The mystery of the missing screw, and other tales

The return of the prodigal screw! At almost 1.5 mm long the screw that held my right hand lens into the very extinguished looking glasses had been much hunted for. You can't just pop of to the optician here - A jiffy-tie had done temporary duty, but it really was rather worrying. Now, from places unknown - possibly the kabouter in the garden I spotted it on my desk. There really is a good reason for having visible wood on a desk - good thing I tidied it a bit for our visitors. Now... to get back in.

I took our young visitors to the jetty early this morning. Aedan started fishing while I was still experiencing the joys of taking youths fishing. All adults really need to have basic ghillie training, and fortunately their mum is a quick study at it too. So as I was cutting up the second bait we get air-raid shriek. "I got one, I got one, I got one!"

It was a pretty cloudy morning up to that point.

Soon Brigit and her mum (and the entire cheerleader team, including me) were dealing with this one.



I broke the necks as I always do in the absence of a priest, and turned away while doing so, to not horrify my audience (they're lovely kids, but well, they're from the city) but Brigit peered round me - Her 'it's bleeding!' sounded more like delight than horror, and it certainly didn't stop her trying for another one. We forget that largest primitive tribe - AKA kids learn a lot from our reactions.



Their mum was looking after my rod while I did the ghillie's next job - untangling, and all her hard work was rewarded by a double hook-up (I fish a paternoster rig for these - but one hook is bad enough with new little fishermen). Much excitement and me nearly falling off the hanging tire I was precariously balancing on with the net, and we had both. The downside with a paternoster rig of course is if you go to net the lowest fish the top one is airborne, and if you net the highest, the other is likely to break off.

But by 9.00 AM the great fisher-people were back (After some brave gutting by the 9 year old. By 9 I'd been gutting fish for 4 years, and it didn't occur to me that if you haven't really caught fish gutting might be quite an experience... dangerous with knives!) Anyway - they've gone off island touring and we're catching up a bit, assauging my concience with some work.