Category: Other bits and bobs


Clarinde´s Fish

Teaching Science to secondary students is what I do for a living. This suits me pretty well. I like Science and I like kids and these, needless to say, are the two key prerequisites for this particular job.

Few students ever say thank you to teachers, even though they might consider you to have taught them reasonably well. And why should they you might ask. After all, as a teacher you are only doing your job.

But every now and then a student does seem to appreciate that, in their estimation, you seem to have given things your best shot and might make some kind of gesture to affirm this. Continue reading

Today some bird told me that I was I was good looking. I was told this not just once but several times. This does not happen to me very often, as it happens, so I felt pretty flattered. More precisely I was called “guapo” the Spanish term for good looking, which is pretty much what you might expect here in rural Andalucía.

Things might have been even better if I had been called “guapo” by a human being but, like I said, it was a bird. My admirer was a red tailed parrot which, I understand, is also known of as an African Grey.

This particular bird was in a cage at a roadside service station on the A357. It had a pretty impressive repertoire which, in addition to “guapo,” included the greeting ¡hola! and I am sure it has a much broader vocabulary had we had time to become better acquainted. It was certainly well able to wolf whistle! Continue reading

I have fished this huge reservoir, the largest in Cadiz province, several times now, most recently with a little “band of brothers” consisting of myself, my son Leo and a few of his mates and, despite this, I came to realise I knew little enough about the reservoir itself.

I have since tried to make amends and what I have learnt is very interesting. For starters it is the water which has produced the heaviest bass recorded in Spain, a 4 kg whopper. This fish was taken in 2000 by a Malagueno. Continue reading

When I was a kid, at about the age when I felt my first stirrings of sexual awareness, I came across a rather curious object. It was a pen. It had a picture of a woman in a bathing suit on its side. The curious thing was that when the pen was held upright, as it would be in use, the woman´s bathing costume slid down revealing her naked figure beneath. As far as I was concerned, this was an invention as awe inspiring as any I could imagine. It was right up there with the great pyramids of Egypt and the hanging gardens of Babylon. The human imagination is capable of great things and the “swimming costume” pen was testimony to our creativeness. Continue reading

My kids tell me that we are living in the 21st century. Fair enough, I will have to take their word for it. And one of the benefits of living in these enlightened times, they tell me, is that our lives are enriched by technology.

I´ve noticed this myself. If you find yourself in a social situation everyone seems to have their head buried in some little hand held device checking emails, finding out about the bowel movements of their favourite celebrity on Twitter, or just surfing the web. Boring old farts like me, who like to regale fishing stories to whoever happens to be sitting nearby, have our work cut out for us. Continue reading

Murray Thompson owns a fishing hut up in the high tussock country of central Otago in New Zealand. I have stayed there on a few occasions and, if I could afford either option, which I can not, I would sooner stay in Murray´s  fishing hut than in the honeymoon suite at the Ritz. Continue reading

It felt just a little bit odd today on the river. It was the first time I have fished alone for a little while and, although I enjoy the freedom this gives me, it has been fun to be out on the river with company. Continue reading

This blog thing has become something of a diary for me. It records not only my successes and failures on the river bank which, frankly, matter little to anyone else, but it also records other, more significant events.

One such event is the graduation of our son Leo from the English International College, the only school he has ever attended. This event, which took place last Friday, was the fifteenth “Speech Day” I have attended as a teacher but, of course, it was particularly significant not just for me but for his long-suffering mum, Catriona and his sister, Pippa.

The highlight was when he was presented with a book, the complete works of Shakespeare, which was signed by his teachers. The presentation was made by Robin Cousins OBE, the Olympic gold medallist ice skater and Dancing on Ice TV judge. I had a pretty good chat with Robin before the ceremony. He is a very nice guy. He brought his Olympic medal with him and doesn´t mind other people wearing it although he said he would never himself do this because he wants to recall that particular sensation as a unique memory. Fair enough. When the Director got his hands on the medal and put it around his neck we all figured that Cousins would never get the thing back again! Continue reading

Well, I guess I have been milking this TV thing long enough and this will be the last installment. Monday 28 April was the last day of filming and unfortunately I could not be there. While John and the TV crew had a final few hours on the river, I was back at work. Continue reading

The third day of our filming allowed us to fish the Guadalhorce for the first time. The river had cleared overnight and things began to look good when I saw a nice carp feeding in the shallows on my way to meeting the boys for breakfast at Cártama Estación. There it was in the shallows beneath the iron bridge lowering its head and working though the mud leaving clouds of silt to work their way downstream. As far I was concerned that carp was a good omen. The river was clear. The fish were there for the taking. Continue reading