Is it cold or what??

Hmm, it's not looking good out there, is it?

I thought we were in with a chance when I got up on Saturday morning.  Well, I say woke up - I was rousted out of bed at stupid-past six by the sound of rain water battering the top of the gas meter box on the front of the house.  Looking out of the window, it seemed the return on the guttering was blocked, so the rain was running straight off next door's roof, out of the end of their guttering and onto our front.

A quick brew, a think of who to speak to, then all was resolved by a visit from the Jockster a little later with his big ladders.  Mind you, it was me who had to run up the ladders and scoop all the shi'ite out - as well as going back up again with a bucket of water to sluice-out the down pipe.  Bloody freezin'...

After all that palava, I went and had a look at Pinfold.  All looked surprisingly thawed when I backed onto the car park.  No frost on there or on the canal bank (you could even see the dog shi'ite) so perhaps we could have a chuck.  No fear, sadly.  I got the icebreaker out of the boot and went under the bridge by the boat.  Dropping it at my feet into what I thought was clear water resulted in a deep 'clunk' and the ice went a mottled white colour.  A couple more drops and it was cracked, but no sign of it breaking.  I did eventually get a small part of it broken, but the ice itself was at least 4" thick, so that knackered any thoughts of fishing for a week or so.

Off I went home, via the paper shop to buy the latest Match Fishing magazine.  That read (I'm sure I've read all those articles before, with different names and pictures...) I set about stripping a few trays of old rigs.  Bored again, I tidied my (copyright Michael McIntyre) 'Man drawer', before giving-in to the boredom and watching more shi'ite on the telly.

The saviour of the weekend was that 'Catching the Impossible' was on all day yesterday on Discovery Shed.  That probably stopped me going insane.  I had a look at the subtly re-titled Standish blog and was quite taken by the new template, so here's my little twist on it.  Dunno whether I like it or not - I'll probably change it back again.