Finally being able to use my new Shakespeare President Super Match 13ft rod, six months after I sent off the mail order slip and cheque to Bennett's. I cajoled my parents into letting me have it for my 19th birthday in a few days time. I rode down to the post box on my pushbike.It was the last day of the Christmas break from college. I posted the envelope and decided to ride on to the local pond at Marchwood Priory, to see if any of my mates were pike fishing there, mainly with the intention of showing off that I was getting one of the best rods on the market. But the banks were cold and empty. So I headed back home, crossing the Marchwood By-pass by the lodge house. It's on a sweeping bend. Plenty of time to see cars coming at 60mph. But not at 60-100mph. A car sped around the corner when I was already halfway across and hit me without braking. If the car had been a normal one, I would have died. But it was a Reliant Scimitar with a fibreglass body that absorbed much of the impact as it shattered. I broke my skull, both collar bones, all of my ribs, punctured my lung, broke my pelvis, right femur, left femur, and a complete compound shattering of my left tibia and fibia. I did the whole heading for the bright light thing as I nearly died. The only thing that stopped me going was as I was drifting out of life, I became aware of someone reading latin.It was a priest reading me the last rites. That suddenly shocked me into fighting and the light receded and having felt more comfortable than I ever had in my whole life, slowly but surely pain began to flood back. And I opened my eyes and I was back. Broken beyond belief, but back.
So six months later, on June 16th 1984 at midnight, with my left leg still in a full length plastercast I made the most eagerly anticipated cast of my life into Marchwood Priory lake. I fished for an hour before I went to sleep, and then fished again at dawn and caught a small carp and a tench. And the rod was absolutely superb. And I still have it.