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I'm not as good
as I once was!
as I once was!
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Thursday 23rd April, 2009 I turned 45 yesterday... a pretty meaningless milestone I thought... I have to wait 5 more years for a good reason to celebrate something, but I'm not sure I'll celebrate being half a century old... kind of just drown my sorrows and the accompanying aches seems more appropriate... but that's ages away. Right now, after a very busy fishing season (Which is still going), a bout of diarrhoea and working with a kennel full of dogs I feel like I'm about 100 years old. But the pheasant season is only a couple of weeks away and that always rejuvenates my enthusiasm for life and before you know I'll be feeling and acting like I'm 20... For a short period of time and then I'll sit under a pine tree with one of my faithful Springer's, smoke a cigarette and feel 100 again. But hopefully I'll have a nice pheasant meal and another big punch of fly-tying materials in my back pack by then.... The Outdoors does keep you young and I have realised that I am, even though I spend far more time indulging in the pursuits practised out there than most people I know, that I am still not doing enough of it... the old cliché things about not thinking about the extra work you could have done when lying on your death bed springs to mind and I realise it's true. If I live to be 80 (I'll feel 300 by then) I will have had 29300 (roughly) days on this planet... I'd like to think I could amass at least 18000 of those in some sort of outdoor sport... the rest sleeping. If I count my past work which was primarily guiding and gundog training then I guess it is possible. That makes me feel good. Because I start to realise, now that I'm no longer bullet proof, that I don't want to venture into some of those river valleys alone anymore, not for company but for safety's sake. I notice my gundogs seem to run just a little bit faster too but the good part is my wife seems younger every day You could easily get depressed by some of this stuff... but then depression is really just anger without enthusiasm and therein lies the key... enthusiasm... so long as you have that you have everything this sport requires of you. Enthusiasm to tie a new fly, to fish a new river, to try a new technique... Enthusiasm to take a bright young pup and turn it into a pheasant's worst nightmare... yep... it's about enthusiasm. I start to feel good again when I think of that and then I realise Toby Keith wrote a song all about it... and it's my current theme song... “I'm not as good as I once was... but I'm as good once as I ever was....” Clark
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