...These cup cakes taste like.....

very nice cup cakes....made by the Daughter tonight for no reason other than she suddenly felt the urge.

On the fishing front, today was a disaster. If you're ever in Lancashire and someone asks you if you fancy going fishing at Charity Farm Fishery....don't go...go home and stick pins in your eyes....you'll have more fun...I promise.

Here are the reasons why..........

Reason 1. We arrived at 8.15 to discover that Charity Farm "Fishery" is also a caravan and camping site and a livery and riding stables.Now, I'm no expert but I don't think it's possible to run three such diverse activities on one site and run them all well.

We checked in with the owner, who informed us we had lake 1 all to ourselves.

Reason 2. We lugged the gear up to lake 1...it was covered in blue/green algae and had several bottles, cans and fag packets floating in the water!

We managed to find 8 decent pags and drew for the match. We dropped the £40 into the safe, which with our £30 deposit paid for the 10 pegs we had booked. Match started at 9.30.

Reason 3. By 10.00 only three of us had had bites and no-one had caught a fish! Obviously this was going to be a tough day.

Reason 4. At 11 the owner turned up and informed Shaun we hadn't paid enough...the lake, apparently, costs £100 for the day. Despite Shaun's protestations that we had a confimation for 10 pegs at £7 per peg, the owner was adamant...£30 more or we were off!. Shaun tried to reason with him that that meant we were paying £12.50 each instead of £7....and no-one in their right mind would do that, he insisted that we paid up!

The fishing was rubbish, at one point I hooked a big carp, got it within 4 metres of the bank and it got off the hook....20 minutes later Shaun, on my left, did exactly the same and 15 minutes after that Gordon on Shaun's left did the same.... I think it was the same bloody stupid fish every time.

Reason 5. About lunch time dozens of bloody kids and their parents started wandering around the lake.....asking bloody stupid questions and making noise, one of the little bleeders even started throwing stones in the water...until I threatened to wallop his arse....and his parent's arses too! They all had that whiny scouse accent too!..........and then they moved into the field next to the lake and began playing loud games and kicking footballs around.

We persevered but the fishing was killed.

Reason 6. At 2.30 the owner turned up again to tell us the match was finished as he'd taken payment from pleasure anglers to move onto the lake. We pointed out that a 5 hour match that starts at 9.30 doesn't finish until 2.30....and that we'd paid £12.50 each for the "privilege" of fishing and a day ticket for all day costs only £7. In the end we told him to go forth and multiply.

Reason 7. The match was won with 7lb and 7 oz...this from a lake that boasts "50lb of fish per angler is the average catch".

We fished until 2.30 and left, 8 very p*ssed off anglers. We're due back there for another match in 2 weeks.................but none of us are bothering. We'll go to one of our own waters and have an enjoyable day...for free!

Das vidanya moy padruga.