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Chris Plumb

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Posts posted by Chris Plumb

  2. Posted

    1 hour ago, ayjay said:

     

     

    I'm not keen on pure instructional stuff, I want some atmosphere.

    Ditto! 

    I'm avid reader of angling literature – with a veritable little angling library of close to 200 books (plus every Waterlog & Fallon’s Angler ever published) and not a ‘How to…’ book in sight. Below is my all time top 10 angling books (at the moment!) – with the self imposed limit of one per author. So in no particular order (apart from alphabetical by author…)
    The Glorious Uncertainty – John Aston. Real toss up between this And a Dream of Jewelled Fishes – John’s 1st book – both are superb – but this one just shades it for me.
    Reflections from the Waters Edge - John Bailey. I have most of Bailey’s books – but this early one is still my favourite.
    I know a Good Place – Clive Gammon. Great travel book and angling read rolled into one.
    Death, Taxes and Leaky Waders. John Gierach. If you’ve never read any of this American author – start here – it’s a best of from several of his books.
    Fish, Fishing and the Meaning of Life – ed Jeremy Paxman. I love a good anthology – in fact they warrant a top 10 of their own – this one is superb and for me just beats BB’s The Fisherman’s Bedside Book.
    Somewhere Else – Charles Rangeley-Wilson. Again another cracking travel book as well as great angling story-telling.
    Rod and Line – Arthur Ransome. A classic which still stands the test of time.
    An Angler for all Seasons - H T Sheringham. When Chris Yates first appeared on the literary scene he was often given the sobriquet ‘the best angling writer since Sheringham’. This book is a compendium of some of his best writing – and like the Ransome book still fresh today!
    Red Letter Days – Various. A lovely read – compiled as a tribute to Bernard Venables – 48 contributors with illustrations from John Searl. Probably the book I've re-read the most!
    The Deepening Pool – Chris Yates. I could have packed out the whole top 10 with CY tomes – I have every angling book he’s ever published. However this is easily my favourite - being a mainly river angler myself. Fantastic Yates prose coupled with his own photography – sublime!
     
    Always interested to hear of other recommendations...
     
    C.

  4. Posted

    Apologies if this has been put up before (I did search for it but couldn't find it here) - its about a year old now but still a rather good summary...

    Here is Nate White’s answer to the question, “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump.” It’s written so well, so strongly, that I wonder whether an intelligent rebuttal could ever be done.

    A few things spring to mind…

    Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.

    For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.

    So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

    Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever.

    I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.

    But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

    Trump is a troll.

    And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.

    And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

    There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.

    Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.

    Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.

    And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.

    Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.

    He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.

    He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

    And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.

    That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.

    There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

    So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think

    ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’

    is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

    Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

    You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

    This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.

    After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form;

    He is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of ****.

    His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.

    God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.

    He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.

    In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

    And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:

    ‘My God… what… have… I… created?’

    If being a **** was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

  13. Posted

    Probably wrong forum - but at least it will get seen here! Caught a nuisance Rainbow Trout today on the Kennet and it shed a load of eggs in the net - which somewhat surprised me as I thought that these stockies - which I'm sure it was - are meant to be sterile Triploids! How are they sterilised - and is it fool -proof?

  14. Posted

    Eventually got around to having a play with the functionality on the blog - loving the new headline feature - will start using that a lot plus the fact yiu can upload pics directly no more need to find somewhere to host pics...

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