AMaybe I’m getting old or my bed dislikes me, but I’m getting up in the morning with a stiff left shoulder and today my neck hurts too. It’s very frustrating as it is sore to keep my head straight. If I was to get the fishing tackle out and head for the water today, I fear that fishing would be quite painful instead of what it should be, which is chilling.

Angling is a chance for anyone to be able to spend some useful time by oneself, think about where life is taking one and what can be changed, what is going nicely and what is not. One receives so few opportunities to be by myself and I do believe that could be a source for an accumulation of unwanted stress. For instance, I work at home, Mrs Izzard has also been at home on long term sick leave since after getting breast cancer in April last year. The good thing is that as I am at home, I have been able to help her, take and be with her when she’s been having chemo and radiotherapy and then subsequently when she’s been dealing with the after effects I can look after our little boy.

However, the downside was that, mainly during the radiotherapy, which was every weekday, I wasn’t able to get down to doing any work. After the journey to the hospital and back, which was at least a ninety minute exercise, then driving Will to school, having some lunch, picking up Will again and coming home, there was barely a period of an hour or more until late in the day when I could actually get on with doing anything which obviously meant that any prospect of getting the fishing tackle out of the garage and doing a bit of angling was all but out of the question. This increases my stress levels a lot, with little opportunity of taking a decent break.

What is occurring now is that things are clearing up. Chemo and radiotherapy is finished, and Mrs Izzard is looking to head back to work on January 17th which is very exciting. She will have to have an intravenous herceptin treatment every three weeks but there are no nasty consequences from that. So, since she will be picking up Will from nursery on her way home every day, it could be that if I wanted to, I could nick a few hours of an afternoon doing some angling at one of the local canals. I do have to get some new fishing tackle before I can do anything, as well as get a rod licence and join the Birmingham Angling Association to be qualified to fish the canals, but with a bit of luck I can get the paperwork finished by the time she goes back to work.

Whether I can spend an afternoon angling of course, will depend on work and whether I can get enough done in the mornings to be able to leave it and swap the screen for the fishing tackle. Perhaps Friday afternoons will be the easiest to justify, but at least as I work for myself then I will know whether I really can afford to bunk off.