Gone Fishing

How is it that boys wear through their clothes out so quickly??!! Ds1 and ds2 have pretty much destroyed every item of clothing they possess: I've noticed recently that the sleeves on every top are brown and stained and there are holes and tears everywhere! Not only that but they just don't stop growing. Ok, that's stating the obvious, but I swear ds1's ankles weren't showing out the bottom of his jeans last week!

So yesterday morning we took a quick visit to Matalan and I bought each of them an outfit. As we normally buy clothes secondhand from car boot sales or get them free from the local swapshop, I'm always shocked to find out how expensive kids' clothes are from shops. I suppose there's also the moral issues of sweatshop production to contend with, so secondhand shopping seems more agreeable all round. Dd1 insisted on some wholly inappropriate shorts with lots of sequins and sparkly beads on (inappropriate in the sense that it's pretty rare to get the sort of weather for shorts here,but also because I figure they'll never be able to go in a washing machine) but they did look cute, so I succumbed. What is it about girls? The boys would just wear anything, but dd1, well, fussy is an understatement!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, as we were browsing Matalan we spotted some fishing rods for £3 each. They looked ok, something a bit more than a toy, so once again I succumbed. 2 hours and a lot of cursing later - sitting at the table, trying to put the line on the rod with some dreadful instructions and lots of pestering from the kids - we were at a local nature reserve trying to tempt some very tiny fish to eat lumps of bread and ham off hooks. Most of the time was spent by me trying to untangle lines and stop the dog from eating the bait (he snuck up and ate most of the ham out of the bag when we weren't looking!) so I wasn't in the best mood by the time we went home. Ds1 gave up pretty soon and resorted to a fishing net, but was happy to catch some minnows and other creatures with it. Dd1 was very brave and put a tiny minnow onto a hook in the hope of catching a bigger fish. The line got a few nibbles, but not much else. None of the boys would put anything live on the hook, but she was happy to do so (lots of squeals from ds1 when she put the hook through the minnow's eye!). I guess we'll know who'll be putting maggots on the hook at some time in the future!