway, without fail I set off the metal detectors. I then get touched up by a bloke who, following his grope, waves a wand at me which picks up absolutely nothing. This always makes me wonder where in my body the metal is hiding and why I don’t know about it.

Onto the departure lounge and ‘duty free’; the chance to make back some of that cash you’ve been plundered for up until that point. Or not, as the case actually is. Firstly, I always wonder (after I’ve strolled into an electrical shop to marvel at things with flashing lights) who the hell buys a 42” TV on their way to Brazil? Where the hell are they going to put it? I’m damn sure it won’t fit in one of the little baskets they have to check your hand luggage size and it won’t fit in your overhead locker either. Anyway, we all know how manufacturers put RRP prices on things? That’s some fantasy price that they wished they could sell the product for and, coincidentally, is exactly the price that no-one would pay. Well, it’s when you get to ‘duty free’ that these RRP prices are plastered everywhere. Because if something has an RRP of £49.99 and ‘duty free’ are selling it for £42.99 then you’re getting a bargain. Unless, of course, it can be had for £39.99 at your local shop and a fiver cheaper still on the internet.

Eventually you’ll be ripped off for some average food and you’ll sit and watch the TV screens, waiting for your flight to be called to its gate. When it is you will witness the biggest rush of sheep imaginable. Assuming your flight isn’t with the cheapest of the cheap airlines your boarding card will have a seat number on it. That’s your seat and no-one else’s. It’s not first come, first served and as long as you don’t actually miss the flight, it’ll still be yours ten minutes after the boarding call’s gone out. I generally sit at the gate, continuing to read my book, as the rest of the flight has almost beaten each other to death in the rush to be the first in the massive queue to board. Why do it? Feel free to stand in another queue for ten minutes for all I care. When that queue diminishes to one or two people I’ll take a leisurely walk up, but even then I won’t rush. You know why? Because you hand in your boarding card, take the walk towards the plane and there’ll be another queue.

What’s this queue for? Well, that’s the queue for your seat and it’s unavoidable unless you really were the first person in the last queue. The reason? People are stupid. Space on planes is fairly limited and that means they don’t have sweeping, spacious corridors to move around in. Therefore aeroplane etiquette apparently dictates that if you’re the first person aboard you should stand in the middle of the aisle while you comically fail to put bags in overhead lockers and rummage around for your book, iPod and pack of Werthers’ Originals. Take no heed to the three hundred people that you’re stopping getting to their seats, they don’t mind. If you’re the second person in the queue, you should stand and wait impatiently, before doing exactly the same thing when you reach your seat. And so on.

Eventually I’ll reach my seat and it will be a window seat. You know why? There are a couple of reasons, and none of them are the “I like to see the sky!” one you might be expecting. Firstly, I’m not a girl and consequently I don’t have a thimble sized bladder which requires me to visit the toilet every six minutes. Get seated between one of those people and the aisle and you’ll know what I mean. You just get settled, about to nod off to sleep, and BAM! “Sorry, can I just squeeze past again please?” I once did a round the world trip, stopping in twelve countries and taking a huge number international and domestic flights. In the whole time I went to the toilet once on a plane (and it was on a twelve hour flight). I have self control (unless there's beer involved).

The next reason for blagging the window seat is simple dynamics; it literally halves the number of elbows you’re likely to be clobbered with. We’ve established that planes aren’t big. The more seats the airline crams onboard, the more money they make. So, sit in the middle of two people and you’ll come out the other side with bruised ribs. Or, worse still, you’ll double your chances of being next to a person that cannot physically sit still. Once again, just as you’re nodding off to sleep his arm will whack yours as he attempts to re-arrange his blanket for the thirteenth time, drops his book or decides he needs to read his broadsheet newspaper at full width.

“Aha”, I hear you say, what if you grab the aisle seat? Wrong again. Do that and you can look forward to a flight where you get continually smacked in the arm or shoulder (or both) by stewardesses and their trolleys. And fat people.

The one thing you likely won’t get away from (in economy class at least), is the fool seated behind you. After having shoved your seat back and forth so he can get to the glossy mags stuffed down the back he will then use your seat to pull himself to his feet on his constant trips to the toilet (or to ‘stretch his legs’… on a two hour flight for God’s sake). The seat is bolted to the floor, you’d hope, but that doesn’t stop it rocking back several inches every time someone pulls ninety kilos to their feet because their legs have inexplicably stopped working. For the same ‘non-functioning leg’ reason they will, upon returning to their seat, not lower themselves down as any normal person would. They’ll simply assume the position and collapse. When the person in front of you does this you can look forward to your dinner bouncing off its tray and into your lap.

Oh, I nearly forgot; children. Under no circumstances should kids be allowed on planes until they can prove they can sit still for the duration of the flight without crying, shouting, screaming or throwing things around. If I wanted to see kids do that I wouldn’t be jetting off to another country, I’d be at home.

What’s the issue with simple instructions, by the way? ‘Turn off your phone as it might interfere with the plane’s navigation and communication equipment’ surely isn’t that hard to comprehend? I’m not saying that I buy into the reasoning for a second, in the same way that, despite being told, I don’t turn off my mobile phone at petrol stations because I’ve yet to see any proof that an incoming text message will cause the nearest petrol pump to explode. However, I’m fairly sure that my network provider’s coverage does not extend to 37,000 feet over the Atlantic and to that end it makes no difference to me if it’s turned off; no-one’s going to be able to call me. And yet, your flight will come in to land (you know the crucial bit where, if it’s going to go wrong that’s where it’ll happen) and you’ll hear the familiar ‘bleep, bleep’ of incoming text messages from a couple of imbeciles who need to have their message delivered one minute faster and to hell with the (alleged) risk of ending up in a fiery grave in the middle of the runway.

Having written all this has anyone considered that the 9/11 terrorists weren’t actually terrorists but normal travellers who had been pushed beyond the brink of rational behaviour and decided to end it for them all?

Anyway, the flight lands and, in another display proving that people cannot think more than two minutes into the future, everyone jumps to their feet, grabbing for their bags… so they can stand in the aisle for ten minutes. I'm yet to witness a plane screeching to a halt and with the doors instantaneously flying open. Once again, I’ll stay seated (and undisturbed because I’m at the window seat) until people are actually getting off the plane but there is still no need to rush. When was the last time you reached baggage claim and your bags were there waiting? No, it’s never happened to me either. In fact, when has the conveyor belt even been turned on? Why people expect that the baggage throwers handlers can get the bags to the terminal faster than the passengers can run is beyond me.

Here’s one thing about airports which only seems to count if you’re British. When you land in a foreign country the country in question has the good manners to funnel its own nationals through passport control as fast as possible. It’s a perk, right? After all it’s your own country and you’re the one paying taxes. I’ve seen it countless time when I’ve landed in a foreign country to a huge queue at passport control while the local nationals breeze through. That is not a complaint, since I would expect it. I would expect it at home, except I’m British and it seems we’re far too polite (or stupid) to save our own citizens some time. No, a British national lands at a British airport and can look forward to huge queues while the foreigners sprint through some kind of express passport control.

Back to instructions and not being able to follow them. In a museum (I’m told that’s where they keep old stuff), if you slap a sign on something saying “do not touch”, people will whack their mucky paws all over it. There are many similar examples but the one that irritates me most is baggage claims. The concept is really simple. You stand behind the yellow line and when your bag comes round you step forward and take it from the belt. It really is not that hard.

What happens in reality? Everyone pushes forward to the edge of the conveyor belt, so close that their feet are wedged underneath it. This means that the people behind, who understood the concept of not being impatient morons, can’t see anything. The muppet who is front of you, never straying more than half an inch from the belt for fear of his bag being lost forever, then proceeds to pick up (and inspect) virtually every suitcase that passes him. It’s made all the more absurd by the fact that he eventually selects his distinctive blue holdall, after having scrutinised every green or black case that passed him – just to make sure. Those pesky baggage throwers may have swapped his case, just for a laugh.

All this means, of course, that not only do others struggle to see their bags but they also have to push past a dozen people to get to them – none of whom want to move and lose ‘their spot’.

On my last trip through Gatwick airport I developed a solution to this particular annoyance. You place a number of guards on each belt... armed with cattle prods. Once you cross that yellow line you have ten seconds to retrieve your bag otherwise you get a stab of electricity to the base of your skull. Sure, the rest of us might have to clamber over a few bodies to eventually collect our bags, but at least we'd be able to see when they were coming.

Clothes Shopping With Women

This one’s not an unusual complaint, I know that much. Who on Earth likes being dragged around multiple shops while your girlfriend or wife individually checks out (what seems to be) every item of clothing for sale in the city?

Blokes, in my experience, are much easier to please in the shopping department. If I need trousers, point me at a decent shop which sells jeans and I’ll come out with a pair. I don’t feel the urge to compare them with every other shop in the county which might sell similar or slightly better jeans. If I like them, I get those ones. Better still, give me a computer and internet connection and I'll order them at home while I'm having a beer.

Women? A woman goes into a shop, finds a top she likes, changes her mind about whether to buy it half a dozen times and then leaves. She’ll then proceed to visit every shop in town, contrasting and comparing. Finally, four hours after she started, she’ll head back to that first shop and buy the very first one she was looking at. If you're really unlucky you’ll have been dragged along for the trip and it’s a journey of despair.

My wife’s not as bad as most but, to my consternation, she catches me out every now and again. Women are devious:

“Fancy popping into town, maybe get that film we were looking at?”

That’ll catch out most men, but I really ought to know better by now. We drive into town, park up and within fifty feet of the car park she’ll “just want nip in this shop for a minute.” That ‘minute’, in reality, is five. And ‘this shop’ actually means ‘all the shops of this type within a forty minute hike’.

I’ve even tried, in desperation, going down the 'being the annoying and embarrassing husband’ route. I loudly point out inappropriate clothing, suggest which items she’d look slutty in, make disparaging comments about styles and prices etc. For a while I started trying things on. It began with hats but, admittedly, I stopped short of lacy underwear. None of it worked. She’d roll her eyes in a way which all her fellows shoppers knew and understood. They don't fall for the same crap from their boyfriends or husbands either.

I guess the obvious solution would be to do the same to her – drag her around a million shops because that’ll give her some empathy with what I’m going through, right? Not a chance. She’d diligently follow me around being genuinely helpful and making useful suggestions. I’d get bored long before she did.

I think it’s partially because she gets an honest opinion. You must know what I’m talking about. Your lady tries on a piece of clothing and she loves it, she’s thrilled it fits and it’s just what she’s been looking for. Naturally she asks your opinion… and you hate it. Me? I’ll give it to her straight and tell her it makes her look like a malnourished zebra. Now, I’ve been accused of being insensitive around this subject by others but what do girls want? A ‘yes man’? Maybe. They’d better not ask me then because they’ll just get my opinion, warts and all. But this is not a bad thing. When I tell my wife she looks great in something she knows I really do think that. Surely that’s better than wondering why I say everything is ‘nice’? Of course it is.

Anyway, what is my course of action to escape shopping trips? The easiest one – I refuse to go on anywhere near a shopping centre without clear definitions on which shops are being visited. I know, I know, it sounds very draconian and devoid of any spontaneity but I’ve had all of that sucked out of me by repeated trips around places which all stock exactly the same apparel. It could be worse for her, I could mutiny on one of her trips and head to the nearest pub. That’d very quickly stop her inviting me along.

Addendum: You couldn’t make it up. I originally wrote the above moan on a Friday evening (rock and roll lifestyle all the way for me) and guess what happened the very next day? That’s right, I was tricked into clothes shopping. Again. I’m such a sucker.

We had some vouchers that were given to us as gifts and the nearest store was a couple of towns away so we (eventually) decided we should head over there. It just so happened that her favourite clothes shop in the whole world happened to be opposite. You can fill in the blanks yourself. It’s made worse by the fact that I had to entertain the two month old baby (in the pushchair which doesn’t fit down any bloody aisle) as she strolled about seemingly grabbing items at random. This is all true, I promise you. She walked to the changing rooms (eventually) where they normally provide you with a numbered token which matches how many articles you’re trying on. This means that if you have two items you’ll get a number two token and you can’t get away with stuffing a blouse down your pants in the changing room and claiming you only ever had one item. The highest number they had was a token with ‘four’ on it and my wife had ten items of clothing. Ten. There’s no help for me and, according to our wedding vows, I have a lifetime of this. I’ve read the small print too and there’s no get out clause for excessive shopping.