Return To Ludlow & Edinburgh

 

Today's Columbus Day or as you like to call it, "Indigenous Peoples' Day," but two weeks ago it was just another Monday in Sadiq Khan's London, a warm one at that. Almost as though the Sceptered Isle's capital city hadn't paid enough weather tax, which is Net Zero absurd because of course it has, why else would energy be so expensive there? Regardless, I strolled over to the train station, Euston, and rode the rails to Ludlow, a beautiful market town on the border with savage and doubtless Anarcho-Soviet Wales.

Typical Communist Street Scene

"Why Ludlow?" asked an old friend who I met at the town's small but well put together train station the following day. "Because," I replied with razor sharp logic, "I like it, and I have friends here." He seemed to understand, "Ah, now I understand," and we toiled up the hill to the center of town and the Blue Boar pub, lunch and the arrival of MCP, our old boss or Guv'nor in the mid '90s. Great fun, and I think we drank the place clean of Viognier. Were my friends there Communist? No, they were not, and some considerably not.

Room with a view

Neither, I think, was the town itself, unless you count unspoiled late medieval architecture and a market overlooked by a fortress somehow Marxist. And guess what? The place clearly needs to pay a steep fine for its appalling lack of DEI. Didn't see one single burqa or anything even approaching it. Huh. Go to Ludlow if you can, it's very pleasant or as my old boss would say, "Middle Earth."

Edinburgh

Then it was time to move, that being a sign of life, and the movement took me to Edinburgh and the Royal Scots Club (RSC) thanks to a weirdly cheap off-peak rail ticket via Crewe. I like Edinburgh a lot, once you get past the tartan gifte shoppes, and I especially enjoy the RSC, but was it taken over by the Frankfort School and Rainbow Marxism? I sat at the bar to find out.

RSC

Before long, a group of men set up beside me and we fell to talking, lo and behold, they worked in the arms trade or adjacent and go figure, they weren't commies, not at all, quite the reverse. This same pattern occurred twice over so many days and we all got along famously, go figure. That was the day shift, the evenings were mostly taken up with a trad crew of younger guys who seemed to mostly look up to Enoch Powell. No, they weren't Bolsheviks, far from it, and we had a lot of fun.

Note Tartan as opposed to DEI

As with Ludlow, visit the RSC if you can, not a Snackbar in sight and if you're a member you get a great discount on rooms, but much of the place is open to the public in a small, relaxed country house hotel kind of way, so don't let membership stop you from visiting. The Club was founded after WWI as a monument to the men of the Royal Scots Regiment, Pontius Pilate's Bodyguard, who gave their lives in the conflict.

Fast Mover

Next stop on this whirlwind tour of the UK? Cheltenham, a town of contrasts, lovely Georgian buildings as if set in a park, and bikers. Perhaps I'd find the Islamo-Marxist Caliphate there.

Stay Tuned,

LSP

Floored

It's been all about floors here, like no fooling. Remove noxious carpet, behold in potentia pine and have at it with Kwik Strip, 000 steel wool, murphy's and all of that. When you've removed the dirt, ancient varnish and associated gloop apply beeswax. Works like a charm.

OK, there's a different path, another route. Rent an industrial sander and take those floorboards back to basic. I've done it before, several times, but this time didn't. Why? Because the old pine looked good as is and's going to look better with more waxing. 

The finish builds, you see,

LSP

Just Go To The Lake

 

Movement, says the Philosopher, is a sign of life and that in mind I loaded a couple of rods in the rig and moved off to the lake. Yes, I was alive, but what about the fish? Good question. Soldier's Bluff, once a reef in a vast inland sea, shone under a fierce Texan sun, teenagers did backflips into hot water, all was alive, but the fish weren't moving.

Don't get me wrong, I tried, with worms and shad but no, our piscine enemy were lying low, immobile, playing dead. So much for this game of soldiers, I thought grimly to myself, and moved to another location, across the dam.

Boom, right out of the gate a ferocious Drum pulled rod #2 along the fishing pier. Off I ran, alive, picked up the rod and reeled him in. Good fight, well done fish. He went back, living, to fight again another day. Next up, Gar.

The thing about Gar, if you're me, is they're easy to get on but hard to hook. You see, they'll play with your bait and drop it if you attempt a premature hookset, which tends not to work because of the bony toughness of their long prehistoric beaks. So what to do?

Try a small #6 hook, baited with frozen shad, on a 12" leader weighted with split shot beneath a small float. If you're smart, unlike me, make that leader steel. Launch the shad near the Gar, he'll see it, move in and it.

Watch the Pleistocene creature gobble that bait fish down; seriously, let the fish do its thing, give it line, allow it to pretty much eat the shad and then run with it. It'll run, allow some 8 seconds into this then set that hook.

Fish On, Just Doesn't Know It

Wow. Stand up, rod double, line out, leaping, thrashing, diving, running fish action. Just a lot of fun. But word to the wise. I say again, if you're fishing from some kind of pier use a steel leader, otherwise the fish will bite through your line as you haul him up, which is what happened to me today. Still, good fight, great result, thank you fish.

Back at the Compound we're reflecting on this real-life parable. It's the Feast of SS. Peter & Paul, who followed Christ and became fishers of men.

Tight lines,

LSP