15.09.2007 14:29 - There Is No Fish
My father once tried to instill an appreciation in me of the fine art of catching fish.
Fishing, unfortunately, is one of those "sports" that you don't appreciate when you're thirteen, full of raging hormones and have a frantic wanking schedule. Or when you're well-fed, for that matter, and live round the corner from a supermarket with large freezers full of fishfingers.
Years later, with the hormones have gone, and the full horror of spending the weekend with SWMBO and the resultant offspring can only be dulled by going out to the local cut and sitting for hours in the pouring rain, occasionally casting and re-casting, just to make it look convincing.
You see, the point of fishing isn't to catch any fish. Besides, there was only one fish in the place, and his lips looked like he'd been to one of the more progressive piercing shops you see nowadays.
No, the whole thing about fishing is to spend the time in Zen-like contemplation. Eastern monks spend years pondering the universe in an attempt to achieve Nirvana. The English usually just spend saturday afternoon staring at a float, contemplating the subtle paradoxes of the path that brought them to this point. There is no fish, which is why you do not wish to catch him. Men spend more and more time in perfecting their lures, making them out of dayglo purple feathers and endowing them with Dr.Who monster-like tendencies, so that no self-respecting fish would dare chomp down on it and ruin the peace and quiet. Mind you, no self-respecting fish would dare live in the local cut, which is why you were there in the first place.
