Last weeks adventure into fishing did not make this blog, and to precis, we arrived, the fish were spawning, we went home. Deprived of the fishing bug, the next few days were taken up with watching YouTube videos that cover fishing, plus an element of reading about fishing. It seems that every time I go into my local Co-op these days, there’s a new Angling Times staring at me out of the magazine section. This week’s issue was partly dedicated to modern technology, its use in fishing, and whether it has gone too far. Those that read this fishing blog are unaware that most blog posts are future chapters in a forthcoming book that describes the journey that Wil (15) and me (72) have taken from roach and rudd on a waggler, through two-to-four-pound carp to the dizzy heights (for us) of nine-and-ten-pound carp, and our hopefully continuing progression thereafter. The reason I mention this carp journey with regard to the title of this blog about technology is because preceding chapters of th

Promote Your Indie Book – Yourself. a) Time. Be prepared to devote, say twenty minutes, every day, to self-promotion. Keeping things going is the way to get your book noticed and that is the only aim you have in life for that twenty minutes. b) Do not follow the crowd as if you are a sheep. Yes, you want a wide audience and that is good, but things trend and everyone jumps onto that latest bandwagon and they can be guilty of disregarding the social platforms that they seem to abandon. Here is a for-instance;- At the time of writing, Twitter (X) is in turmoil. Personally, I see no difference but writers elsewhere say it has become toxic and I see no signs of that toxicity. Many have abandoned Twitter because of a dislike of Elon Musk and that to me seems weird. Anyway, donkey’s years ago I was into buying and selling shares in a very small way and learned that you shouldn’t follow trends. If you bought when the market was selling, and sold when the market was buying, you would make mone

At seven-thirty, when I picked Wil up, it was already warming up and overnight temperatures of 10 degrees Centigrade (50F) were forecast to reach twenty-six Centigrade (79F) by noon, hotter that Mediterranean countries the forecaster had said. I knew, or thought that I knew, that Carp would be high in the water today and that Wil would want to fish the bottom with his method feeders, but I also knew that I’d continually told him that he was fourteen, no longer a child, and had to make his own decisions. Arriving at Hazel Court, parking up, and looking around, it became obvious that the six or seven anglers that had already arrived were on the closest pegs to the car park on each of the three ponds. It seemed that nobody wanted to lug gear to the far end of a pond in the heat, but then, maybe we are bonkers, because we chose the far end of the pleasure pond where success had come previously. Wil set his method feeder rods up and alarmed all three on his rod-pod while I set up my pole an

A holiday read for the beach that isn’t going to be ready for the summer – probably. After self-publishing thirty books, those being novels mostly but two books of poetry included, I decided to write for the first time a cosy, clean, romance with absolutely no vampires, witches, succubus, or similar characters. I’ve reached the end, started a first edit, and a question popped into my head that I hadn’t thought of for a while. Are you a cutter or a filler when editing? Me, I’m a filler. The finished novel is thirty chapters and an epilogue, around sixty thousand words, and I know that as I edit, more and more detail will be added (smells, sounds, touch) and the word count will slowly move towards eighty thousand or so. Some may say that it isn’t an edit and it's just filling in where needed before an edit proper but I see it as a first edit, an addition of words and those additions can be edited on the second edit. After that second edit the novel will be put to bed for a couple of week

We had no idea whether today, when we rolled up at Hazel Court, it would be full, empty or half way. The weather wasn’t as good as it was when the ponds were full and we had to go Jim’s Pond, neither was it that bad that most had stayed away last week. Sunny and cloudy was the forecast with rain starting at four in the afternoon so we decided on a nine o’clock start and to leave around three thirty. On arriving, before Wil could open the gate, the dogs found him and Griff seems to recognise him every week. Eventually we got parked up and could see four families or groups around the Pleasure Pond and an empty Reed Pond. For some time now, I’d thought about the Reed Pond being a rectangle, the far side of the pond being one of the short sides, and the corner of that side being completely covered in bushes for three metres either side, inaccessible, and an ideal spot for my margin pole. We carried all the gear to the chosen spot and started setting up, Wil with his familiar method feeders

Resting Heart Rate - A Possible Correlation? For this and anything else I blog on the subject of prostate cancer, I first have to divulge that I am not medically proficient, am not a scientific person, and nothing that I say can be verified by professionals. Anyone with suspicions about their own prostate cancer or their own rise in their resting heart rate should contact proper medical advice and anyone of a certain age (varies country to country) should have their prostate specific androgen (PSA) tested at least annually. The purpose of this blog post is to outline the changes in my personal resting heart rate before and during the time when the cancer took over and during treatment. I should point out at this point that my oncologist told me that my rapid increase in resting heart rate was maybe due to a massive flare-up of the cancer at that time and the cancer would have taken hold a long time before the rise started. I have also contacted various cancer researching charities, no