Myself

I thought I would tell you something about myself and what I do for a living. I know that you can look in my personal profile section, but it's not very comprehensive.

I live in a cottage on a farm 4km outside Estcourt KZN. The cottage is very small, but large enough for myself, my 4 dogs and a cat called Cat. The cottage will win the approval of "Greens" everywhere, built of  uncured mud brick 60 years ago, and thatched. It has withstood the ravages of time very well. In winter it's warm and in summer it's at least 5 degrees centigrade cooler than outside, very energy efficient. The cottage looks like something out a Hans Christian Anderson fairytale. I will include some photos of it in the near future. In spite of the fact that I live within 50m of the N3 highway, a four lane highway linking the port city of Durban to the interior of the country (this is the busiest highway in Africa) the highway noise has just become "white noise" to me.

My profession  is school librarian. My job is to teach learners how to use the library, how to do research but most important to instil a love of reading. I love my work and get great enjoyment out of it. The school I teach at is a primary school, grade 1 to grade 7 and I work with all 7 grades. We have about 650 learners in our school, each grade is divided into three classes and I see all of them each week, so I have a busy, but enjoyable day. I sometimes think I have the best job in the world. Nothing beats a teachers holidays, especially if you like to go fishing.

I live a a very minimalist lifestyle, materialism has no appeal to me. My car is a 28 year old VW Jetta with 350,000km on the clock. It still gets me where I want to go, is fuel efficient, reliable, cheap to maintain, and most   important gets me to my fly fishing spots on bad roads without a problem. I own no fancy gadgets, apart from a laptop, Black Berry cell phone (bottom of the range) and no TV. I do have a good Cd player and radio, but I don't listen to radio because it's mostly drivel.

I don't mind spending money on fly fishing and fly tying equipment and material. I own several fly rods, from 2 weight to a 9 weight, and reels, and fly tying material worth a small fortune.

I have the privilege to live close to some great fly fishing water, some of not 5 minutes walk from where I live. But more about that next time.