Breaking The Ice

Our weather seems to be stuck in a very nasty rut at the moment. It's freezing outside and a blanket of snow is covering everything. Every now and again I peep through the window hoping a thaw might have set in so that I could take the dog for walk, but I know it isn't going to happen today and probably not tomorrow either.
At times like this I'm sure we can all be forgiven for repeating that often asked question, what happened to global warming?

I have posted a couple of photos on this blog to brighten it up a bit. Take a look at the one of the frozen lake, beautiful though it is, doesn't it make you want to shiver.


The worst part about this weather is the fact that it stops me from doing what I want to do. I also feel sorry for those people who get up early each morning to go to work in atrocious conditions. Scraping the ice off a car every morning isn't much fun especially when it's so cold that even after doing the outside your breath freezes on the inside of the windscreen. I've been there and done that for over thirty winters and count myself lucky that things have changed for me. Now I only have to make myself a nice cup of tea, climb the stairs to my study and switch the computer on. On that note, perhaps it's time to talk a little bit more about freelance writing.

Writing
I mentioned in my last blog that time wasting is the worst enemy of all writers. There are so many distractions to contend with. One of the main problems is that the software program we use to do our writing is on our personal computer. That shouldn't really matter, but what do you always do when you switch on the computer? Well, in keeping with the majority of computer users you probably check your e-mail account to see if you have any important messages. The problem is it doesn't end there because some of the e-mails need a reply. Then you check the news, the weather and then google all the things you have thought about googling since the last time you were logged on. The net result of all this activity is that you've achieved nothing and you are no closer to becoming a writer of any description.

If you want to push forward with a writing career and avoid the brass monkey weather next winter, you need to change your habits. If you are going onto the computer to do some writing do that first, you can look at your e-mails when you've finished. If you can't manage that then sit yourself down in a quiet corner with a good old-fashioned notepad and a pencil and get on with it. Lots of writers use this method and edit their work as they type it into the computer.

In my next post I'll make suggestions for getting started.

Fishing
I've already mentioned that because I work from home I don't have to venture out in Arctic conditions to go to work.

What I also don't do is go fishing. It isn't that I'm completely nesh, it's because it seems to me to be a waste of time if your main objective is to catch fish. If however your reason for going out in horrible weather is motivated purely by the need to get out of the house for a bit of peace I can sympathise with that.

If we go back about twenty years the sort of weather we are having at the moment was common place. This is how it was every Winter. Our fish club's Christmas fur and feather match was always fished early in November because the canals were generally frozen over by the end of the month and would stay that way for most of December and January.

At that time I was also keen on match fishing and found myself roped into taking part in a winter league. This was a series of matches that must've been organised by the local tackle dealers to keep us fools fishing when we'd have been better off under the duvet. These were regular events that were fished on the canal and were for very hardy people. If Earnest Shackleton or Scott of the Antarctic had been anglers I'm sure they'd have enjoyed our Winter league.


The matches were always fished in horrible conditions and more often than not ice needed to be broken regardless of how thick it was. I can only remember one match being called off because it was too cold and that was because the match secretary couldn't make a hole in the ice even with a pick axe. If you are a fair weather angler that puts his rods away at the end of August you'll laugh when I tell you that most of the anglers broke the ice with a house brick tied to a piece of rope then they moaned when they didn't catch anything. One chap I know was so determined to make a good size hole in the ice that he always carried a full size axe with him. You can read more about him and his determination to fish on regardless of the conditions in my book Fishing:Learn from the Tips & Laugh at the Tales.
More information about the book and free download
If you are venturing out to wet a line soon I wish you all the luck in the world, because anybody who goes fishing in this weather deserves it.