Paul Arden | Monday, 23 November 2015
It's been an interesting few weeks with, at times, some rather vibrant discussions. "It must be about fly casting!", you say to yourself - and you'd be right! It actually comes down to the British Casting Team. Following the last World Championships where three of us attended from Great Britain, Lee and I, inspired by the progress made by other teams, such as Norway and Finland, decided that we should start a British Team to hopefully try and match them, if not in numbers then in spirit. However for one reason or another we have now split into respective countries. It is felt by a few people that this route will result in more participation. Time will tell - let's hope so!
The curious thing about this, is that it leaves me in a somewhat peculiar situation. As you can tell from my orange beard, I have Scottish ancestral roots. These are on my mother's side - they are pretty deep roots too. I have clan roots. I grew up in Scotland, from the ages of 2 to 10. However I don't really feel that I am Scottish - I don't have the Glaswegian accent any more for one thing, and of course my youth was spent in England. But I don't really feel that I am English either. I was actually born in Jersey, Channel Islands and have always held a Jersey passport.
Now no one really understands the political system in Jersey. They are not UK, not Great Britain, not British Isles, not EU, but they and all the rest of the British Isles are collectively known as the British Islands. When I got wind of the potential split, I did some research and emailed the Jersey Government Sports Department asking does Jersey compete Internationally in any sports?
It happens that they do. They compete in, and are recognised Internationally, in obscure sports such as Cricket and Squash... and more mainstream sports such as Surfing and - significantly - Coarse Fishing! So following the split and a couple of Skype calls later, I can now confirm that for future World Championships I'll be competing for Jersey. There is some government sports funding - not much but everything helps, and it might be interesting to try to get some corporate sponsorship. Jersey is very famous for both potatoes and cows and I'm particularly fond of potatoes.
I'll visit Jersey again this summer, it's been a long time! It's the reason I asked about the possibilities of sailing the Med and what would life be like sailing past France in a small 6m yacht. Living on a sailing boat around Jersey would be fun - there's good saltwater Bass fishing! However the result of that conversation saw me watching a video of an enormous storm in the Bay of Biscay. Perhaps I'll fly instead...
You know, I've been travelling for 25 years now, I can't help wondering sometimes if I've been looking for Jersey all along. Probably not - but it's a nice thought!
Cheers, Paul
