| KEVIN PERKINS | |
Never mind smelling the flowers, don’t forget to take time out to see the satirical side of fishing life and grab a laugh along the way as well. So here’s a regular column from Kevin Perkins to remind us that life is for laughing at, or taking the p*** out of, whenever we can. |
|
Back to being (almost) topical, and being mindful that we are slowly losing our ancient fish related rituals, such as West Country Conger Slapping, I see that American Signal Crays are well and truly in the public domain at the moment. Seen plenty of coverage lately with the TV and press doing their best to turn their readers and viewers against these foreign invaders. Obviously, I’m not one to buck popular trends, but rather than just fan the flames of a hate campaign, and in a sprit of political correctness, I feel we should be opening our hearts and minds and set to finding ways of welcoming these aquatic misfits into our culture. Mindful of the prevailing drought conditions, which are said to be threatening this year’s conker harvest, a substitute needs to be found. How about ‘Crayffers’ where instead of using the depleted fruits of the horse chestnut, you can bash merry hell out of each other’s crayfish, the winner being the one with the most tail segments left dangling from their string? Of course, having to just loop a string or bootlace around the tail of a crayfish is inherently safer than trying to bore a hole through the middle of a conker, which will save the A & E departments having to deal with scores of young boys whose palms have been lacerated with meat skewers (usually with conker still attached) or worse, the results of borrowing daddy’s Black and Decker and a 10mm drill bit to do it that much quicker Back to the game itself, there are two forms of this sport, of course, live and dead, with live being considered the most challenging, because if you don’t play it at a fast enough pace, the crayfish may just have time to haul itself up the string and inflict severe damage to a player’s fingers with its claws Although with normal conkers being banned in most playgrounds, or at the very least only taking place after a full risk assessment and the compulsory wearing of full protective clothing, and with spectators at safe distance and behind blast proof screens, the playing of ‘Crayffers’ may be driven underground, with illicit matches being staged all round the country. Whilst young players may get away without damaging themselves with flying shell and legs, if caught, they could face the serious charge of ‘Playing with your food’ and that carries a minimum sentence of ‘Go to your room’ followed by a concurrent term of two weeks’ grounding. If that plan doesn’t get off the ground, the old traditional favourite of apple bobbing could be revived, but with a twist of course. Particularly relevant with Bonfire Night season not far away, all we need is two tin baths, side by side. One is filled with cold water and crayfish, the other boiling water. The participants line up and try to ‘bob’ a crayfish out of the cold water with your teeth and then drop it in the hot pan. There is a slight risk of facial scarring if the little blighters take exception to being picked up this way, or if you inadvertently immerse your head into the wrong pan, but that’s all part of the game. The reward for success is a tasty morsel cooked in the best Gordon Ramsey tradition Those wimps who are too scared to take part will unfortunately go hungry, because there will be no recourse to baked potatoes chucked in the glowing embers of the bonfire or even any burnt sausages that someone’s mum left under the grill. Success or starve, all good character building stuff. In fact, I might just sell this idea to those airheads who run ‘team building’ courses. Make a change from building six-man rafts with only three matches, an empty lemonade bottle and a bootlace or, indeed, running barefoot over a bed of hot coals, waste of perfectly good barbecue, if you ask me, although it could be a cure for verrucas, I suppose…. Another hard-core sport has emerged which utilises the infidel crustaceans in a test of eye-watering endurance, which is that of inserting them into your clothing. It has parallels with the pansy northern sport of ferrets down the trousers, but is much, much more macho. A number of contestants line up and the specially bred fighting crays are introduced via the elasticated waistband of the compulsory crayfish trousers. (These trousers have Velcro seams all along the side for quick removal, and trained crayfish handlers stand by with tongs and blood transfusions, in case of emergencies) Anyone who faints, screams like a girl or cries for their mummy is immediately eliminated, the winner being the last man standing. Although after winning the competition, they may find they are less of a man as when they started. If all that is a bit extreme, there is always the more genteel version of a beetle drive, suitable for children and the elderly, where instead of throwing a dice and drawing legs onto an imaginary beetle beetle, you pull the legs off a real crayfish. Again live and dead versions are played, the live one being a good test of your reactions, as the more legs you pull off, the more angry the crayfish gets, not surprisingly. So there we are, several practical uses for Signal Crayfish, and for all the family to enjoy, got to be a winner, don’t you think! |
