I'd normally write a sarcastic report of his adventures, but I'm so disappointed with him , I really can't be bothered. He launched at Caister and didn't even anchor up - something about the sea being too rough and deep and the rods came home bone dry. So instead they paddled out to the windmills and took photos ? Pathetic, I'm sorry but a cat can't eat photos - call yourself an angler grumpy , I certainly don't.

Grumpy is back in my good books - just for a while you realise , until he does something else to hack me off.

I packed him off to Salthouse to earn his keep Thursday morning with strict instructions to bring something back for the bowel.

He arrived there to find the place crawling with bird spotters. Now I always thought that anglers were tackle tarts but these twitchers have a league of their own. Cameras, telescopes, hides and all sorts. It was the first time he had felt sorry for a bird, imagine this pitiful sight , 10 twitchers all in a circle around a pond with cameras and telescopes all trained on this one bird in the middle - come on , how stupid must that bird have felt, not to mention the invasion of privacy. A cat would have flipped a claw and sat licking his butt for the duration - haha photograph that you losers !

Well he got all excited when his first cast brought in a nice Dab, but it most certainly wasn't a sign of things to come, because he then spent the next 5 hours watching these stupid little terns running round the beach in packs like parading nazi soldiers. I really should go with him, I'd give the stupid little feathered snacks something to run from.

It wasn't until 6'ish when there must have been an invasion of very hungry fish, cos let's face it he's not that good an angler that he can claim credit for the next six fish all coming in on the trot ! Still I can't complain as two of them came home for tea, or to be more accurate "my breakfast"

Well done grumpy you have finally redeemed yourself.

George

If an ex army man and ex bank manager went out for a days fishing , you'd expect some pretty serious activity. Like a well planned incursion to a beach , equipment set up in a well managed and positioned sort of way , with some great results , wouldn't you ?

Not a bit of it , it brings tears to my eyes to recount this tale , that in honesty any self respecting cat would have executed flawlessly.

The "boys" , and I probably am referring to mental age here rather than any form of group hug metaphor, left grumpys house at 8-30 ish with their liddle boats strapped on the Jimmys roof rack , and more kit in the boot than you would need to invade a small african country. The plan was to have a quick "play" , and again I'm using the word in it's playground context , at Wells in the surf and then head over to a beach and catch me some fish.

Why I continually get surprised at the outcome of these trips I don't know, but anyway.

Having filled up on coffee at the Wells deli (great idea when you're wearing a dry suit) they parked up and kitted up in the car park near the beach and launched their liddle yaks into a new "marina" that was being built there. They paddled up the river and after a while it dawned on them they couldn't see where it joined the sea , so rather than tire their old muscles out they dragged the boats over a sand bar and into the surf.

Well give a kid some candy and what does he do , of course he scoffs the lot ! They did as well , straight out over the sand bars riding the waves in and kidding themselves they were rehearsing for a new season of Hawaii Five O. Book em Danno !

On a couple of occasions grumpy looked round to see the Jimmy floating in the sea and trying to clamber back on his liddle boat. The Jimmy says he was just getting up close to the seal that was sitting within a few yards watching. If I know animals I would say he was having a damn good chuckle actually. Grumpy was raving about a wave that threw him into the air and how he landed back in the boat and stayed upright and then managed a wonderful ride back only to realise he was gunning down on the Jimmy and had to try and steer past him. Hopefully that will be on film shortly, I for one am looking foreward to seeing it.


To cut what is a long and boring session in the surf short , they paddled back as far as they could only to realise the tide had been racing out and they were now faced with a very long walk back across the sand. Grumpy had to keep stopping as his poor little arms were tired and the Jimmy had to surpress rolling eyes so's not to hurt his feelings.

Paddling back up river against the current finished them off and like a couple girls they huffed and puffed their way back into the car park only to realise that the ticket had expired a couple of hours earlier, but luckily the ticket police were obviously holed up somewhere eating doughnuts and perving at young girls - that's an in joke for anybody who knows any policemen - so they got lucky.

Next off to Cley after gorging themselves on fish and chips - which without giving the game away was the closest those two got to a fish all day. Now if I'm honest about this , being knackered after their playday probably didn't help their fishing , as they set up and only put in a few hours and I get the impression there was a distinct lack of animation that evening. So the fish head count was nil and this cat - once again - has got to out and kill something , I'm thinking here that Jack Russell round the corner would probably taste rather good with ketchup.

The highlight of the evening was bringing out some seaweed with something called luminous algae , slimy stuff that flashed a green light. Well what can I say ? better luck next time ? no chance. Grumpy had better sharpen up , as his man parts are easily accessible with one swipe of my paw.

George


The Jimmy would appear to have lost his boat in this picture



The Jimmy before his dunking - note the dry hat

Grumpy and the Jimmy decided to meet up at Gorleston , with Grumpy having the bright idea of trying to catch conger eel from the wreck. Tell me , where does he get these ideas from ?

So having posted the rendevous on the web they attracted two other reprobates known as the Tony and the Dave , so bless his little heart , his circle of acquaintance is expanding - who said cat's are illiterate ?

Grumpy has secret aspirations to being a film svengali and took his little video camera. Oh dear !

Having cocked up his launch a couple of times and confirmed that his new life jacket works OK , he clipped a line to one of the pipes on the old wreck and within ten minutes had a great bite on his 60lb boat rod. Battling with it for about 5 minutes the line snapped and despite his best efforts that was it for the day.

Getting bored and very cold after about three hours he unclipped and went for a paddle and confirmed that Gorleston bay doesn't get very deep a mile out - the things he finds interesting are really quite amazing !

Tail between his legs he returned home empty pawed and kissed some serious feline butt. This lack of fish is becoming very worrying - anybody want to give a loyal and affectionate cat a good home !

Home Brew Video

Send an old man to do a boys job !

I didn't think his catch rate could get any worse than one fish per trip, how wrong I was.

Planning a trip to Cart Gap , with a view to checking out launch facilities , he received a call from a group known as I Drown Pedros. These reprobates persuaded him to go to somewhere called Thorpeness. Apparently it's full of very big and expensive houses that get visited by Range Rovers twice a year.

It was round about that point things went wrong. Bouncing around the house like a kid with a new toy he packed up his gear and headed south. The trouble with old grumpy is that he lives in his own little dream world, highlighted by him getting half way to Acle and realising he should have been on the Lowestoft Rd. It got worse, as a couple of minutes after this moment of realisation he hit a diversion and got routed around half of east anglia before he got back on the road he shouldn't have been on in the first place !

The second realisation was when he got near Lowestoft and realised he hadn't packed any sinkers. So he drove around Lowestoft trying to find the tackle shop and failed, he drove around Saxmundham and failed to find the tackle shop there.

So he got to the beach and unpacked his gear thinking he would blag some weights from the I Drown Pedros, only to find he had in fact packed six a few days earlier. This was lucky as he actually set up half a mile from where the I Drown Pedros had set up. Being a lazy git he couldn't be arsed to move to join them and had a bash at fishing a different spot to them

To cut a long story short , he spent five hours throwing worms, squid and prawns into the North Sea with not even a sniff of a fish. What a shame we cats don't eat seaweed as I would have been a very happy feline.

I left one owner (they think they abandoned me) and I thought adopting this family would be a good move given his obsession with catching fish. Currently rethinking this clearly flawed plan.

Nice photo though and Mrs Grumpy got to watch all her soaps without him moaning in the background ....

"Old Grumpy" , seems to be getting rather good at finding me fish , once again the human brought me a rather nice flounder home for supper.

He met up at Trimingham at midday with another human called Jimmy. Now apparently the Jimmy human comes from somewhere called Scotland as does my female human , so grumpy was well equipped to converse with Jimmy as he speaks the language ! I don't get this language thing as I've managed without it all my life , I find a feline glare and the threat of a claw down the leg is all the language I need.

Back to his trip out , though. They launched into moderately rough surf and having swallowed a few cup fulls of briney when some large waves hit him , he paddled out about 3/4 mile and they both anchored up. Now excuse me while I put a paw over my mouth to supress a chuckle , but this is where it went a bit "Pete Tong" ! The Jimmy human started to slip anchor and spent a disproportianate amount of time trying to get it up again and not tangle with grumpys line and then have another go. Grumpy managed to catch the flounder while the Jimmy was battling with rope , which I'm sure made the Jimmy feel much happier.

Having moved away a few hundred yards the Jimmy dropped anchor again and grumpy sat there watching him float off to the horizon , so clearly there was another slippage situation which was followed by an anchor cutting. You may think grumpy was getting an easy ride , ho ho, he was until he tried to lift anchor and discovered it was as stuck as much as the Jimmys was made of butter. The Jimmy sat watching him as he rowed up tide several times to try and pull it backwards, but he had to give up in the end after the boat started leaning over at a 45 degree angle and he cut the line and lost his anchor as well.

Accompanied by a rather nice sunset the two of them admitted defeat and paddled back to shore. Fancying themselves as budding Spielbergs, the cameras came out and they planned the film of the landing. Well call me cruel but that really was the kiss of death , as the Jimmy got to within ten feet of the shore and rolled over on a large wave and washed his hair. Next was grumpys turn as he very carefully positioned himself to come in on a slight diagonal to ride a nice wave in. Well it went OK until the last second when the wave grabbed hold and grumpy came in sideways barely managing to land upright. He called it skill , well I'm sorry but I know what I call it !!!