Steve Lewis
Senior Member
Hi all
A couple of you have messaged me offline - presumably spurred on by my post in the big cats thread - to enquire as to my whereabouts and ask about my wellbeing. It's much appreciated, thank you. I promise I'm fine, and you'll see I still post (very) occasionally, and also browse the forum at least a few times a week. I haven't abandoned fishing (at least not intentionally) or BFW.
Unfortunately due to various financial and health reasons I'm "out of the game" for the time being. Nothing disastrously major or terminal, but struggling with a few long covid issues (I'm still physically mobile, but not really fighting fit for the bank), and currently waiting to find out if my pay is about to drop by £8k a year following a restructure and pay grade review at work. This is almost immediately following my wife being made redundant twice from two companies that went out of business and leaving another job due to bullying, all in the last two years. We also have some fairly major problems with our house which have revealed themselves since 2020 and we can neither afford to address them nor move.
All in all things haven't been great and, as you can imagine, I find it quite difficult seeing all the fishing I'm missing out on (there's only so much vicarious fishing you can do by reading others' catch reports, ), so have purposely kept my posting to the bare minimum. But I'm constantly reminded that there are plenty of others - especially with things going on around the world concurrently - in a much much worse position than me, which is keeping me humble, sane and level headed.
So yes, I'm still alive and still keen, but tempering my hopes and expectations, at least for the time being.
I hope everyone else is doing okay and hope that the ongoing river pollution problem is resolved, or at least improved massively, by the time I properly rejoin the ranks.
Much love now
A couple of you have messaged me offline - presumably spurred on by my post in the big cats thread - to enquire as to my whereabouts and ask about my wellbeing. It's much appreciated, thank you. I promise I'm fine, and you'll see I still post (very) occasionally, and also browse the forum at least a few times a week. I haven't abandoned fishing (at least not intentionally) or BFW.
Unfortunately due to various financial and health reasons I'm "out of the game" for the time being. Nothing disastrously major or terminal, but struggling with a few long covid issues (I'm still physically mobile, but not really fighting fit for the bank), and currently waiting to find out if my pay is about to drop by £8k a year following a restructure and pay grade review at work. This is almost immediately following my wife being made redundant twice from two companies that went out of business and leaving another job due to bullying, all in the last two years. We also have some fairly major problems with our house which have revealed themselves since 2020 and we can neither afford to address them nor move.
All in all things haven't been great and, as you can imagine, I find it quite difficult seeing all the fishing I'm missing out on (there's only so much vicarious fishing you can do by reading others' catch reports, ), so have purposely kept my posting to the bare minimum. But I'm constantly reminded that there are plenty of others - especially with things going on around the world concurrently - in a much much worse position than me, which is keeping me humble, sane and level headed.
So yes, I'm still alive and still keen, but tempering my hopes and expectations, at least for the time being.
I hope everyone else is doing okay and hope that the ongoing river pollution problem is resolved, or at least improved massively, by the time I properly rejoin the ranks.
Much love now