Oh dear. I’m here again ranting about wimmin and fishin’ again. It’s very boring, and this is no way to start a posting. My lovely friend, who runs the brilliant Ladies Fishing, asked the editor of a very well known British Magazine when they would feature women on the front cover. Here was his response:
Tried it once, back in 1996. Pretty brunette, long, bare arms in a fishing waistcoat... remember it well. Thought: "with a huge male readership, this issue's sales are going to be sky high". So, can anyone tell me why it was the worst seller ever?
I suppose I had better answer his question. I think I have to think about what men were like in 1996. I like to think that all men were either mourning the split up of the Stone Roses and participating in lager fuelled Oasis V Blur debates. If they were in Edinburgh, they were clearly shooting up heroine and seeing babies crawl along ceilings and getting lost in the toilet and shouting “lager, lager, lager, shouting”. .. Were they indeed feeling guilty about living in a house, a very big house in the country and buying animals floating in formaldehyde? Did they take girls to the supermarket? Not knowing why but having to start it somewhere, so they started it. There. Did they wear three lions on their shirts only to tear them off again condemning them forever to mixed feelings about Gareth Southgate? A possible answer could be that they had other things on their mind like Kate Moss in Calvin Klein adverts and Louise Wener.
My long-winded, nostalgia ridden point is this: 1996 was rather a while ago; John Major was Prime Minister, O.J Simpson went on trial. Times have changed.
More women have taken up fly fishing and its popularity is growing. We weren’t all killed by BSE, the Stone Roses have reformed. Oasis won. Dear Mr Editor, please roll with it, move with the times or I’ll have to draw upon something called Girl Power, invented in 1996 by the Spice Girls.