Tuesday 7 June 2011

when does the campaign start?


Yet another edition of the Australian Fishing World, known as Fisho, pings into my inbox, and includes the following:
In addition to barra the lads landed saratoga, mangrove jacks, golden snapper, black jewfish, red-throat sweetlip, Spanish flag, alligator gar, black spot and gold spot cod, tarpon, blue salmon, queenfish, GTs, barracuda, fork tailed catfish, emperor and the inevitable reef sharks. If they had gone wider there were Spanish mackerel as well as tuna to be had, while the rivers and creeks hold good stocks of hard fighting threadfin salmon.
Martin very nearly missed out on his first 'toga when a sea eagle swooped out of the sky just as he hooked up on a surface lure.
He said: "I knew that the upper reaches of Goose Creek would be my only chance of landing this rarest and most frustrating of Aussie fishes before I return to the UK. I had just worked out how to get them to hit my fizzer but was having the usual nightmare trying to set the hooks in their bony gobs when the sky turned black as a 'toga and the eagle collided either side of the lure. Incredibly the fish stayed on and the bird went away hungry!"
A couple of things: don't Australian fish have lovely names?  I particularly liked "red-throat sweetlip" and "black jewfish" - why is the latter called that?  It looks like this, apparently.

Anyway, assiduous readers will have noticed, as I did, that Mr S indicates that his return to the UK is imminent.  Might this explain the Labour Group's unseemly haste to form an administration now, when they could have waited until next  year when they are very likely to take one or more seats from the LibDems?  Because an elected mayor is what they would like to have, so that the town will be their pocket fiefdom no matter what happens in council elections or to the government.  And other parties in Reading are still afraid of Mr S and his bully-boy henchpeople.  Which they should not be.  But why not ask?  A simple question to council will suffice...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh dear. Why can't the sad sack just float off - food for fishes - bones picked clean, as in The Tempest?

'these are pearls that were his eyes' ( The Wasteland).

Martin S MP, Reading said...

At least I've done productive stuff during my sabbatical. Not only have I done some amazing fishing, I've also learnt to speak Australian. You're not the only one who can talk foreign.

Anyhow, I'm flattered that you think little old me would aspire to be Mayor of Reading. If, and that's a big if, that transpired, I would be the People's Mayor for the whole of Reading. None of your East/West schtick. Boundaries are just so irrelevant.

Anonymous said...

Moby Dickhead.