Thanks to Jake for letting me use this video of him kissing his pet fish! Hope you all enjoy it!

Randomly... random! O.o

Hellooo again everyone!

Since I have no new news, I’ll give you some … stories… I’m not sure what they are going to be yet, myself, but I’ll just write and see what happens :-P!

Well living in Ireland was a lot of fun… yet very cold :-P. Nah in the summer it reached at least 20 degrees. When I was three (yes I know I’ve already told you this but that doesn’t mean I can’t give a more detailed… description :-P)!

Well when I was three years old we moved from Zimbabwe to Ireland, we had to leave because it was far too corrupt to live in anymore and my dad was a journalist which made it a whole lot more dangerous. Now the only reason we chose to move to Ireland out of the whole world was that my mom had lived there when she was younger for a short time in her life and my grandmother and great grandmother had been born there. So anyway we moved to southern Ireland first, I started school here for the first year, we stayed in southern Ireland for about three years, later moving to Northern Ireland, Belfast.

My parents quickly found my sister (who was about 10 now) and myself (I was six… aww how cute!!!) a primary school. I was so scared on the first day that I cried as soon as my parents left the classroom… the teacher moved me over to a desk where there where more children (I was sitting at one with… four at the beginning … it needed more people at it, well it did have five for a very short time…) and introduced me to two girls there Natalie and Lauren C. (not sisters their last names both just begin with C :-P), who have been my best friends since...

Anyway to carry on with what I was saying, I soon became friends with almost everyone in the class and stayed in Finaghy Primary School until the last day of primary seven (I’m not sure how this works out in any other countries but I was 11, if that helps).I moved onto Hunter House College, parting ways with a lot of my friends, a few months later my parents decided to start home-schooling my sister and I so I ended up parting ways with ALL of my friends. Although I did gather a get-together once in a while.

I’ve been home-schooled since and I’m very pleased that I started it or it wouldn’t be likely that I would be sitting in south-west France typing this now and I also wouldn’t have moved house a few months after beginning home schooling as to the limitlessness I had. Not having to live close to schools.It’s really strange to think of stuff like that :-S. Anyway, if you read the 5th post under this one, you’ll see how we came to get to France, don’t think that the people who have already read it would appreciate me repeating myself (something that I do often) :-P!

Ohhh! In France at the last house, we found out a secret that our dog (Gizmo, our shih-Tzu, which is a small dog, creepishly koala like, with a pigs tail, has more rows of teeth then any normal dog and hair instead of fur…) was keeping from us… HE LOVES FISHING! Well actually… he couldn’t be bothered with the fishing part, he just likes to take the fish back to the water and drop them in…

Sometimes this doesn’t go as smoothly as it sounds, sadly Gizmo was a little bit too rough with two tidlers (literally the size of my baby finger) and he didn’t bring them to the water soon enough… it’s okay though, my sister and I hummed a sad song… the fish just… floated away… one came back to life though :-D!!!

I have the tape somewhere I just need to edit it a slight touch :-P, he was better with the bigger fish, it was really funny, they kept slapping him in the face (well I wouldn’t like to be in Gizmo’s mouth either…).

Gizmo’s not so great with the fishing part because he’ll stand in the water, up to his stomach (which is right on the embankment… he has VERY short legs), and groan at the float. Sometimes he’ll get so annoyed that the fish aren’t biting he’ll start to bark and scratch at the water, flicking it up. A few times he chased the toads in the lake as well!

Ohhh my dad caught a toad once, it was pretty late and we were watching a baby toad eating flies at the edge of the river, so my dad got a piece of bait and put it on his hook, began waggling it around in front of the toad (about the size of my thumbnail) and it went for the bait! My dad quickly yanked the rod so the toad couldn’t latch on and get hooked. That was really funny!

Well I’m tired… and slightly hungry as well now so I’ll leave it at that! Hope to hear… and see :-P from you all soon! Thanks for reading (sorry it was a bit random today).

- Bianca

Last night... Dun dun DUNNNN!

Hi Everybody!

I think that when my life gets that little bit boring (and I have nothing to write for Kiss My Fishy) life throws something, sometimes not so good…sometimes awesome, in my direction.

Well last night my parents, my sister and I were going out to dinner with my dad’s friend who’d come over from Ireland. It was all going great (especially my banana split, wow, the first time I’d had it and oooooh *drools*). Anyway, once we’d finished with dinner we took a stroll, about to go to our car but decided to go for drinks first instead (don’t worry, I just had pineapple juice :-P)… anyway, to carry on with my original story!

We walked my dad’s friend back to the hotel he was staying at “for a laugh” as he worded it. The reception was very pretty, filled with plants and statues of… stuff. We said our goodbyes and finally walked back to the car, laughing and joking, as you do.When we got there DISASTER struck! Dun dun DUNNN! No really though… The underground parking was LOCKED! And what’s worse was that our house keys were inside the car! We walked around to the back doors where you’re “supposed” to walk out of, here was the closing (and opening times), just 20 minutes after we’d parked the car, did the doors close (21:00). And they’d only open at 7 am. I know, stupid, eh?!

You see… we didn’t see the times because… okay this is so lazy… Greg (my dad’s friend) had been waiting by the fountain in the main square in town for us, and we couldn’t find any parking (because we thought the underground parking would’ve been closed at this time), so we’d driven around the square three times before finally giving in and trying out the underground parking.

We were surprised that it was still open (but we thought it would stay like that all night, once finding out that it was open now because it was all mechanical-ised) and so quickly finding a parking, ran up the ramp, that we’d driven down, instead of walking around the parking lot, finding the door, then walking up the stairs and then crossing the road, this sounds so much more complicated, you see. So the end result was that we didn’t see the times, wow, that was difficult to all get out!

If you’re from the U.K. or just don’t know what under ground parking is… even though it tell you pretty much in the name I will describe :-P. Basically it’s like those high-rise parking buildings, but that’s been squished down underground, I didn’t think anything strange of it when I’d first gone under, then realised that we weren’t driving up, we were going down. They’re really great, well they’re supposed to be, because it makes out that there’s not supposed to be many cars parked on the side of the roads… last night this proved as incorrect :-P!

So anyway… where was I with my original story… oh right, so we were LOCKED OUT of the parking lot, so we couldn’t drive home and even if we took a taxi home we wouldn’t be able to get into the house! We walked straight back to the hotel Greg was staying in, asked if they had rooms left, they were the least bit helpful, the guy looked in his little bookings book, looked up at us and said “Non”. Even though I saw keys hanging up :-P! He didn’t even lift the phone, or give us directions to another hotel!

We walked around for about 10 minutes, finally finding a hotel. We knocked on the knocker, heard heavy footsteps and a man answered the door. My dad told him our problem (in French) and the guy (I never caught his name so it’ll just be “the guy” for now :-P) ushered us in went over to his paper filled desk. Picked up the phone and began ringing other hotels, after two attempts I said with my, oh so wonderful French, I know I’m so modest, well it’s not that great but really came in handy here :-P.

Pensez-vous que la police peut… (Do you think that the police can…) he broke me off here, just nodding, dialled the police’s telephone number (17) spoke in rapid French , wrote a number down, hung up, phoned that number, spoke more and hung up again. Smiled, sat up from his seat, brought us outside, pointed and said that a person will come there and open it for us (yes, still in French) we thanked him and walked over to the area.

About 10 minutes later a guy in a GIANT black, zip up coat, walked over, half his face coved by the jacket, hands in pockets (very scary :-P). He asked us for the parking card, after some searching through my dads pockets, we realised I had it in my purse (give me some credit I was half asleep by this stage :-P). I handed it to the guy (didn’t catch his name either, so he’ll just be the new “the guy”) he took it, placed it in the machine, the lift opened we all squished into it, with “Whoops, was that all we had to do?”, we all felt absolutely terrible from getting this guy out of bed in the middle of the night. Anyway we went down in the lift, got out, walked over to the car, thanked him.

Got into the car drove to where you’d usually drive to get out, put the card into the machine there, the barrier went up and a few seconds later the iron gate lifted itself up and we drove home. My feet were killing me because I’d been wearing boots so my bed couldn’t have been more welcoming then it was.

I’m afraid to say that no new pictures have been coming through, despite my efforts at sending out tonnes of e-mails to fishing clubs :-P. So hopefully I will get a reply or something. The poll I put in seems to be going well though! Already 11 people have voted :-).

Okay, well I’ll leave it at that and I really do hope to hear from you all soon. For those of you, who have taken the time out to read my blog, thanks a million!

- Bianca

Carcassonne!

Hey everyone!

I know :-O What?! TWO posts in ONE day! Well, I DID promise this one about Carcassonne on Monday!

Yes, so we went to Carcassonne yesterday, it was about an hours drive from our house. The scenery on the way was absolutely stunning! You have to drive up the twisting roads through The Black Mountains, there was a gorgeous, clear river that flowed to the right hand side of the road once we reached the city outside of Carcassonne, I don’t know where it came from though, might have dozed off for a few seconds :-P.

The most frustrating part in Carcassonne though, was being in the city outside of it, being able to see the towering castle, but not able to find the route to it! Not such great street signs ;-P! Yep, just blame the street signs! (Below - Carcassonne on a NICE day :-P).

It was well-worth it… once we found the entrance :-D! The best part was that I’m reading a book at the moment called “Labyrinth”, by Kate Mosse (not the David Bowie one with the kids that get lost in the labyrinth). And in it there’s a character from the 13th century (not too sure on the century, will look it up later in the book, wow, I’m impressed, just looked it up and I was right :-P) that lived in Carcassonne so you get more of a feel of what the castle and it’s grounds would have been like back then.

Anyway to get on with my ORIGINAL story, we walked through, have some pictures below of me standing in front of the entrance… holding a half eaten ice-cream :-P, (That's the second one)! (Top one - I'm the shortest one and wearing white :-P, my mom in the middle and my sister all the way to the left)

After looking around some “medieval” shops we came across “The Torture Chamber”. It’s like a museum of all of the torture… devices that they used on “heretics”, “witches”, and the “accused” in the olden days, the one date that I can actually remember was the first recorded date that they used “The Iron Maiden”, it was disgusting, that not even 500 years ago they STARTED using it (1515 A.D.). The Iron Maiden is like a sarcophagus that has long, I’d think very painful, nails on the inside, sticking out all over the show, the “accused” gets placed inside and the doors are slowly clamped over, it doesn’t do BRUTAL damage so the average person takes two whole days to die! It was so gross!!! Much worse things there too…

Afterward we walked around some more, ate, went to the BEST sweet shop EVER! Got ice-cream and walked around some more :-P! We drove home later, stopping by a gorgeous mountain valley, that over looked Hautpoul. (Below - Hautpoul)

Really hope to get some more (Wow! More sounds weird there :-P) fish pictures in sooooooon!

- Bianca

P.S. Yes I know, I thought I lived in south-west France too, but with this weather… pfft, it's okay though, it wasn't as bitterly cold as Ireland was :-D.

Not so lonely any more!!!

Hey everyone!

I have some GREAT news!!! I received the first EVER picture from a fellow fisher all the way in Pennsylvania, USA (This is veeeeerrrrrryyyyy far for me :-P)!
So I’d like to say thank you very much Matt! This was taken about two or three years ago when Matt was 21 or 22, now Matt is 24 :-P.

I have some more people that have promised some pictures so as soon as those come through (hopefully soon, hint hint, nudge nudge, wink wink) I’ll post them straight on! When tonnes start coming in, I’m going to get a website built and have all of the pictures in photo albums on there :-) ...

I’d also like to thank Janice, in Alberta for trying to persuade everyone on the www.nlft.org forums to put up a picture of them kissing a fish in their avatar!

I hope to hear from everyone soon!

- Bianca

French stuff... I guess... you could call it that...

Hey all again,

Well, not much news over here… none about fishing anyway. We’re all settling down very nicely in France, in the new house. We’ve even bought a new car with… a whole lot of frustration from me having to translate and the sales people not understanding… or usually me not understanding what they were trying to get across… eventually though we did it, and it was well worth it.

Tomorrow we’re taking a drive to Carcassone (a medieval city… somewhere in France, will get more details on it tomorrow or on Wednesday), with it. So will write about that afterwards and try get some pictures :-). On Sunday I found out that’s it’s only a five hour train journey to Paris from Toulouse, so that’s good to know… I guess :-P.

Oh! About two weeks ago, my sister (Venetia) and I made French friends… okay they made arrangements to meet up with us the next day in town, but they didn’t pitch up :-O!!! Okay well I think we got lost in translation… Still haven’t seen them around, but on the first day that we met, they took us to a little square, beside the park in town.

Here there were tonnes of kids dancing, they called this type of dance “Tecktonik” (Whew, that is the way to spell it, I used to have it as Techtonique... looks French enough :-P... but was wrong >.<). It’s … quite different to British dancing... Tecktonik is like loads of arm movements and twisty leg movements, some jelly body movements as well, (wow, now you can REALLY imagine what I’m trying to describe :-P).

At the beginning Venetia and I thought of it as strange, but after watching some videos on youtube, I think it doesn’t look… too bad :-P, and want to learn it… so far I can do… one move… and it’s a very simple one (most of the time I can’t even get my hands right with it >.<). Hee hee! The girl who does break dancing even said it was more difficult than that, so I don’t feel that bad about it :-P!

How sad am I?... Actually don't answer that, it's just a rhetorical question :-P. I have absolutely no other news… wow I need to get a lake! :-P Hope to hear from you all soon!

- Bianca

How we came to be so far across the pond! (Ireland to France)

Hey everyone!

Well on the first of September, we moved to our permanent house in France. About time too, you see… moving about all began a VERY long time ago (well.. 6 months on the first… but that seems like a very long time to me, so just let me have my rant!)… So on the 1st of March 2007, we departed Ireland only after deciding 6 weeks earlier that we were going to move to Sicily. Yep, that’s right not France, Sicily (confused, eh? :P)! My dad’s dad had lived there, and Ireland was so cold, EVERY single day it was like “What’s the day like?” “Umm… rainy and cold…” on and on and on.

We’re not used to cold weather (I’ll get to that part later). So we all made a decision to give it a go, (for those of you that never concentrated in Geography classes, Sicily is the football of the boot (the boot being Italy), it’s also know as “The Land of the Mafia”… actually I just made that last bit up, but it is where “The Mafia” originated from, with only ever visiting it once.

So you’re wondering how we ended up in south-west France? After having a lot of bad experiences there, my dad got a job offer in France and so he accepted. I left Sicily after living in it for two months and flew all the way up North, just stopping short of Northern Ireland in South England. We came here first because my cousins live there and it would give us more time to find a decent place in France.

One month later we left and after only finding a “gite” – like a summer house (that’s where the lake was and where the pictures below were taken at) – we arrived in our hopefully last destination… for a while! Then of course we moved to this new house. Sadly it has no lake near it :-(, but it is very nice and only five minutes from town, an hour from skiing in the Pyrenees and an hour and a half’s drive from the Mediterranean :-)!

We’ve been living here for a month and the fishing withdrawal symptoms are starting to set in! I find that when a bar of soap drops in the shower, I’m mildly surprised it doesn’t flop around for a bit, before becoming still!

Oh right yeah, just read through above and realised that I forgot to tell you why we’re not used to the cold weather, well we (my mom, dad, sister and of course myself) were all born in Zimbabwe, Africa, I was three when the country became too corrupt to live in and we had to leave for Ireland. Right well, I’m away until next write up :-).

Hope to hear comments SOON :-P!

- Bianca