I got back from Ireland last night after a week of fishing, swimming in the sea and Scrabble. We were in a small place called Portnoo in County Donnegal where the weather was great; staying in a house that was a stone's throw from the sea.

I had only ever been fishing once or twice before, without success. But before we left I went to the Angling Centre and kitted myself out with a rod, a reel and a selection of psychedelic lures. I was all geared up for standing on a rock and staring aimlessly into the sea for hours.

When we arrived, Nick invested in a tide-table from the local shop which turned out to be our clock for the majority of the holiday (much to Trish, Lotte and Katie's annoyance). You see, apparently the best time to catch fish is at high tide. Which seems reasonable. Except when high tide is at four o'clock in the morning. There was only one thing for it... get up and fish. And so, despite having travelled since six am, we got a couple of hours sleep and woke up at half-past three the next morning to go and harvest the sea.

The good thing about high tide is that it occurs twice a day which means that it is never more than twelve hours until you next get to stand about on a rock trying not to fall into the sea. Oh, how we fished. The other thing about high tide is that the timing changes every day. So a half-past three start becomes twenty past four and then five am, and so on. Eventually, the sun was getting up before we were.

It was like a re-acquaintance with nature. Well actually, it was more like a blind date with nature. I don't know why fishing is quite so compelling, but it is. I was standing in the most precarious places I could find, my Adidas gripping the barnacles that were gripping the rocks- sometimes it was dark, windy and/or wet. The sea made it pretty clear that if you fucked with it, it would just drown you. Yet somehow, it was the best way to kill a couple of hours. Whereas the best way to kill fish, I have discovered, is to simply smash their heads on a rock. I did this countless times. In the end I caught fourteen fish- four mackerel and ten pollack.

The rest of the time was spent swimming in the sea, walking around in the middle of nowhere in the sun and watching Charlie performing stunts of varying quality (including running away from 'a bull'); with a few games of Scrabble and some drinking thrown in for good measure.

I could go on and on what Nick looks like climbing out of the sea naked at seven am, who Triviaman And Booter are, and stuff like that... but I'm not going to. I'm not even going to post any photos yet. The reason is that I'm still in the process of rebuilding the whole site here and adding more stuff makes this more complex and annoying than it already is. I'm almost finished though, so this should be the last post before the switch. I'm not going to post anything for a few days (so no change there then) and by the time you tune in towards the end of the week, everything should be shiny and new. And then I'll post about seeing a man buying a machete.