When the weather is this consistently rubbish I tend to disappear down memory lane

I am in no position to complain about this consistently awful weather, not when for two weeks over Xmas and New Year I was on an amazing holiday in Kenya, and also not with all the photography based trips I used to do to the (warm) southern hemisphere. But sod it, I am complaining! I have had enough of it and I am sure you have as well……………

In early December 2010 I flew to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean for a fishing photo job. I left my wife and two young girls back home in Plymouth and jetted off to some lovely sunshine. Both sets of parents have always been a good few hours away from us, so my wife and I have always been perfectly used to getting on with raising our girls with very little external help. I used to be away for easily three to four months a year for work and we have always just got on with things pretty well.

When I landed in Mauritius I got myself down to Port Louis and jumped on the mothership that was going to be home for a couple of weeks. This was before the days of satellite internet and so on, so I would be out of touch with my family for at least 12 to 14 days or so. We never used to worry at all about this because it was just part and parcel of our normal lives. The start of the trip was a 24hr+ crossing to the remote St.Brandon’s Atoll where I was going to be photographing some pretty awesome saltwater fly fishing, then at the end of the fishing there was the same 24hr+ crossing back to Port Louis. On the crossing to the atoll it got that rough I remember the angler I was sharing with being literally thrown out of his bed by the storm, but once we got to the atoll it was very sheltered and the fishing commenced. I have always loved being around fly fishing, even if I am pretty rubbish at it myself, and when the weather is warm and the fish are rather special it was a part of my work I used to seriously love doing. Especially when I had left a UK winter behind to come and do it.

I came away with a lot of photos and words which went off to various fishing magazines and books etc. around the world when I was back home, and by the time we had done that (bouncy) 24hr+ crossing back to Port Louis I was pretty knackered. When the boat docked back at port I obviously hadn’t had any contact with my wife or indeed the outside world for a couple of weeks, so I switched on whatever sort of mobile phone I had back then and called home.

Now my wife is a very level-headed and incredibly competent girl. We got through those times apart with minimal fuss and I reckon the two of us have raised a couple of pretty awesome girls (it’s somewhat quieter here at home with the eldest in SW France and the youngest in New Zealand, we won’t see them until May I believe). My wife and I have been together since we were 19 years old so we know each other pretty well, but even I was a bit shocked by that brief conversation we had after a couple of weeks of no contact. It went something like this:

Me: “Hi sweetheart, how are you all doing? It’s been an awesome trip, we are just back on dry land but it’s been a tough one, I’m pretty knackered. How have you guys been?”.

Talk about the wrong thing to have said, because then I copped an unfortunate one! I subsequently learnt that right after I had left, the boiler had broken down right when a serious cold snap hit, there had been a bit of a flood in the kitchen, plus one of the girls hadn’t been very well. Basically it had been a pretty rubbish couple of weeks in the icy UK. Whilst I had been sunning it up in the Indian Ocean and calling it work. Which it was, just that it was a particularly awesome form of work in lovely warm weather in a stunning part of the world.

My wife: “Don’t you give me that I’m knackered crap you selfish b&^&ard, try a load of what’s been going at home and then say that again!” And so on, but you get my drift. I was somewhat taken aback!

Me: “Hang on a minute, I’ve been working, it’s been really tough out here”. Why oh why did I persist with this line of defence? Us blokes don’t tend to learn that fast, because I copped another load which is seriously unlike my wife. We still laugh about it now though! You all have a good weekend and let’s hope this sodding weather does one and starts getting a good bit better…………