Well, the first of what may be several apologies, as I’m posting this from my ‘lurking’ temporary sign on. I’m in between mode at the moment, in between homes, new one built, still got 3 months to go on a renter and in between jobs, moving away and too far to commute.
First and foremost let me say that I have the utmost respect and admiration for Graham, both with what he has achieved with the site (old and, thank God, the new) and for putting up with my inane rambling for seven years, and even more than that, for having the courage to unleash them to you, the unsuspecting and public.
The article is published under the ‘Opinion Piece’ banner and as such, is just that, my opinion. Graham took the time to answer all the concerns I raised, and those points were by and large very well answered.
When I submitted the piece, I did tell Graham that I had written and re-written it several times, I had rambled on to over 2000 words at one point (it’s below 1500 now) and I still wasn’t sure that what I said was what I felt. But you know how it is with us men, very hard to explain your feelings, let alone write about them.....!
I am fully aware that the old and new sites are different, and that different doesn’t mean ‘not as good’ But it is interesting that several of those who have commented on the article have mentioned that something is ‘missing’ and they can’t explain what it is, and if they can’t, what chance have I got trying to put that feeling into words?
I think that the point I made that it now seems that many of the articles pass without comment is valid. To those who take the time to contribute, the excitement of seeing your work accepted and put up on screen is completely dashed when it appears that no-one has apparently read it, let alone taken the trouble to comment , good or bad on what they’ve just read.
As to ‘missing’ members, again, I accept that a lot of the old ‘uns are still here, and may well be posting and contributing less, the membership of any organisation is a movable feast. But what is filling the void that they are leaving what is rushing into the vacuum? Volume is no substitute for quality, there may be more posts, but is the quality and/or content the same...?
Cont......
---------- Post added at 16:56 ---------- Previous post was at 16:54 ----------
Part 2.......
As to my own efforts, the lack of archive means that I (and all the other long term contributors) have no real ‘provenance’ on the site now. Jeff said he has talked to Graham about re-running the ‘Silt-Walters Letters’ but they were written with quite a narrow readership in mind, and that may not be relevant now. Likewise, a lot of the Alternative Angler’ pieces were contemporary when they were first written and published, their relevance would not be meaningful now.
I said in the article that I tried desperately not to plagiarise or repeat anything in the articles I have written over the years. It may well be that the ‘Donald and Damien’ stories were formulaic, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, plenty of TV comedies over the years have trodden a well-worn path without their popularity waning to any great degree.
In my opinion, a re-run of old articles isn’t really the way to go on FM. I accept that it’s OK for the weeklies to just rotate four versions of the same article, pellet fishing with the waggler, waggler fishing using pellets, the pellet/waggler approach, tactics for waggler/pellet fishing etc. etc. ad nausea, but I would hope that FM members expect a little bit more variety in their articles....
Steve Spiller asked about a report from me on the Chavs v Aces match. Again, anything I write will only be relevant to the thirty or so people who were there, and if I turned my jaundiced keyboard onto one particular incident, for instance, it would cause far more upset than it would entertainment. I might have done that a while ago, but not now.
I hope the satirical inspiration comes back soon, I doubt it will be back up the weekly output that I reached on the ‘old’ site, but I still hope I can do enough to make a worthwhile contribution
Regards
Kevin
