A glorious seasonal celebration of copper, bronze, tin, silver and some gimp wire as the tuesday swim photographer warms up for christmas with a collection of vintage spoons.
The tuesday swim advent…
01 Monday Dec 2014
Category Archives: General
The Tuesday swim photographer.
28 Friday Nov 2014
Posted in General
Tags
landscapes, photographer, photography, sim, the, Tuesday, tumblr
The tuesday swim photographer
26 Friday Sep 2014
Posted in General
Tags
photography, swim, the, Tuesday, tumblr
A photographic project that I am working on, the element water is a prime player…
http://thetuesdayswim.tumblr.com/
Boy’s Own summer adventure.
15 Friday Aug 2014
Posted in General, The Lea Valley
After a few weeks away in both the French and English Riviera I find myself back in London with a twelve-year-old to keep entertained for a few days after the devastating news that his laptop has fallen foul of a hardware failure. Next week I have a two-week stretch looking after my two-year old daughter, a much more daunting task, this week though I thought a digital free two days with my stepson could manifest itself as a mini boy’s own adventure.
Day One:
In my basement along with a collection of fishing tackle, pots of paint and various tools is a canoe suspended from the rafters that has for the last two years hung dormant, today seemed the right day to get her out (I think one speaks of a boat in a female context?) and take her down the River Lea. This particular canoe has taken me into the drink on a few occasions, she seems to sense a nervous pilot akin to a horse. The canoe twitches from side to side until the rower relaxes or the nervousness results in a dunking! Once settled though, a serene calm takes over and the river is experienced from a completely new perspective. To sit low down in the water is really quite interesting for an angler who normally spends so much time looking at the river as it passes by, in a canoe you become an integral part of the rivers ebb and flow. The Lea was looking splendid though, the water was clear and fairly high for the height of summer, the banks over-grown and looking quite wild. Not much fishing goes on here, well perhaps a little bit?
By lunchtime the clouds were gathering and a darkness came over the river that suggested it was time to set off for home.
Once home I thought it was time to put on a ‘proper’ film, I had forgotten about the piggy scene!
Day two:
For our second day we were to go in search of The Lost Pond in Epping Forest, travel light and catch ourselves a mid-summer crucian. The Lost Pond or Blackweir as it is also know is set in the forest away from any road which involves a short walk, this I like, it keeps the lazy anglers away. After passing by Baldwins pond and walking through ancient woodland which was just starting to turn to gold, The Lost Pond appears in a small clearing, surrounded mainly in reeds broken by six gravel banked swims.
With us both fishing, our first three casts resulted in three tiny golden crucians and then nothing, not a nibble! We only stayed for about an hour and a half, trying every swim but nothing would bite, one or two missed chances but not a fish, very strange. Then on my last cast a slight movement to the float resulted in what looked like a rudd/crucian hybrid, in its imperfections it was a perfect end to a two-day, non-digital, 3D adventure.
The Lea takes on the Tour de France.
07 Monday Jul 2014
Posted in General, The Lea Valley
Today my ride to work took a slight deviation so I could experience a two to three mile section of the Tour de France, that will take place later on this afternoon. Starting from Cambridge and eventually coming down the Lea Bridge Road, the machine that is the Tour de France will cross the Old River Lea, enter the Queen Elizabeth Park and end up on The Mall.
A breakaway group of three large carp were spotted under the A102 road bridge at around 9.20am but so far no riders…
And then they were gone.
Mother’s ruin & the scent of summer
05 Thursday Jun 2014
Posted in General
Tags
Summertime has arrived and as the song goes ‘the fishing is easy.’ Having the time to fish is never easy, it is a permanent issue that at certain times of the year can be quite a problem, June especially. Even if the official start of the summer can be a slow one, the ground has warmed up and the flora is blooming, grassland is shooting up, woodlands are lush green and the river banks are over grown with willow, towering hogweed and elderflower. For me one of the finest smells throughout all of the seasons is elderflower after the rain in late spring or early summer, the air becomes filled with a heavy sweet scent.
With little time to fish I still try and put aside an afternoon for elderflower picking with the family and the steeping of the flower heads for a rich and intense cordial that should last long after the summer has ended. One of the first ever posts on The Tuesday Swim was a recipe for sloe gin, a great blast of autumn fruit, preserved for the winter months. If the summer months are filled with lost opportunities to fish I would recommend as an antidote, a shot of elderflower cordial in a gin and tonic with plenty of ice and lemon (and gin) and a chapter of John Hillaby, Colliers and a Carp at Dawn, or for the modernist The Carp Strikes Back by Rod (buy me a pint) Hutchinson.
The recipe:
20 elderflower heads per litre of water.
1kg of sugar per 2-2.5 litres of water
3 x lemons per litre (zest and juice)
1 x orange per litre (zest and juice)
50g citric acid per 2-3 litres
Dissolve the sugar into the water, add the elderflower, lemons, oranges and citric acid and leave for 24 hours. Sieve through clean muslin into sterilised glass bottles.
Stuff!
19 Thursday Sep 2013
Posted in General
The problem is we have too much stuff and when we buy new stuff it is packaged in more stuff. As we run out of space we either rent some space to store it in or we throw it out. Sometimes it gets re-cycled or better still it is re-used and passed on. A generation or two back the passing on of stuff or re-making something was an everyday event…not now or very rarely. So what is the problem with stuff? Well it takes energy to produce, transport and ultimately get rid of and that includes re-cycling.
So why is the Tuesday Swim wittering on about green issues? Well this morning I had meeting with Andreas at Public Works who is putting together a one day event on the Floating Cinema called Experiments in Household Knowledge, and it got me thinking. Firstly I was thinking about my own personal consumption of stuff and my prime pastime of angling. Well the good news is the majority of my tackle was produce before 1975 so I guess that ticks the re-use box, a lot of my bait comes comes from the wormery/composter in the garden and I generally walk to my fishing spots along the Lea. I won’t kid you though as many miles are spent driving throughout the year for good fishing, it’s not easy being green.
Anyhow this weekend there is Experiments in Household Knowledge which showcases people who have a passion for producing something from nature in our hedgerows or supermarket skips or re-working something from discarded stuff. There is also three short films about people who craft things with their own self-taught knowledge. One problem we now have is technology, its beyond our understanding, the art of fixing and repairing is fast becoming lost.
So this weekend is an important event on the Lea Navigation in Hackney Wick, to see folk that can make things, adapt and re-use. Why is it important? Communities in the future will have to become more self-suficient, not in a Tom and Barbara Good manner but more where local authorities draw in the community to be responsible and pro-active.
To begin with, one will have to make a cricket ball using paper-mache and rubber bands….knowledge is power!
The Tuesday Swim’s 100th post.
14 Tuesday May 2013
Posted in General
When I started The Tuesday Swim I didn’t quite know how long I would be writing this blog. From the beginning I wanted to do something that had a sense of originality and held a captive audience even if it was for a select few. I was never a fan of reading about someones day-to-day captures unless the writing or circumstances were exceptional. We all go fishing for different reasons and I didn’t want to preach to the reader about my personal angling triumphs, anyway to be honest they are too few and far between these days! I guess for me I am interested in exploring the feeder stream rather than the main river, the less obvious is more compelling and its quieter, there is no shouting about it here.
Because of my modest writing skills I made a conscious effort not to become overly romantic, flowery or down right clever, instead I have just tried to write my blog in plain english…keep it simple and not to plagiarise others with more natural talent. The most important bit was to include original content and keep it fresh.
What I have really enjoyed is the feedback from like-minded anglers (and non-anglers) here in the UK and overseas (I need to work on those african cousins, see the map below) who have appreciated the blog by following, commenting, or just simply reading it. This keeps me looking for new material to write about or photograph…always a pleasure never a chore.
For now a big thank you to every reader as the tuesday swim sets sail to take on the sea and a chance of a spring/summer sea bass…coming soon!
Water & Canoeing.
20 Monday Aug 2012
Posted in General
I’ve spent many hours looking at it, standing in it, walking along side it, swimming through it and casting a line into it, well now I have decided to start sitting on it!
Anglers and canoeist generally don’t seem to get on together, both wanting the same quarry for themselves, share and share alike I say…
Midsummer & there seems to be some movement…
29 Friday Jun 2012
Posted in General
After spending the last month feeding two spots on the canal just outside our flat and the close call I had on the 17th June with one of the lurker’s, things are looking positive. On the 20th June last Wednesday it was the summer solstice (being a leap year it was a day early) and it was quite warm, so as ever I made an evening visit downstairs with my apprentice and fed two areas with half a bucket of particles dumped in the canal. Being warmer than usual there was a little bit of pre-spawning disturbance going on, groups of carp tightly bunched agitating one another. After an hour I crept over to one of the feeding spots which is only two feet from the canal side and saw four to six double figure carp, two or three of them were in their twenties, all with their heads down feeding away! I cast out a free-lined pop-up bait (I say cast out in fact I dropped it in) amongst the feeding carp and waited.
The line twitched on the surface film as the feeding carp brushed against the line, my senses were lifted, the excitement was electric and the feeling that I was getting closer to success made the whole experience quite unbearable. Sitting on my sweaty hands I continued to crouch just a few feet away from some very large paddle sized tails wafting in the upper levels amongst the streamer weed, as if they were teasing me. It was 8.30 in the evening when suddenly a text bleeped, making me jump…’dinner is ready!’ was the message.
My trusty ten-year old apprentice who was also captured by the sight before us and doing well to keep low, quiet and calm looked at me with disappointed eyes but reluctantly we had to pack up. I thought that we could return early in the morning before his school and try again, the carp always seemed to be in view at this time, so we left them to it…
2.30 am: I was awoken by my partner who couldn’t sleep due to the fact she is eight and half months pregnant, a cup of tea was administered as uncomfortable pains started to come in waves of intense pain every few minutes. By 3.00 am I was calling the hospital and by 3.15 we were on our way driving through the empty streets of London crossing red lights with my mooing partner on the back seat. After 4 hours and fifteen minutes our daughter was born…tears of relief, joy and wonder as we both held little Olive in disbelief.
I now hold the future in my arms and I will have to let go of some of the indulgence that I have allowed myself in the past, especially in time and in money. There will always be places and people to fish with in the future, hopefully my daughter will be one of of those people, my apprentice is certainly one of them, but the main thing is, the future is exciting.
the tuesday swim... 