SIR GUESTLING THORN

 Day 248

It is interesting how different programmes on TV affect you. Yesterday we watched the Christmas edition of Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing. If you have not seen it you’ll find on the BBC iPlayer. It is a gentle, charming programme about friends, both of whom have suffered from heart problems, who go fishing together. Paul Whitehouse has fished all his life, Bob Mortimer is new to it. The relationship between the two of them is touching, funny and full of love. It is probably because they are a similar age to myself and discuss things that make you laugh and bring a tear to your eye in equal measure that gives me such pleasure in watching. They go to beautiful places in Britain fishing in rivers and occasionally the sea. I never understood the popularity of angling but I must admit watching them stand fly fishing in shallow running water for salmon or trout has a contemplative connection with nature that looks very calming. Casting a rod is a skill and I’m beginning to understand the attraction. Just so as your know they always return what they catch.

Let’s pretend you just lost a football match 4-0 but your very unhappy about it! So you tell people it was a fraudulent result and say you will challenge it legally and that what obviously everyone clearly saw did not happen. Everybody says you lost the cameras prove you lost but you persist in claiming you really won. Your own club stays quiet because they do not want to upset you and if any of them ever dare to say “guv we lost” that are quickly sacked! This goes on for some weeks after the match was played and now you sit hiding in your office and only communicate by some form of social media. Eventually you are reluctantly removed and fired as manager, no other club will hire you because they all think your mad! Some fans still believe you did were great and that you were right to challenge the result, they are desperate to keep you in your job but the overwhelming evidence means you have to go. You never manage again you are considered toxic and unemployable not only that but past events come back to haunt you and you end up a broken man dribbling into your soup, telling everyone and anyone that you have been robbed!

Stay well