Debby is the wife of Stewart Bloor, author of the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ column. 
And Stewart is the Reverend Bloor, or Sedge, as he is known to his fishing buddies on the Mailing List. Here, Debby tells us what it’s like living with a parson with a penchant for piscatorial pursuits.
Life with Stewart…..no I mean Rev. Bloor…. no I mean Sedge! Help, I’mnot sure who he is anymore or even what I should call him myself!
Life with Sedge (I’ll stick to that as that seems to be what most people call him these days), is certainly different. Answering the telephone is becoming quite confusing, I get phone calls for Rev. Stewart Bloor, calls for Stewart, calls for Sedge, and for the latter when I ask who’s calling I get answers like – Wurzel! (Paul Hiom, author of ‘The World According to Wurzel’ column on this web site – Ed). The mind boggles!
I don’t know whether all fishermen are the same, but since Sedge has taken up the sport of fishing, the sport of fishing has taken over my kitchen. Many a day there is hemp boiling on the cooker filling the house with a wonderful aroma! The freezer is full of sweetcorn, (not for human consumption), boilies of various flavours, hemp, ice blocks, luncheon meat etc. etc. The kitchen food cupboard includes items such as fishmeal, calcium caseinate, boilie flavourings and dips that could turn even the strongest stomachs, food colourings, need I go on. Oh and I mustn’t forget the ‘Secret Agent’ (a particularly powerful Rod Hutchinson flavour – Ed). If ever we forgot where that was stored it wouldn’t be too difficult to smell it out. I must thank Graham Marsden for introducing Stewart to that delight! 
Personally I have become quite an expert at making boilies, groundbait, cheese paste and flasks of tea. As you can see when Sedge takes up a hobby he really takes it up in a big way. Oh did I mention the wellingtons and bivvy and sleeping bag and rucksack and rods and……. I think you get my drift.
Our house is more like a tackle shop every day. Which is somewhere else that I have become quite familiar with these days, I am often seen coming out of tackle shops with bags of maggots in hand. A few times when I’ve ventured into such a shop and interrupted the cup of tea and chat, I have even been asked where I am going fishing. It’s quite worrying.
At times I have been called upon to be a photographer. I have received a phone call of an urgent nature asking me to get on my bike quickly and ride down to where Sedge was fishing and take his photograph with a giant fish. I agreed and enjoyed the ride down, but Stewart had obviously forgotten to mention the 6ft high nettles that I had to wade through to get to him.
It always amazes me that Sedge always finds the most awkward places to fish. I often picture a nice flat riverside peg that’s a pleasure to sit in, but when I see where Sedge fishes it’s just the opposite – it’s anything but flat, usually a 5ft drop down into nettles and mud. I don’t know why he always chooses these places because I can’t count the times that he has slipped down the bank and got covered in mud and even fallen in.
One time in particular ended up as quite a costly slip. Sedge had climbed up one of his steep banks to have his photograph taken by a passer-by, with a nice fish that he had just caught. He was just on his way back down the bank, (the passer by being extremely impressed by the big catch still looking on) when suddenly Sedge slipped on the grass – he slid down the bank, kicked his fishing tray, which catapulted his mobile phone into the air, which then landed in his keep net. At this point the passer-by had walked away – quietly laughing to himself I should think, with all thoughts of Sedge being a great fisherman totally out of the window so to speak. 
When Sedge arrived home that night I asked why his phone was not working because I had been trying to call him all day, and that’s when I heard the story. Guess who had to go into the phone shop next day and try to explain why we needed a new phone? Yes – me!
Stewart is always trying to get me to go fishing with him, but after you have heard of the kind of places that he likes to fish, you can’t really blame me for saying no, can you?
I did, however, have one successful fishing attempt while we were away on holiday in Devon. I had bought a crab line for daughters Miriam and Becky to go fishing with, as earlier in the week we had seen a man catch a fish on a crab line. Sedge put a heavy weight on the line and a decent hook and Miriam threw out the line. After about two minutes she was bored, so I thought that I may as well have a go myself. We were on some rocks, looking out to sea with the sun shining down on us, so it seemed like a good way to pass a few hours. I never dreamed that I would catch anything.
I helped myself to Sedge’s ragworm (careful to use only the tail-ends as I had been warned that they can bite). I baited my hook and threw it in. No one was more surprised than me when a few minutes later I felt something tugging on the line. I pulled it in thinking that it was snagged on the rocks, and there it was a 1lb Ballan Wrasse. I was rather proud of this, my first ever fish, especially as Sedge had not caught anything yet. 
I actually went on to catch seven species of fish that day much to the amazement of other anglers who were watching. There I was with my little hand-line pulling out fish after fish, and they with their expensive rods and tackle were catching nothing! I even had two men that were alongside me on some other rocks, cast their floats right in front to me to try and catch some fish, but they caught nothing.
I really enjoyed that day and from that, I can understand to some degree the addiction of fishing and the excitement of feeling the tug on the line and wondering what fish it is and how big it is. That, however, was my one and only day of glory. The thing I enjoyed most though was that during the first hour or so I caught more fish than Sedge!
I could go on and on telling various mishaps and funny stories aboutSedge’s angling experiences, but I will finish by saying that being afisherman’s wife is definitely not boring, neither is being a Rev’s wife orbeing Stewart’s wife.
There are plenty of worse things that a husband can be other than a fisherman – so go easy on them, fellow fishing wives.
