Culture

In a word . . . angling

Consistent to both angling and porn is the heart as a lonely hunter

Patsy McGarry's face
Patsy McGarry
Sat Sep 30 2017 - 00:00

I have a friend ( It surprises me too!) who once said he realised he was getting older when it dawned on him that he preferred to watch angling programmes than porn. “What?”, I responded with disbelief. “You know ‘porn’, people having sex?” he said.

“I know”, I said, being well-informed,“. . .but angling?” It helps that he is happily married to a wonderful woman and for for more years than any of us wish to be reminded about. But, angling?

The admission from him, a man whose libido in younger days unleashed such adventures it became the stuff of more mirth than myth, prompted some mature reflection on my own part consonant with a passing middle age.

In the throes of same one evening it dawned on me that consistent to both angling and porn is the heart (well!!) – allow a little licence, please – as lonely hunter. You used need a licence for both, one being a marriage certificate.

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Primitive man was more hunter than gatherer or husband. Indeed husbandry, with its necessary rootedness in one place so as to cultivate an area of earth, cleave unto a woman, rear animals and children, or both, meant suppressing man’s crude instinct to chase variety. In sexual as other matters.

It could mean boredom. But he lives longer to enjoy it (his wife allowing), if less intensely and, lo, grows fat around the middle.

Yet the hunting instinct remains. He has to find a socially acceptable outlet for it. So, some men do so through sport or, in later life, vicariously, through following the fortunes or otherwise of a favoured team with a passion once felt in the bedroom. It, the latter, having been tamed by more children than expected and outrageous fortune or, the economy, as some call it.

Other men find different outlets. The pub. Hill walking. Cycling back to lost youth in obscene lycra, while the desperate seek out politics. Or golf.

Then there’s angling. Nothing quite concentrates the mind so wonderfully as a fish on a hook. Landing it takes all the concentration, patience, skill, and guile with which sex was pursued in younger days. And then there’s always the catch that got away, with which to regale non-believers on fallow nights.

Angling from Old English angul, fish-hook; related to Old High German ango, Latin uncus, Greek onkos.

inaword@irishtimes.com