Hello again.   Apologies for my overly long absence.  I am sure that most of you will be pleased to hear that I have not died of columnaris, bird flu or rananculus. I have not eloped with a dusky maiden, not been the subject of a fatwa from the carp anglers I occasionally poke fun at. Nope, still here.  My big roach water had been playing silly games with me.    It had decided to send in massed legions of 4 to 6 ounce roach to mop up every bait I threw at the water.  Immaculate fish all of them, all uncaught because no-one ever fishes for roach on the lake.   Still a pleasure to catch, but when you are seeking to commune with and make contact with their great grandmothers and grandfathers, they do become something of a pest.   And the perch had started to join in too.  These were also not the huge fish that I optimistically suspect may be present.  The nights were devoid of fish, but I was joined by a spectacular lightning storm, with the attendant drenching downpour.   Crouched under my brolly, I watched the sky clear after an hour or so, and was able to see the odd orbiting satellite, the Pleides star cluster, and even, faintly, the milky way.  Daylight brought the roach back, in what was obviously a huge shoal.

Other problems beset me.  I set off the alarm walking into Aldi, and once again as I left.  I stopped and held my hands up, as you might with a gun pointed at you, protesting my innocence, as the manager rushed out to intercept me. I was checked, searched, and proved innocent, but the alarm went off again as I left the building.  It did it again the next day, and I almost decided to keep walking around until they adjusted it, but contented myself with a good moan at the manager, told him that the alarm was effectively accusing me of being a thief, in front of other customers, was highly embarrassing and thus gained an assurance that he would call in the engineer and have it adjusted. He did not grant my suggested bottle of apologetic wine.

Over the next two days I also set off alarms in Tesco and Morrisons.  I don't like getting sunburned and had bought some long sleeved shirts in a sale at Decathlon.  The alarms were only going off when I wore the blue shirts.  Weird.   Have Decathlon declared war on Aldi and Tescos?  Tennis balls at dawn? Baked bean cans in retaliation? The shirts are in the wash now, and I can only wait until they drip dry before my next experiments and altercations at Aldi's exit.  

So I decided to run away, and take a few days off, hiding and fishing in Wales.   The plan was:  River Severn, River Wye,  wild carp, and mullet.    Far too complex a plan, and such intricate plans often do not go as desired, and so the first river I hit was the Wye.  Arriving in darkness on a strange river with steep banks, the safe option is to find the first easily accessible swim and to cast in.  More difficult distant swims can be sought out in the comparative safety of daylight. I have never fished the Wye before, and so that first cast was made entirely at random, into a river whose depth and nature was entirely unknown to me.    But the two hours before dawn did produce a bite on a large lump of bread, and a chub was heading towards the net.  At about 3 pounds, not huge, but my first Wye fish. Blank saved.   Soon after,  dawn broke, and I had my first real glimpse of the river close up.   Beautiful. Idyllic.  Not another angler in sight.

First View of the River Wye

   I was not to see a single empty tin can or plastic bottle float down, not a single half submerged supermarket trolley, not one old tyre over three days. I did NOT feel at home.    In such circumstances I might have gone on to say no fish either, but that was not the case. The river was low, and I scrambled down a difficult embankment some few hundreds of yards further downstream into a swim with a visible snag.  Rain was to make getting back up the bank quite difficult a day or so later, with resultant muddy knees and hands. A felled tree in the river was caught up on an old salmon fishing stone jetty.  Jetty is not the correct word...I'll think of the correct one sometime I hope.  I had seen a fish rise near to the tree, and so in the absence of any other clues where to fish I plumped for the spot.  An unfashionable word these days: "plumped".  Years ago you would often hear people "plumping" for things, rarely today though.  "Groyne"...that's the word I wanted....not "jetty". Feel free to cut and paste it into the original sentence.  Thank God for a working memory, even a sluggish one.    Now where was I?

Oh yes:   the day proved fruitless from a fishing point of view.  From about 8 a.m. a constant stream of Canadian canoes and kayaks paddled downstream.  Well over two hundred, most keeping to the far bank,

With a bad phone signal, the nearest I could get
to Wi-Fi was Wye Fry.  Sorry!

especially when I had cast a long way across the stream, and it seems the Wye attracts canoe day trippers by the hundred, and canoe hire companies by the dozen. One lonely kayaker had totally the wrong idea. He paddled upstream. What an idiot, going against the flow in both senses of the word.   So no bites, although an angler I was to meet a couple of days later said that the canoes did not disturb the fish or fishing at all. He may well be right, but the last canoe passed by at 7pm, and my first barbel took my bait 20 minutes later.   The fish looked to be waiting for the canoes to pass, rather than for darkness.  At about seven pounds it was more lightweight than it looked as I drew it over the landing net, and on the bank it was a far leaner, sleeker and fitter fish than those caught in the other barbel rivers I have fished in recent years.  It was not overfed on pellets and other angler's baits and hence fought far better than such fat fish do.  It was a barbel as barbel should be. A barbel as they used to be.

A Wye Chub....Rotated 90 degrees by Blogger

This was my first serious barbel session for two or three years, and I admit that the first sight of the river was a little daunting.  Where to find fish in a new, big and shallow river?   But the fish were there, and I finished with four more barbel.  None to worry my personal bests, but fish from 6 pounds and up to 8-15, the biggest of the session will always get a warm welcome from my net. Four or five chub completed the catch.  None reached four pounds, but were still welcome. The chub photo may well give you a crick in the neck, but it was Blogger that rotated the picture, not me.   Blame blogger for your whiplash injuries.

I also lost five barbel to hook pulls, and was probably a little silly, and slow to figure out why.   The river is very rocky, and although a cursory glance at the hooks did not reveal it, the hooks were becoming slightly blunted by the bedrock.   I had changed to a straight hook, one with the point parallel to the shank of the hook.  Next time I think I shall revert to an incurved pattern and see whether that improves things. And I will add a magnifying glass to check the points more thoroughly.   We all make mistakes, but if we can learn from them...

Whilst chasing the barbel I photographed this bird.  I am not sure what it is, but would guess at a cirl bunting.   Never seen one before so my ID may well be in error.  An inconspicuous little creature, but rather nicely marked. (P.S. George, one of the readers of this blog, tells me the bird is a female reed bunting, and I am sure he is correct.)

On to the next part of the plan: remember the plan?  The wild carp lake.   I was sent a written set of directions to the lake, daylight fishing only, and so at 4 am I was close by, and the directions were working well.  1.2 miles and then turn right towards xxxx yyyyyy.  At 0.6 miles a signpost suggested that xxxx yyyyyy was to the left, but I drove on and found...there was no right turn signposted xxxx yyyyyyy.  So I tried the left hand road half a mile back and was lead to a track, impassible to my car, too rough, too steep a track.  If the error in the directions was simply the turn right, rather than left then this might be the correct route, and the lake would be just half a mile up that hill, and be visible in the next valley.   Not sure if I was in the right place, I did not fancy walking half a mile uphill, carrying my carp gear, abandoning my car in the middle of a large chunk of tundra and hoping that the lake would be visible.   At that time there was no one to ask, and with no visible signs of human habitation anywhere in sight I backed out of the carp fishing and headed towards the mullet. One day ticket wasted.

I arrived at the estuary and chose a swim a little upstream of where I had my one and only mullet a couple of weeks previously.   This was a snaggy swim in the extreme, old tree trunks, and what looked like an old bedspread spring mattress made the prospect of hooking one of these fish quite a challenge. As the tide

Mullet in Some of the Snags

   flowed, so some fish started to show themselves.  Grey Mullet!  In my swim!   About 30 fish going to over five pounds swam back and forth in front of me.   And apart from nosing at my bait constantly, and swirling often, see the photo above, that is all they did.  They refused completely to take any of my baits, and it quickly became apparent why so many sea anglers get infuriated by the species.  Grey ghosts would cruise happily under my rod tip, sneering at my inability to hook them. After two days and three high tides I gave up, and gave in to the mullet and text messages from wifey to come home.

Ugly Duck.

During that time spent mullet watching I also saw another unidentified bird.  This photo, zoomed into a blurry magnified picture show it, some sort of duck.   It is a dopey looking individual,  and my best guess is an immature sheld duck.  But who knows for sure what this ugly duckling might be?  Not I .   And this one ain't no swan to be sure.  And my commiserations to any old bugger reading this who fully understands the hidden reference in this paragraph.

...And Now For Something Completely Different.

Wednesday was my wedding anniversary, not an important one, not one that divides by 5, or by 10, so not even one that would have precipitated my death had I forgotten it. Last year was one of those significant numbers, and I am sure we must have done something to celebrate it, but it now escapes me, exactly what we did.  So with a memory like that, it was surprising that we went anywhere this year. But we did, we went to Wales,  Welsh Wales.  

Now I know that a lot of you anglers out there, would have booked the hotel, and then, within minutes, you would be looking around for some nearby fishing.  I can assure you all that I did not behave in such an utterly disgraceful and despicable way.  What a way to treat the wife on her anniversary.  Nope, I would never have done such a thing myself.     If nothing else, it is so inefficient,  it is far better to choose a fishing spot, and only then to find a nearby hotel, only then deciding on where to spend the short vacation.   

There was a big argument somewhere south of Shrewsbury.  I knew that we were still on the right road, but she was obviously lost, and telling me where to go.   Before I knew it she had disappeared into the middle of a nearby field.  Gone for a good ten minutes.   I have never known a SatNav lady to get lost before.  This one did, and for a good while she was to be seen, on screen, in the middle of a field.  Meanwhile I remained on a well known road.   But it would seem that even SatNav ladies may need comfort breaks.  She rejoined us a while later, saying nothing about her little trip into the fields.    

"Are we nearly there yet?" I hear you ask.   Well no:

It was a long while before we actually reached Wales, an event that was marked mainly by the place names changing.    Welsh place names are all constructed from those letters remaining at the end of a Scrabble game.  After playing your game, arrange them at random, and they are sure to spell out the name of a Welsh town or village.  It is a well known fact that, in Wales, there are two sheep for every man, woman and child.   It is a less well known fact that there are enough roundabouts in South Wales alone, to give every one of those sheep its own traffic island.  It is impossible to move any distance in Wales without getting terminally dizzy.  And having to drive around so many circumferences, greatly adds to the journey time and distance. So be patient, there are reasons we are not there yet.

In between all those roundabouts are the speed cameras.   I don't like speed cameras.  Three times they have issued me a ticket, and three times I have taken them on and won.  But to continue to do so is a risk, and so I do try not to get booked a 4th time.    The problem is that driving then becomes a state of constant paranoia.   The most safe way to drive is to take each road, each incident on its merits.  The safe driver will automatically KNOW at what speed he will be safe.    Once the driver has to monitor the road for speed cameras, or to blindly follow every single speed sign, then I believe he is no longer concentrating all his efforts on driving safely.  It can become almost soporific, being told exactly how fast to drive, especially if that speed is mind-numbingly slow.  Far better to allow the driver's experience to shine through.   It does mean edging over that 30, or 40 limit at times, but always in a safe manner. I don't think I triggered any speed camera,  time alone will tell.  I did a little research whilst writing that, and it would appear that the Welsh have yet to invent the major road junction.   That is real the reason there are so many roundabouts, it is nothing to do with having to keep all those sheep fed and nourished. 

So, you are no doubt wondering, did I get to cast a line or two?   

Not yet, the cameras and the circular diversions meant that we reached the hotel rather late in the day.  A seafront establishment, it looked quite downmarket.  Some workman was painting the outside of it in a pale green colour.  That green which only comes in tubs of choc chip mint ice-cream.  You know the colour.   Quite tolerable on your teaspoon, but on a hotel...no way!    I rang the bell: no answer.  Moments later the workman  squeezed past me and opened the door.   He was the hotel proprietor, as well as the chef, painter and decorator, probably the cleaner too.   Inside the hotel were more "wet paint" signs on the woodwork of the steep staircases.   The same colour paint adorned the stair rails, the skirting boards and all other wood.  The wallpaper was the same shade too.   I am sure the owner must have picked up a job lot of paint left over from painting seafront toilet blocks.  The bedroom, and the en-suite, which I am fairly sure used to be a built in wardrobe, were all painted in exactly the same shade.  And looked as if the latest 7 or 8 coats were similar.  The green tide had sealed up the window too.  We were unable to open it, on one of the hottest days of the year. The back fence of the hotel back yard( no sea view for us) was adorned with a line of nailed up loo seats. Most odd.  Some relief from the green was to be found in the considerable number of pipes and cables which ran through the room, up and across the walls to provide power and water to other rooms in the house.      The relief was only partial, as the pipes and cables had also been daubed with exactly the same colour of paint.

And the fishing?  No time to go fishing before breakfast.

All the guests breakfasted early.  The road outside was the car parking space, and the council notices stated that cars still parked after 8am, would be towed away, ensured that we joined the other residents for early toast and marmalade. The chef / hotel manager / plumber / barman had no time to clear any dishes, and so the only two vacant tables were already half used.  His chef's uniform suggested he also worked part time down at the local soup kitchen.  But enough of the hotel, except that when we left, after TWO days of hell, I left a comment in the guest book which simply said:

In the words of Thumper  "         ".

My wife was amused, but not pleased by the entry.  So we did a bit of the tourist bit, before accidentally ending up on an estuary a couple of hours before high tide.  Odd what you find in a car boot: some Warburton's bread and a light barbel rod, isn't it Boyo?   A fish swirled 15 yards away, and it would seem my natural ability to find fish is not confined to freshwater.  The spot was right next to the car park....so no additional skills were actually employed.  I fished unsuccessfully, and although a few fish were seen jumping and swirling, I did not know what they were, and I had no bites. An angler fishing further downstream said that he had lost a bass of about five pounds.

We accidentally ended up at the same spot, high tide the next day too.  Some five yards out, soon after we arrived, a tail wagged out above the water, just a few feet from the bank.  It had to be a grey mullet.    The wind was still quite strong and fully in my face.  I realized that a somewhat stronger rod would have been better, and maybe a second one to target the bass too.   But that might have been a little too obvious  a tactic to the wife.  As the ride flowed upriver, a two ounce lead, with a couple of hooks loaded with breadflake seemed to be the way to go.  After an hour, I was playing a fish of about two pounds.   Six inches from the bank, as I reached down to pick it up, it shed the hook.   Soft mouths I am told.  At about peak flow of the upstream  tide, a good sized fish jumped clear of the water very near to my baits.   The fish was probably 5 to 7 pounds.   Do mullet jump?   No idea, but thirty seconds later I had a huge drop-back bite.  The strike made contact with something closely related to a rocket.  Unfortunately it swam almost immediately right behind a submerged rock, and the line parted company from the fish as it was abraded by the stone.

My First Ever Grey Mullet

 Disappointment, for that was a good fish.

Thick Lipped, I am Informed.

A whole hour later, as the tide started to ebb back downstream, a third bite, and a mullet hooked.  This fish would not give up at all.  Once in the shallows near to me it made short run after short run, until I was almost bored with it.   It finally allowed me to pick it up, and was a mullet of about two and a quarter pounds.   The local anglers said it was a thick lipped variety, and scolded me for returning "one of the best tasting fish anywhere".  The species is a very clean, precise looking sort of fish.  A secondary dorsal and the anal fin are set well back, which, assisted by the large tail and muscular body, probably account for that rapid burst of speed I had seen with the second fish.   The pectoral fins are set very high on the body,  and I can only speculate that they help to point the fish nose down into its grazing attitude.   

I stopped fishing soon after the capture, the ebbing of the tide, assisted by the flow of the river meant that I could no longer hold station with my bait for more than a few moments.  Masses of floating green seaweed grabbed hold of my line, and aided by the current whisked my lead downstream at a rate of knots.   There was one amusing moment as the tide first started to flow upstream.   I was dozing, rod in hand, (by far the best way to touch leger), when suddenly a huge triangular black fin

SHARK!, SHARK!

appeared out of the water, a few yards away from me.  My emotional, half asleep response was to think a shark had surfaced nearby.   In a foot of water...yeah, sure!    

 What had happened was that there was a piece of old board, or maybe stiff carpet that normally lay submerged, and partially buried by muddy sediment.  But as the upstream component of the tide increased, so it tucked under the board, and, all of a sudden, I was staring at a "shark's fin". Out of the corner of my eye, it was momentarily quite realistic.

My first mullet had come to the rod far easier than I had expected.  Was I just lucky, finding them on an ideal day?  Or are they perhaps not such incredibly difficult beasts to catch as many like to make out.  I feel I must have another go for them soon.  I would like to experience the scrap of a larger fish, and maybe, whilst down there, try to add a bass to my species list.  Two rods, somewhat more powerful, and a landing net will be needed this time.

T

Tinca, Tinca, Tinca, Scotland and Wales.

I thought that we had totally escaped the effects of the bad weather up here in the North, and that I could nip off fishing without any problems left behind by mother nature.   Not quite.   After the North West's hurricane force winds last weekend I found my usual route to the fishing grounds blocked by some very large trees that had been snapped off at head height by the wind.   As I searched out an alternative route, my mobile rang.   My wife; asking that I return home immediately because the burglar alarm was going off and we had lost all downstairs lighting.   So I returned to also find water dripping from the kitchen ceiling under the bay window.  In 25 years I have never had a lighting fuse blow before, and so its seems highly likely that, when the installers fitted the PVC window, and as requested, removed the strip light that was up inside the old window, they had not completely removed the associated wiring, nor sealed the joint properly.   So I have had to fix the leak over the window, and reset the alarm, which had triggered when Nina removed the wrong fuse holder whilst trying to fix the problem.  This was in retrospect useful, in that it showed that the internal battery had died at some time in the past and was thus not able to maintain power during the power outage.   The lights stayed on for about 3 hours minutes after replacing the fuse and then blew again.  Repeatedly, and sometimes instantaneously.

So yesterday, " in order to allow the circuits time to dry out",  I went fishing. Leaving the ground floor completely in the dark, I headed out to another trip after those tench.  The day was almost balmy, I recorded 11 degrees through most of the day, and apart from an hour or so of light drizzle, it remained fine and very still.  Water temperature was still at 5 degrees and so I was fairly confident I would catch.   I was legering whilst watching the line meniscus as it entered the water, with a back up bite alarm made of a bit of old reed, lying across the line near to the reel.   By mid-day the line had not even twitched, but then a slight ripple from the line suggested that something was nearby.  It was probably a minute, teensy line bite, but it readied me for action, and sure enough, ten minutes later after the reed suddenly flipped into the air, I was fighting a male tench of 4-14.   This exact scenario happened twice more each fish separated by about 90 minutes.    So alike were the scenarios, that each fish pulled the scales down to exactly the same weight.  For old times sake, I weigh any tench that I think might scrape 5 pounds.  The first two fish were of the pale green colour

A Beautifully Fit Winter Male

that the venue usually produces, but the third was a far darker and much prettier fish altogether.  Swims on the lake were in short supply, it was half term and the kids were out in force.  So, sometime after lunch another angler arrived and asked if he could fish about 15 yards away from me, in one of few remaining pegs.  No problem.  He travelled fairly light, and had one of the old wicker type fishing baskets.  Good enough to carry his tackle, but not good enough to sit on for 4 or 5 hours: he had also brought a flashy folding seat.  He opened up the basket and the first thing he brought out was a large mallet. I hate mallets.  They are wielded by the bivvy brigade with no thought to scaring the fish of other nearby anglers.  It does not matter to them, as they will probably have a couple of days in which the fish might recover from their fright.  So I tried to forestall his use of the mallet by saying telling him that I hated such fish scaring devices.  

He asked "Do you really think that they scare fish?"

"Yes."  I said  " I have occasionally been watching fish, and seen them spooked by someone using a mallet over two hundred yards away."    Sound does travel far better through water than it does through air.

He replied that he had seen someone bivvy up, wearing a recently Dazzed or Persilled white T-shirt and then caught a carp in the margins just 15 minutes later.

I said that after it taking 5 hours getting the first fish feeding in my swim I would hate them to be scared off now.  There was nothing unpleasant about the conversation and he assembled his gear, having returned the mallet into the wickerwork, which was quite gentlemanly of him.   Two leger rods, swimfeeders, and two very high tech buzzers were soon in place.   These were the sort of buzzers with which, by flicking one of the many switches, he could have probably monitored and displayed much of the data being sent back by the Mars rover mission.   And he had been unable to mallet their supporting bank stick into the ground.    As he cast in the second rod, I hooked and landed the second of my fish. I wonder if I would have caught it had he ignored my plea?  Ten minutes later he was upping and moving 50 yards further down the bank.   Wanted to give me some room apparently.   I had lots of room, and would have been happy to have had him fish there.  A few moments later I heard the mallet going hammer and tongs at the bank sticks.    He was just not comfortable being forced outside his usual routine.  If the banks sticks were not thoroughly well seated into the ground he was certainly not going to catch fish.  Maybe he was terrified that his buzzers would fall over and electrocute anything swimming in the lake within mallet hearing range.    Sadly his move  along the bank brought him no fish during his session, and I would like to think his mallet had scared them all off.  

Should mallets be banned?   Any views out there?    To compensate, it might be possible to fit out all  the man-made comfortable pegs with built in rings to enable the anglers to tie down their bivvies?  I don't like these pretty pebble dashed pegs myself.  I would rather poke my rod out between the rush and reed beds, sitting, if need be, with my backside an inch or so above the water, hoping that the legs of my seat sink into the mud no further.  Each to his own I guess, but why do so few modern anglers ignore the advice about noise from as far back as "Still Water Angling" and still feel they should be allowed to make as much of it as they wish?

Spring was in the air, and the male mallards were already chasing the females, and the robins visited in pairs.  Dunnocks were displaying to any available females.  The lake's kingfisher and grebe were still in residence.  All in all, quite a pleasant trip. Yet it was a trip that was missing something.  It was my fifth trip this year chasing those tench.  Every one of those trips has produced tench to my rod, 12 in total.  And although catching any tench in Winter is wonderful, I did feel that today's trip was a little predictable.  I expected to catch tench, and had I guessed, I would have guessed at my landing three fish. Spot on!  I need more than that from my fishing, or perhaps less than that. I don't want to be able to make such predictions and be right.  Five trips is too much of the same old thing.  I don't know if I needed a blank, or just something very, very different.  Conversely, the other angle that I also have to look at this from is:    eat your chips before they go cold.  And today I did.

I have no idea how some anglers are able to do the same thing every single weekend.  Mainly it is carp anglers, but barbel anglers are getting close too.  They go out, set up the bivouacs and fish right through the weekend.  Some of them don't catch very often, they are on hard waters, others catch most trips.  But in either case it all seems too much same old, same old.   There seems to be little imagination involved.  Shut up in, or under the bivvy all weekend, or perhaps longer, using methods tried and tested, prescribed by angling press, TV and DVD's with a little extra input from mates and forums.  The objective, the only objective that matters, seems to be to catch  fish. Little else is of any concern at all.  Catch the fish no matter how long it takes, no matter if it is exactly the same modus operandi that was involved last week, and indeed during every week of the last year or few.  Further evidence of this attitude was evident after the anglers on the far bank left.   I could see the  litter they left from 150 yards away.  I can moan all I wish about litter here, or in fishing forums, but the fact of the matter is that, until anglers see fishing as being much more than just catching fish, until they learn, by themselves, to appreciate the outdoors for what it is worth, then no amount of cajoling will ever persuade them to take their rubbish home.  And I fear that many will never have the  vision to see any  further than the fish in their net.

But to return to the matter in hand:  one of the reasons I gave up fishing all those years ago is that it had all become too predictable.   I was simply having too much success, and finding that, even for big fish, before the advent of fancy baits rigs, commercials etc, grabbed hold of all our fish and magnified their sizes, it was all too easy for me, the challenge that I needed at the time was no more.   So nowadays my fishing has to be very varied, with some of those blanks, or I fear I might once again think about giving up.  Of course, to find any other activity with as much daily variation as fishing is going to be damn near impossible, so giving up is probably not really an option.  I need a little bit of planning ahead though, to set up one or two objectives to mix in with the more usual stuff this year.   So, two or three things in mind at the moment.  I have already  a trip abroad planned for next month...more to come on that after the event,  then, come the close season I might have to dig out the fly rod, and actually catch a fish or two with it this time.   The third thing is a complete, all the balls in the air sea change.  Grey mullet are starting to call me.  So I shall be spending some time in Wales, once the shoals move in from wherever they go in Winter.   Never seen a mullet, so that promises to be fun.  Oh yes...and I want to photograph a mole.

Whilst talking about Wales, it is looking slightly more likely that Scotland may go independent.  I don't think Cameron is well liked above the border and it may well be that the Scottish will vote so as to specifically spite him, especially now that he is calling for UK continued unity. It may well benefit Cameron and the Tories to lose Scotland of course, and now that the oil is running out, might he not push too hard to keep us together?  I wonder what he really thinks? 

It would be nice to see a more logical approach to student fees. At the moment students from Europe must be offered courses fee free in Scotland, but English students in Scotland have to pay, because the EU only dictate that there is equal opportunity between member states....not within member states...which is why Scotland is allowed to charge English students. I wonder what will happen to the State Pensions Provision in Scotland if independence kicks in?    Pensioners have been paying in for years,  the government spending the money immediately, and funding current pensions from existing workers' taxes, but after independence what remains of the UK population would be paying pensions to a foreign nation...in the currency of thistles or whatever that new currency would become. So, maybe Scottish Pensions would have to be paid from Scottish taxes?  All looks to be an interesting time in September.  

In my spare time I run the local juggling and unicycling club, and at one juggling event I met a wild Scottish juggler:  A BIG guy. Complete with crazy red hair and a beard like Hamish in Braveheart.   He was juggling with three hatchets whilst wearing a kilt.  A very scary sight indeed, far too scary to check whether his backside was painted blue. If there are many more like him up there, we will have to rebuild Hadrian's wall after independence, make it higher  and fit it with gun turrets.

 But what about the Welsh.   Where do they fit in?  One answer is that they don't. For some time I have wondered why Wales, if it really is a fully functioning and patriotic part of the UK, does not have its flag incorporated into the Union Jack, or Union Flag as some prefer to call it.   I really like the Welsh flag, it is one of the best in the world, and it is something of a shock to find that the Welsh have not insisted that it be incorporated within the design, so that the UK flag would look like this:

There is one other major advantage. No-one could possibly fly it upside down by accident. So come on Taffy, Dafydd, Rhys, Megan and others.  Fight for your flag!  I have already done the design work for you.  As an afterthought, having  the English flag,  St. George's Cross on the flag as well might lead to conflict, St George being the slayer of dragons, allegedly.

Stop press: the drying out time fishing trip appears to have worked, and we have let there be light in the house for about the last nine hours.