Blade, as you will know if you have read any of his rubbish, used to be a mad keen angler, wasting several lifetimes a month by the river, canal, lake or pond. God knows why, and if he caught anything he would throw it back!!! This was before he met me: I should have been waiting with a hot frying pan, ready for the fish or to slam it down on his head should he have ignored me all weekend for nothing. Either he or the fish would have been battered. These days he no longer fishes, and I bigheadedly quote my feminine charms as the reason sanity has returned to him. It's either that or his advancing years.
Tradition dictated that each June 16th, the first day of the fishing season, Blade should cast his line on the stroke of midnight. Dull weather and rain was something to be prayed for, but on the 15th, at 6pm he and his co-lunatic were sat in a punt anchored a few yards out from the bank, basking in the sort of sunshine you and I only dream about, yet cursing the fact. He made some claim that the fish also disliked the sun, but I, suspecting that fish have a higher IQ than the average fisherman, would doubt that.
Anyway about 11pm, the clouds, summoned by a 5 hour prayer session, rolled in: darker and darker it got, the sort of clouds normally only seen in the most scary of horror films were massing above them. And the rain, a veritable downpour deluged them, threatening even to sink the punt. But they were happy in the anticipation that the first cast into the dark could now only hold success.
"God its dark!" said Blade.
His companion dryly replied that were he to remove his sunglasses he might just see a little better. And so it was: Blade had been basking in his new ultra dark prescription sunglasses, thinking he looked super cool. But in his haste to reach the lake he had left his clear glasses half a mile away, through thick woodland, in his car.
On reflection he accepted later that to have returned to the car was foolhardy: but he was faced with a choice: to wander back to the car, through thick woodland in pouring rain, unable to see because of the darkness of his spectacles, or alternatively to wander to the car through the same terrain and conditions, unable to see because of his short sightedness. His orienteering skills in the circumstances were minimal, and his pledge to return by midnight, Cinderella style, was not fulfilled. Instead he returned at 4.00 AM having spent hours wandering blindly, and in an ever increasing state of muddy saturation, his way lost completely. The picture this conjures up in my evil mind, the anger, the waders being sucked into every bit of boggy ground, and the frequent walking into trees, never fails to make me giggle....
.....and on such a PERFECT night too!!!!
Er... sorry Blade: could not resist the temptation to tell all.