Alan Hammond

I see PC World are also offering for sale a digital camera with a twenty seven inch screen. Could be quite interesting trying to carry that around.

The village of Imber on Salisbury Plain suffered the same fate. But possibly because it was and still is mainly used for infantry training the church has remained intact and there is still an annual service there as far as I know.

I often walk around a wood that borders a golf course. The amount of rubbish in the undergrowth around the edges of the golf course has to be seen to be believed. I once actually saw three golfers swigging from beer cans at a tee and then just chucking the empty cans into the bushes. This was at six in the morning! So anglers are not alone in having their litter louts. But at least we acknowledge the problem and are trying to do something about it. Incidentally I had no response from the secretary of the golf club at Gosforth Park in Newcastle to my letter complaining about the litter left by his members. In both of my angling clubs such behaviour would have meant a lifetime ban for those involved.

I notice that there is no mention of the Africans who sold and for all intents and purposes still are selling their own children into slavery apologising to anybody. If the Africans themselves had not been so willing to trade in the slavery of their own people then the trade could not have existed. So where does the guilt really lie?

Surely if eels are sea fish then so too are salmon? The main difference being that whereas eels live in rivers and return to the sea to spawn salmon do the opposite and live in the sea but return to rivers to spawn.

I asked this same question on this forum a couple of years back. The answer then was that it was to do with the way that the scales become rough on Coarse fish during the spawning season as opposed to Game fish whose scales stay smooth. The major exception of course being the Grayling which although technically a Game fish is considered for angling purposes to be a Coarse fish. I am not quite sure where Eels fit into all of this though. I would suggest that they are in a class of their own.

I will be doing the same job myself in a couple of weeks time. Only this time I have to replace the liner and build in a water fall so I will probably end up deepening and extending the thing at the same time. As a result of past experience I intend to splash out and hire a drainage pump from a local tool hire shop. The average pond pump may be alright for a fountain and filter but they take for ever to empty even a comparatively small pond like mine whereas a proper drainage pump with a 2" hose will do the job in minutes. This means that the pond can be emptied and refilled a couple of times or more during a day so giving it a proper clean out. As for refilling I have always just used tap water with one of the proprietary additives to get rid of the chlorine etc. without any apparent harm coming to the fish. In fact I use the same for my aquarium and there are Discus in that which are supposed to be very picky about their water condition. Having said that I have been reliably informed that the additives are not really necessary as the aeration effect as the water goes in does the job of getting rid of the chemicals just as well. The other thing I intend doing is buying a cheap plastic kiddies paddling pool to keep the fish in while I am doing the work. The main advantage over a dustbin being the amount of water surface area which is more important than depth for the well being of the fish. Not forgetting of course to cover it with a net while the fish are in it. But like you it is not a job that I ever look forward to and I normally use the frog spawn as an excuse to delay it as long as possible.

I do not know any of the people involved in this or the background to the whole thing but as I understand it each computer has a unique address called an IP address. It is possible to put a block on an IP address preventing that computer from logging in to a site. Fair enough an abuser can get access to another computer if they wish and use that but at least it makes life a bit awkward for them and generally there is a limit as to how many computers most of us have access to.

I bought a 32" Sony LCD Hi Def for last years football world cup. Even leaving aside the far better picture on both Hi Def and normal digital the thing takes up about a third of the space that the old 32" CRT did and does not dominate the whole room or need an engine hoist to shift it if you need to get behind it to fiddle with cables etc. As to the argument between LCD and Plasma I will leave that to others but I am more than happy with the LCD that I have.

A couple of years ago I caught myself in the finger with a size sixteen hook. Thought nothing of it at the time but later that day it turned septic and swelled up as well as hurting like hell. I ended up that evening with a trip to the local casualty ward to get it lanced. That cost me three stitches and a course of antibiotics.

Oddly enough because I tend to suffer from arthritis in the cold and most of the waters that belong to the two clubs that I am a member of are enclosed still waters I tend to regard March as the start of my season and got out for the first time today since last November. Didn`t catch anything and the wind was a bit on the nasty side but at least I got to try out some new tackle without any witnesses when I messed things up a bit.

I think that you did the right thing Ferret. I see that the second add has now been removed as well. But at the end of the day it just shows how far some people will go for a lousy pound or two.

I see that the original advert has gone but somebody else has got some advertised as coming from a private garden pond. Whether or not that makes it legal under the Countryside act I would not like to say. On thinking about it though I do not think that it will be worth the hassle of collecting, putting, it in bottles and packaging it just for a few quid even it is legal.

Personally I would have thought that it was illegal to sell it or move it from one place to another without a a licence or permit. If my memory serves me right doesn`t frog spawn come under some form of protection similar to native fish? At least the bloke selling it has not had any offers yet. On the other hand if it is not illegal to sell it then I may as well cash in myself as a lot of mine will be ruined when I strip the pond anyway.

Pond is full of frog spawn at the moment. Which is a pity in a way as during the Easter holidays it is going to get the complete revamp, including new liner, that I have been promising to do for the past five years but have always managed to put off with the excuse that it would disturb the frogs and destroy the spawn.

Actually I think that the word is flautist. Which somehow sounds altogether a better and more appropriate word. Either way you have my deepest sympathy. May the Force be with you and protect you.

Like every body else I am no expert but those thin tubes remind me of carronades I think that are called, the small cannon that used to be carried on merchant ships and were held in row lock type of devices. The big riveted piece looks like a piece off a modernish trawler or something.

One of the problems with these forums, and it is a trap that I have fallen into myself on other forums, is that we take them far too seriously. So what if somebody decides to have a go at you on here because of something that you have posted? With due regard to a certain recent exception that was well reported the chances of meeting any other members of this or any other forum are minimal unless you deliberately arrange a meeting . So why get upset when somebody that you do not know and are never likely to ever come across in real life decides to wind you up? Lets face it how many people actually read this forum anyway? A couple of thousand at the most. Which is not very many among the angling fraternity let alone the whole population. So who is going to know what was said outside of those few thousand? I have found that the best way to deal with this sort of thing is simply to give the forum or the particular topic a rest for a few days when the wind up merchants start. They soon give up when they get no bites. But throwing your toys out of the pram only serves to feed their moronic little egos and encourages them to try it on some other poster that they happen to take a dislike to for no real reason at all that a normal sane person would understand. That by the way is the advice of an exjob who spent most of his working life walking around the less salubrious areas North of the Tyne in a blue suit and funny hat.

Very little sympathy for the bloke. No matter what he was trying to cover up for there are loads of other ways that he could have done it without involving all the other people who put themselves to no little trouble and inconvenience because of him. I hope he gets the bill for the whole operation. Apart from which it was a stupid lie in the first place. As nomoretequila says anybody who knows even the slightest bit about the sea or diving around the Channel Islands would realise straight away that his story about being in the sea all that time was highly suspicious at the very least.

I was never a fan of the bloke and tended to switch to another channel when he was on. But he never seemed to do any real harm to the animals he messed with and at least he was on their side. He just had a funny way of showing it and getting other people to appreciate his message on the environment thats all. It is a real shame he should die so young. But by all accounts it was more of an accident than an actual attack which as others have said is very rare from stingrays anyway.

I have had dealings with Pixmania in the past with a couple of things including a Nikon Coolpix camera that I bought from them. I have had no problems with the firm. The camera arrived next day as promised complete with full English manual. I was even able to trace its journey virtualy by the hour from France to my door. Incidentaly I am currently in the market to replace the Nikon and have plumped for the Canon Powershot A620. It is due to be replaced next month by an only slightly better upgrade and there are one or two bargains at the moment. But be warned avoid Savastore. They are advertising it cheaply but do not have it in stock and their telephone manner stinks when you complain and cancel the order.

Has anybody had any dealings with Savastore.com. from Watford at all ? I have just ordered a camera from them for next day delivery but unfortunately did not read the reviews about the store first. They were not good. To cap it all I have just received and order status e-mail from them saying that the camera is not in stock. I am seriously considering giving them a phone call in the morning to cancel the order. Luckily I paid by credit card so I have some safeguards if things do go belly up. Any information on the firm would be welcome.

Dogs are a pack animal. The human family replaces their natural pack. Therfore they learn and follow the rules and methods of the human pack. In order to fit in and learn their place in the pack it is nescessary for them to adapt some of their natural behaviour to suit that of humans. Which is why they develope human like traits and mannerisms.

As an ex soldier I have alot of sympathy for these men and their familys. I feel that by todays standards that they were badly mistreated and deserve their pardons. But having said that I am also aware that at the time there was very little sympathy among the general public or their comrades for them. It was an entirely different age then with an outlook on life and set of mores that is completely alien to modern thinking. The most striking example of this perhaps is what happened when the Germans captured Brussels during that war. The first thing that they did was to round up a hundred civilians at random, line them up in the main square and shoot them as a warning to the rest of the population as to the consequences of any resistance. The Allies were in no way outraged by this massacre considering it as a normal part of warfare at that time and something that they themselves would possibly have done in similar circumstances.

This post is taking me back a few years. I was brought up in Amesbury and did most of my early fishing there. As far as I know the only free stretch of water in the village (town now ?) is in Lords Walk woods. Most of the rest of the fishing from what I could gather last time I was down is owned by the Salisbury and District Angling club. I wonder if they still have the gravel pits at Steeple Langford?