It was Saturday night and I was sitting in the Flip Out cafe in Glasgow – I took the kids there to burn off some steam. I was feeling a bit edgy as several folk had been coughing harshly and there was a lack of mask wearing. You may think I am being hyper cautious however in my work we all still stick to social distancing and strictly wear masks – while everyone else seems to be returning to an element of normality we had to advise a member of staff who was leaving that they could not meet up with their work colleagues in person to say goodbye. The reasoon I am telling you this is because I want to give you an indication as to how a lot of people are feeling about being around groups just now. Even the current guidence states that you should still only really meet in small groups of people.
I am not going to bang on about work however working in health and social care has not been a lot of fun over the last couple of years and even though working damn near 9 hour days helping with the running of the Kelvin Angling Association has provided some element of respite – the secretary Paul R and I were able to have weekly chats about Kelvin stuff as well as commiserate about each others jobs – I was able to tell him about my fear of sending workers into a situations in which they became unwell and he told me about colleagues who were losing their jobs each week and that at some point he could be next. But still we both managed with the help of the committee to keep it all ticking over – we hummed and hawed about having an AGM or an online meeting. Some clubs were managing and some were just happy to let things trundle along – I have written before about the Kelvin AGM and the history of these and how bad they are and we just let things trundle on with the promise to each other that we would “sort it out” in a few weeks. Please remember that everyone connected to the running of the River Kelvin Angling Associaion are volunteers.
And then the guy who had been warned for his rant on the River Kelvin Fisher’s facebook group last year and which prompted my statement about bams on the river and who apologised profusely when we met with him posted this:
This was the guy that caught the out of season salmon on the Clyde whilst Grayling fishing – I cannot remember at what point his pal waded in to the discusssion however I started getting messeges about some “banger” accusing the Kelvin commitee of fraud. It turned out the “banger” was the guy that enthusiastically videod the out of season salmon being caught.
I lose the plot and decide to point out that folk were emailing me calling him a banger…
So now, again we are accused of some pretty awful stuff – fraud and being cowards by a self proclaimed social media superstar no less. A very wise man once told me to be wary of people that come armed with their credentials – this guy was fully loaded!
I am not sure what I was supposed to be afraid of – I have been trying to get out of assisting with running the association for damn near 10 years now so leaving peacefully is not an option – abandoning my post maybe? I dunno, it is just all so weird – even Paul the secretary who I like to describe as the only democratically elected dictator in a fishing club says he only does it because trying to explain the system to someone would take up more time than actually doing the voluntary tasks. I just find it so odd that there are these people out their talking about us and making up stories.
Thankfully , it turned out that this is the same guy that was overjoyed at catching out of season Salmon on the Clyde and he has just over 600 YouTube followers – I was sure that this must be the worst ever “Do you know who I am” that I have ever read. Personally I am more into the old school written word so I checked with my 13 year old son whether this was a lot and he sniggered and said “I have got over two thousand Dad for posting star wars videos”
It looked like he was not bezzy pals with the Kardasians after all!
The thing that annoyed me was that a number of folk stated that they would not be buying a permit for the river as this person stated that what we are doing was illegal – this is because we have not retired and been voted back in for two years – I did not hear anyone complaining when Paul put himself up for election every year instead of two years ? Every year he was voted in by a landslide because quite frankly everyone knows that we cannot find another mug anyone else who is actually that pedantic to do the job – in fact does this mean that his renegotiation of the lease a few months ago to include the worm being used is now invalid this year? It just so happened that he scrutinized the lease to ensure that we were being as inclusive as possible – a guy that only touches worms when he is doing the gardening wanted to make sure that folk could still use bait on the Kelvin.
Messages were flying in from other places – one banned member sent a message stating that they were taking back the river and wanted all the work equipment back that we had “stolen” How do we then go about removing the dead trees that we clear from the fish pass I wondered. When we had taken over the association many moons ago this person had been taken on as a bailiff and had a jacket and mobile phone bought for him – he had lasted a few months and then chucked it, the jacket and phone were never seen again. He then took advantage of a free permit off the chairman – it is actually the only perk we get, we get one free permit to give to someone. I thought it was a bit of a churlish accusation to be honest.
Technically we can all claim for expenses however none of us do – even when we had committee meetings in the Islay Inn Paul bought the crisps and the one drink out of his own pocket. The previous secretary used to claim for his tyres on his car that he used to drive to the river and nobody batted an eyelid. I gifted my free permit to a disabled anglers group that I helped set up most years when they had someone able to walk to the river.
What also upsets me is the fact that these folk that accuse us of these awful things have seldom actually met us or interacted with us in any way. They have never spoken to us in real life or actually asked us about the decisions that we make – I refer to my previous statement about this and also the fact that not one person has actually made a proposal about ways to improve the fishing on the river – all they do is say were are not doing a good job as they call us all the names under the sun. Even my explanation of the pros and cons of holding a zoom agm was called stupid and cowardly by the pal of the kardashians and social media superstar. I mean the majority of our members are well over 60 and holding an AGM on zoom would mean that a lot of these guys would not be able to attend. A lot of these guys have their kids emailing us to buy their permits because they cannot buy things online. I had a fair few emails the other day because there was a warning on the fishkelvin site stating it was not private – turned out I had forgotten to pay for the certificate to make it secure for the secure transactions. Then sure, we could probably find some hall to squeeze everyone into however I do not want to be responsible for anyone becoming unwell – like I said due to my work I have heard of far too many healthy folk dieing or becoming seriously unwell. I personally do not want to take the chance and neither do they – it is just not fair and inclusive.
“Just ignore them” the other committee members say – sometimes though I just cannot – not when the stuff that is said is just quite frankly wrong or just plain nasty. Of course there are also the physical threats of violence – “you are getting duffed up down the river” (or words to that effect) “We know where and when you fish” – hell, I don’t even know where and when I fish sometimes all I do know is sometimes I get a helluva lonely and will stop and chat to anyone that I meet fishing. 90% of them are oblivious to the politics of the association and the ones that do know about it roll their eyes – some folk just cannot be convinced though and blame the secretary for every wrong thing that has happened in their lives without any real self reflection about their own behavior. Accusing the committee of deeds that they themselves commit on a regular basis because to them that is the norm. They do not understand that some folk just have a different set of priorities that just involve getting on with things with a shrug of the shoulders. Paul R told me about putting a well known Kelvin angler off the river a couple of seasons back because it turned out the guy refused to buy a permit. When he got back to his car it had been keyed pretty badly in retaliation – I told him that the repair costs should come out of the association funds as it happened on association business, plus he does drive fancy cars- he just shrugged and said these things happen – I bet nobody is going to be scrutinising the accounts to see if he did put it through. When folk do lose the rag and give as good as they get – our exiting chairman can be a bit hot headed online sometimes I believe, when he does talk back the folk that hurl abuse suddenly turn into pink fragile flowers that cannot believe that someone has spoken back to them.
Anyway, it looks like we have a lot of new members joining this year and we do actually have some plans to get members involved. Firstly a virtual tour of the river, hopefully this will let us know at least how folk manage with zoom and secondly a casting workshop run by a well known casting instructor – spaces will be limited. Paul R used to meet up with new members pre pandemic and walk the river with them and that has certainly been missing the last couple of years.
Anyway, if you have read this far then thank-you I know I have been banging on a bit – and now the actual important bit. What is happening in Ukraine just now is dreadful and is going to get worse. The Red Cross do some amazing work and it would mean a lot of you could donate even a few pounds to help them – you can do so here.
See you on the river!
Edit – Two mins after I posted this on the River Kelvin Fisher’s page I get this:
