The Christmas season is here! -  I can almost hear your comments – “Great, thanks a million Glenda, as if you have to remind us about this one!”  Oh! Come on, deep down everyone has that inner child just waiting to surface - that little spark that often gets dampened in the daily grind - just longing to ignite.

Isn’t it time to put a log on the fire, sip mulled wine whilst sorting out your flies, catch up on the fishing magazines which you will probably find in the bathroom, or watch one of your favourite films? Isn’t it time too to relax in a candle-lit room as the nostalgic scent of pine needles fills the air?

Or maybe this year you are genuinely feeling miserable because of the “R” word. This year maybe you are not so concerned about the office parties, the department store queues, the agony of not knowing which perfume she wears, or what dress size she is now. Or maybe it’s not even the search for that “must have” toy that no one seems to have left in stock - that pushed you over the edge.

Maybe we are going back to basics here, back to a time which a lot of us will remember only to well.

Some of you may be worrying about the future of your job, watching your hard earned savings and pensions crash by the day, or maybe you have to work a lot harder just to make the same amount of money as you did last year. Anger and bitterness set in because this is not your self doing. We are all in the same boat - so to speak - so let me try to cheer you up just a little bit.

Each year at Halloween I take my children to Northern Ireland to visit my family.  This year it was not the fun-filled holiday that my children had been used to in previous years.  Sarah (Sadie) McPeake - my grandmother of almost 87 years - passed away during our trip.  I was privileged to have got there in time to say our goodbyes before she passed on. As we buried her on that cold October day, I watched as tears trickled down my grandfather’s cheeks. Tears filled with pain for the lifetime of love that he had just lost. 

The following day was Halloween. That evening I stood alongside my children - numb with the emotions of just having stared death in the face - and watched the fireworks explode over Belfast city. I found myself asking the same questions that I had asked my grandfather the previous day – “What is life all about?” What are we all doing here? Why do we all worry so much about the small shit when we can’t take anything with us?

As for the recession, would it be such a bad thing to backtrack 20 years, to a time when families and friends were important? To a time when we bought second-hand Levis which we patched every Saturday night before going out.  Would it be so bad if our children grew up knowing about the value of money and needed to find summer jobs to support their wants? What was wrong with our mothers baking our wedding cakes, and passing down clothes from child to child? And as for the oddly shaped vegetables that were thrown away in their masses because they didn’t confirm to EU standards. Just as well they didn’t have the same attitude with people!

If this recession will help bring people and communities closer together, and possibility give us all the reality check that we need, then I am all for it!

 I acquired two ferrets earlier in the year when I was demonstrating at the Irish Game Fair, and - even though they are still very young - I couldn’t wait to take them hunting this winter.  Truthfully, I have been waiting for years for my children to be old enough so that I could use them as an excuse to get ferrets again! I don’t know of a better way to convince young children to go for a walk across the fields on a cold and wet Saturday morning.  Apart form the much needed exercise, my father gave us a beautiful new puppy which we called Sadie, who also needs to be walked.  Of course one day she will be as perfectly trained as our other two dogs - Strangford and Gillie!

For anyone who doesn’t know about ferreting, then the closest thing in fishing that I can relate it to is worming for salmon.

You net off the rabbit holes, put the ferret down one of the holes and wait.  Often you will hear a thump, thump, thump of a rabbit warning the rest of the warren and then………., with all of your senses fully awake, barely breathing and simply dying with excitement, you wait in anticipation to see if the rabbit is going to bolt out and get trapped in a net. When using nets you can choose to keep or release your quarry, a bit like fishing really.  We usually keep one or two for dinner and set the rest free.  This sport - like worming for salmon - is often viewed by the inexperienced or purist as somewhat easy or common. It is rare to find someone who really knows what they are doing in either of these fields.

I went on a ferreting trip a couple of weeks ago. I have been out with my children quite a few days since, but this one particular Sunday afternoon will stick in my mind forever.  I took my kids Anna (7) and Ian (5), together with their school friends Ian (7) and his brother Josh (6). We went across country for four miles.  The rucksack was stuffed with sandwiches, sugary tea, chocolate, purse nets, torch, firelighters and paper, and of course the obligatory first aid kit! Flynn the family ferret, four excited children who resembled The Telly Tubbies in their layers, and I were going on an adventure! Across the fields, down the boreens, through the ditches and briars and across the disused Ballyduff railway track. No obstacle was too big that we couldn’t climb over it, and no hole was too small that we couldn’t squeeze through it. We were a team, and we all had to help each other on the way.

The memories of my own childhood flooded back, as I watched four innocent children racing each other through the sodden fields, covered in mud, clothes torn, and laughing all the way.

Here’s to the memories, the friendships that were made that Sunday, and to each child now understanding what an electric fence is! It was nearly dark when we brought a rabbit home, and they curiously watched as I skinned and prepared it on the kitchen table. We roasted it and had a little dinner party with it.  Did they enjoy it?  The evidence was the clean plates and the rosy cheeks.

Wouldn’t it be great to see our children enjoying the countryside as we used to?  The long days of the summer holidays spent playing in the fields with our friends getting up to nothing but mild,innocent, mischief. How unusual it is now to see a young boy (or girl!) walk through one of our towns with a fishing rod hanging over their shoulder?		This week - along with the Waterford Sports Partnership - I had the pleasure of presenting certificates to 16 girls in our local Ballyduff National School who completed my Fish Start programme during the summer. Some of these girls have now moved on to secondary school, but I know that one day they will look back and remember this programme.
	They will remember the sing-songs around the campfires, the BBQ’s, and catching fish with their friends.  They will take with them life-long memories. The smell of the river at dusk, barley after the rain, the weed fight (I lost!), and more importantly - a respect and understanding for Mother Nature -which hopefully they in turn will teach to their own children in years to come.

I seem to have eventually broken through the pain barrier, and have finally integrated back into normal life after my struggle with returning to normality when the fishing season closed (see my End of Season article!)

Well - at least to the outside world - I must have put on a good show, as I have been ‘volunteered’ to give a cookery demonstration in our local Village Hall on December 5^th.

Now, putting a microphone on my head and talking about fly-fishing to a few hundred people no longer terrifies me, but here I am plunged into the deep end in front of a few hundred women talking about Christmas Party food!  It is to raise money for Ballyduff School, so at least I can convince myself that it is for a good cause.  Thank goodness for the school’s sake that the people have to pay for the tickets before the night, and I pray that they are not expecting Nigela Lawson!
 

This makes the bungee jump I did for charity last year (raising money for a Wheelyboat in Fermoy) feel like the low diving board. Time to put away the wellies and hang up the waders for a night, and back to Monsoon (or possibly Penny’s) to buy that Christmas dress I had been avoiding.   I suppose I will also have to wear an apron to at least look as if I know what I am doing. Wish me luck! As we attend to our daily chores in the lead up to Christmas, let’s give thanks for the blessings that we have today.  As well as our loved ones, we all have our sport. We all share a passion that takes us to beautiful, quiet, peaceful places. Places were we can be at home with ourselves - away from the rat race of our modern throw-away times - to a place were our hunter needs and friendships can be nourished.

Fishing teaches us about change, as each season passes quickly on to the next. It teaches us about life and death - only plastic flowers stay the same. Isn’t even fly-casting about changing our techniques to cope with adverse weather conditions?

And as for the change in our economy - doesn’t every generation work it out somehow, someday? 
Maybe a little bit more R&R (Rod and Reel!) next year would be good for us.

Yes, reality has set in - and tells us that we will probably not be going on our fishing trip of a lifetime next year - but hopefully we will all start to smell the roses under our own windows.  The Irish drift nets are gone since two years, and even though we still have a long way to go to protect our salmon stocks, here in Ireland our fishing is getting better and better.

And the best bit! On Christmas Day, we only have 5 weeks to go until the beginning of another season. February 1^st. is our Opening Day, and it’s our tradition to invite anglers for complimentary breakfast rolls and coffee. On February 2^nd., we start our two 3 day residential Shooting Head/Spey casting courses, hosted by my fellow Loop No.1 Pro Team colleague Thomas Berggren (from Sweden) and myself.

Ireland, a nation of people (not materialistic wealth) has recently been voted as one of the happiest places in Europe. Let us keep smiling. Let us continue to look for the rainbow during the storm because - somewhere above it - the sky is blue.