Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.30

Well, the cost of living isn’t letting up, is it? Every time you think you’ve got a bit of wiggle room in the wallet, Rachel from Accounts creeps out from behind her HMRC spreadsheet and drags another tenner off you with the efficiency of a pickpocket at a football match. 

You’d think we’d have earned a break by now, but no, every budget feels like being mugged in slow motion, with the Chancellor smiling politely as he rifles through your trouser pockets. 

The minimum wage goes up, fair enough, but of course that means the price of beans goes up, the price of bread goes up, the price of absolutely everything goes up. 

Even my usual pint of ale in the local has now hit a price where you start checking whether there’s been a clerical error. £4.80 for a pint? Kenilworth, well some pubs >£6 😱

For that sort of money I expect it served in a cut-crystal goblet, delivered by a butler called Charles, with a plate of pork scratchings thrown in for good measure.

So imagine the relief when I popped into the new Wetherspoons in Kenilworth the other day. £1.49 a pint. I thought they’d mislabelled it. 

Honestly, I was half tempted to check under the glass to see if there was a loyalty card hidden underneath. In Kenilworth, where most pubs are charging nearly four times that, Tim Martin must be laughing his mullet off. Say what you like about Wetherspoons, but they’re the last bastion of affordability in a world where even lemonade looks like it’s been imported from Monaco.

But let’s not get carried away Wetherspoons are still exposed to the same rises in labour, energy, and food costs as the rest of us. You can only shift so many curry clubs before the accountants start tutting. Even their prices will creep up, because Rachel from Accounts has her fingers in every pie, pasty, and packet of Scampi Fries in the land.

Meanwhile, the latest borrowing figures came out for August, and surprise surprise, they’re the highest since the middle of the pandemic. Borrowing over the first five months of the financial year? £83.8 billion. That’s £16.2 billion higher than the same period last year. 

If it was a credit card bill, you’d cut it up, stick it in the freezer, and start buying scratch cards in desperation. But no, we’re all told to buckle up for the budget, and be prepared to have our pants pulled down again. You know the drill: tax more, spend less, smile through gritted teeth.

And here’s the thing: it’s simple economics. Tax people less, they’ll spend more. But no, instead we’re trapped in this cycle where you need to remortgage the house just to buy a round of Guinness.

Anyway, enough of the political commentary. I had fishing to do, and unlike Rachel, the chub and barbel don’t collect direct debits.

This time it was back on the drivable syndicate stretch, and not a moment too soon. 

The forecast was for gales, rain, and more rain, the sort of day where if Noah floated past on his ark you’d just nod and say, fair play mate, good timing. 

At least with the car nearby I could retreat, kettle on, and sulk in heated comfort rather than under a tarp flapping like a cheap gazebo at a windy wedding.

The plan was the big pool. Now, I’d dropped the sonar down here when we first got the stretch, and it lit up like a Christmas tree. 

Features everywhere: shelves, creases, overhangs, snags. The kind of features that make you think you’ve found the aquatic equivalent of a Premier Inn. 

The first time I fished it, I had a rather nice chub, so confidence was high. And as any angler knows, confidence is the first step towards disappointment.

I started with a few goodness grenades lobbed in. A recipe so potent even I was tempted to lick my fingers afterwards. Then I went for a wander with some meat, hoping for a quick bite. Forty-five minutes later, nothing but the occasional small fish nudging the bait, as if to say: We appreciate the offer, but we’re fasting at the moment.

So I returned to the main swim for dusk, rods out, waiting. The air was mild, the autumn evening surprisingly pleasant, the rods however behaving like inflatable tube men outside a dodgy second-hand car dealership, flapping all over in the wind.

Then it happened. A bite. Not just any bite, but the kind of bite that could wake the dead. The kind of bite that even a drunk sloth, blindfolded, would have connected with. Line tight, rod tip hammering it was unmissable. And of course, I missed it. Struck into absolutely nothing. If there’s one thing the Warwickshire Avon does better than anything else, it’s humiliating you with precision timing.

I carried on into the dark, but the swim had gone quieter than a politician asked a straight question. Another blank to add to the ever-growing collection, my museum of fishing misery expanding one exhibit at a time.

The Warwickshire Avon is a funny bugger. It desperately needs some colour right now. As it stands, it’s like fishing in a freshly drawn bath clear, lifeless, and about as productive as dangling a sausage in the shallow end at the local leisure centre.

So that’s me done. Wallet lighter, liver slightly more seasoned, another blank chalked up. At least Wetherspoons still delivers on price. Until Richard the Third gets her claws into that too, of course.