Madness - why is it that when you have one really good prospect for an evening's entertainment about a dozen more turn up to contest it's worthiness?? This weekend seemed to be the very definition of selective socialising. I decided to go with the rarest in all cases just so I had something new under my belt, as it were.

This breadth of experience now includes fishing. Fancy that.

I never saw the point of fishing; you can sit for hours by the side of a large body of water with a bit of line on the end of a stick. You wont catch bugger-all for hours, if at all, and you do this invariably at silly times of day when its uncomfortably cold/wet/windy etc.

Oh, and you can pay hundreds, if not thousands of pounds for the privilege.

?????

In fact it is quite relaxing, as most fishermen & women will attest, and all the time you are not catching anything you're thinking of when you might...

...and then the line tweaks, and the thrill of having finally snagged something leaps in your chest and yes, I can kinda get the whole excitement shindig behind this fishing lark, even if the only thing I caught the whole night was a bloody Geranium I'd better explain -

See, I combatted the first few negatives of fishing by going down to a local marina at about 11pm. Now this Marina is on the waterfront of the Solent estuary (thats Southampton-way for the folks that don't know, right in the very Central-Southern-most point of the whole UK mainland; directly above the Isle of Wight) so I guess anyone with knowledge of the area can guess where I was (and if I mention that it costs about £1M for a 2-bedroom house on the marina you'll probably know exactly where I mean) By sheer happy coincidence my nautical friend who shares my name has landed the job of lockeeper there - which means he is in charge of security for the whole marina overnight

And I can tell you now that fishing out of an office window in a comfy chair, sipping fresh coffee, and leisurely smoking the tobacco of your choice safely out of the wind is certainly the kind of fishing I could get used to Even better is the fact that we were fishing into a sealed lock only about 25ft X 60ft, and about 15ft deep, so it almost was like shooting fish in a barrel!! Shame nothing was biting until about 6am, but apparently thats just the way it goes down there. We actually left just before all the actual `fishing` happened of course

My most amazing (read: only) catch was the result of an entangled line as I was doing it by hand (the bloody-great 20-foot-long Atlantic sea rod my mate lent me was a leeeeetle over the top for the lock (it almost reached over the other side onto dry land for Chrissakes!) so while manfully casting my baited, weighted hook into the far corners of the water a coil of the stuff looped around a plant in the border under our balcony and I hoisted a whole Geranium, perfectly uprooted, out of the soil and cast it gracefully into the oily depths The fish were probably most amused.

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To even get there on Friday I had to turn down an evening of climbing, which I haven't done for a couple of weeks and am starting to sorely miss, and I even had to turn down a house-party which would have resulted in much silliness and debauchery; which can only be a good thing ; so I was pretty satisfied with my willpower and suchlike, especially at the prospect of turning down another evening of messiness, the oppoutunity of which I would have previously jumped at.

Then along came Saturday... with an evening of poker set up ostensibly so I could get to know this girl who's a friend of my mate's girlfriend on one hand, and my good friend Nick's barbecue in Guildford on the other hand, I decided to go to a rave near Andover instead! Hadn't been to one in ages so I thought I'd try my hand once again, and despite the fact that I managed to stay awake through the night and only passed out at about 7AM on Sunday, I didn't have anything to drink all night, a fact of which I am pretty proud; especially considering the insane degree to which most people there were mashed.

I can hardly believe how many young idiots were there off their heads - I was sat by the fire between the 2 dance tents (well, dance barns would be more accurate seeing as it was on a farm) with my mate Emma, on the top of a windswept hill at 4am with techno and breakbeat emanting at high volume from our left and right respectively, happily mooching away in a very hippified state of mind, and some 14-year old chav who's off his nuts on ecstasy starts hassling us incoherently for a cigarette and starts gurning his face off about 6-inches from mine, then proceeds to sit down and very, very, very pathetically trys to chat up Emma while she can barely conceal her laughter and/or disgust. That is the kind of idiot we could well do without in the gene pool Happily enough his kind were few and far between, but even still I'm glad I had a reminder of why I don't go to these things any more unless I know the organisers and therefore broadly know the crowd they will be inviting!!

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As I was out fishing on Friday night I didn't sleep at all because I was then working on Saturday afternoon, and I was pretty tired by the time I got home - so naturally I then went straight out (after a heinously greasy fry-up) to this free-party/rave shindig So all-in-all after being conscious for almost exactly 48 hours I slept really *fruitcage* ing well on Sunday Goddamn me if I ain't still half-tired though, but it was worth it because of the lessons I learned. At all events; a most interesting weekender, most interesting indeed.

And I met girl I was actually at school with last night to discuss the joys of travelling in South America. My my, she is a most interesting girl, I must say...

But you care? Doubt it