River Passions Of A Welshman
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| Image: thisislondon.co.uk |
Another half-day at work and another afternoon spent at the Edinburgh Book Festival; life is tough!
Today, a man whom I last saw perform was back in 1992. Smith and Jones were on a national tour of their extremely popular two-man comedy show, and I had managed to bag tickets to see them at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.
Seventeen years later, I found myself in Charlotte Square queuing to see the latter half of that act in conversation with literary agent, Jenny Brown, about his latest project on British rivers. Griff Rhys Jones; amiable Welshman, funny man and now campaigner of good causes, was in town.
Jones was introduced before taking to the stage alone, remaining standing for the hour and talking about his love of rivers at times passionately, but also in the most funny of ways. His hilarious story began when he was a child and how he had been “born with boats in his blood”, right through to when he was an adult buying a canoe with his family.
He spoke about his recent television series and how they came to be—the ITV Director of Programming once played piano in the supporting band of a play he performed at the Edinburgh Fringe 37 years ago—and he addressed the unfortunate slating he received from the English Angling Association who claimed he was anti-angling, when he was said to encourage canoeists to disrupt fisherman.
Jones was upset and visibly still angry about the “violent backlash” he received for an “off-the-cuff comment in an insignificant article in an obscure BBC magazine”. Jones, a lover of rivers and the countryside in general, explained the point he had been trying to make was that rivers should be able to be shared by all. “There are 41,000 miles of river in our country, but only 1,500 are permitted for use by anyone other than anglers, and some of these for only one day each year.
“If someone is fishing and one of the extremely few “floatists” (i.e. river boat lovers) we have in this country comes along, it only takes a couple of minutes to pass quietly by before the are gone. Share and share alike, that’s all I was trying to say.”
He made a valid point, and I would tend to agree with him about the Angling Association only encouraging people to go to the press to shout about his comments because they knew he was right. Anyone who believes all they read in the newspapers should wait until they have heard the recipient of their bile speak—there are two sides to every story and more often then not the Press are the ones to alter things to suit them.
After the event I hung around for a while and noticed that one half of the book shop tent had fallen in and was now being fixed. I had to head back home before long, though, but it was a good afternoon.
In the evening I found myself dog-sitting for wee Gracie the puppy (Gail’s pal’s dog) and did some work by long hand while I was being watchful, i.e., making sure she didn’t pee on the floor.
Today, the sun is out and I’m about to finish my coffee and head up town for a wee wander and a coffee. It’ll be a short one today, though, before some work in the afternoon and then I’ll be back at the book festival later on for a seminar on short story writing, and author events with Alexander McCall-Smith and Irvine Welsh.
Life is good.
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August 22nd, 2009 at 9:35 am
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