SECRETARY'S LAMENT

Let's take a wee straw poll of web site viewers. How many of you can claim never to have moaned about your club secretary? Come on - be truthful. That's better. You all have!

Whether the bone of contention is an outing to a new water which turns out to be completely fish un-infested, the Canadian salmon film which failed to arrive and left the meeting with nothing to do (other than swill pints and talk about the Treasurer's new BMW) or the decision by the committee to cut back on the cost of boat maintenance, country sportsmen must rank high in the league of the world's greatest girners.

A number of years ago I was simultaneously landed with the thankless jobs of Secretary of an Angling Club and Chairman of a Wildfowling Association. At the time I did not dare speak out but, now that I have been able to pass the reins of both offices to worthy successors, I think that its about time that I forsook my vow of silence. Not for my own selfish satisfaction, you'll understand, but as a blow on behalf of the thousands of letter-writers and envelope-lickers throughout the land who hardly ever catch a glimpse of blue sky or draw a breath of fresh air on account of the multitude of ever-so-onerous duties which you lot heap upon their shoulders.

Now where will I start? Just for once I'll give the wildfowlers a break and let them crawl away unsaluted to breathe an undeserved sigh of relief. After all, it wouldn't have been fair on Charles (imagine a goose shooter called Charles!!) to have told the nation about the day he complained for three solid hours about the new restrictions on our Local Nature Reserve only to have the Minute Book produced to prove that he had proposed the original motion suggesting a sanctuary zone.

No, for my present purposes it will suffice to deal a few uppercuts squarely to the chins of my fishing friends. Maybe I naively considered it an honour when I was asked to take on the Secretary's job. The requirements seemed remarkably simple - access to a telephone and a typewriter and a few spare hours each month were all that were needed. Or so I was told. In retrospect I wonder how I could have been so desperately naive.

To begin with, the Secretary is expected to arrange twenty fishing outings each year, all of which shall be held on warm, slightly overcast days with a constant, but gentle, breeze. The outings must be to a variety of different waters, each of which shall be overflowing with free-rising, hard-fighting brown trout. No trout under 3 lbs nor any of the rainbow variety shall be allowed to interfere with members' flies.

Then there is the simple matter of staging the club's Annual Dinner. In theory this should be a combined task of the entire committee but, let's be fair, it is quite unreasonable to expect committee members to do more than turn up at the Hon. Sec's house and drink his Glenmorangie. The final responsibility for selecting the menu, finding a guest speaker and ordering the wine really cannot be delegated.

Only then can the poor Secretary be lumbered with undiluted blame when the rugby referee who was so highly recommended as a brilliant after-dinner wag, turns out to be a devout lay preacher.

But worse is to come. What can never be taken away is the inalienable right of members to criticise the Secretary for failing to do what he was never asked to do. Even the possession of a Mark IV super-clarity crystal ball is unlikely to help him anticipate the member who turns up at the lochside without a rod or who doesn't turn up at all because it was his sister-in-law's cousin's daughter's graduation. But Heaven help him if he has no spare rod to lend or no substitute to take the place of the missing angler.

Come the AGM, questions will be raised about a small unexplained discrepancy in the accounts. "Oh," volunteers the Secretary, "that was the entry fee I had to pay because Andrew qualified for the County Fly Fishing Championship."

"Did the Secretary not know that all expenditure had to be approved by the Committee in advance?" "We were going to write that into the Constitution in 1933, but never got round to it." "Mr Chairman, I move that the Secretary repays the club out of his own pocket."

As the alleged perpetrator of all the postal delays, traffic jams and family crises which prevent members from participating in angling outings, I do think that it's a bit thick when the Secretary has to pay for someone else's fishing - on top of the postage stamps and telephone calls!