"Maggits"

These anglers use a variety of interesting "foods" as bait, but one that definitely doesn't appeal to we dogs, and is the Silverwoods' bait of choice, is multi coloured maggots. These come in a tupperware box with a close fitting lid, and are dyed somehow (eating dyed food?) into four different colours - red, green, yellow and "normal". There is much discussion while fishing as to which colour is most likely to score a fish.

The tupperware box "must" be stored in the fridge according to the Silverwoods, to keep the maggots fresh. So far so good.

On one of the days the boat was left to the dogs, and Mum and Dad, while all the Silverwoods went off strolling or shopping. We dogs were out on the deck admiring the view, and enjoying the peace and quiet (a rare commodity with the 4 children around in a confined space) with Dad when we suddenly became aware of Mum, down in the galley starting to have absolute conniptions. "Ahh! Ahh! Nooooo! and assorted more fruity epithets". Dad raced down to see what was up.

Mum had gone to start cooking, so was trawling the fridge for likely ingredients, and had spotted a maggot crawling determinedly across a packet of goods. This rapidly escalated into lots of maggots as she quickly whipped each pack or salad ingredient out, her voice rising and anguish ringing around. It was obvious that the maggot box had not been closed properly and the little blighters were everywhere!

The fridge was rapidly emptied and the beasts either hunted down and corralled from closed food, or the open food thrown into a big bag with no holes in it, held by Dad. Then the fridge started to be picked apart, as they turned out to be behind shelves, under the wire racks, in among the rubber seals, and Mum was yelling and fretting throughout. She even found some frozen to the back plate of the fridge and had to scrape them off with a knife. Some had got behind and under the fridge too.

Right! That's It! Said she - No more maggits in the fridge! New house rule! The maggots (now sealed down) were confined to under the seat on the front deck. The food was mostly thrown away in the carefully sealed bag. One tub of minced beef which was recently open but had at least one maggot in (on the blood-pad) was quickly fried off for us dogs (so this was a good thing as far as we were concerned). Dad restrained Mum from hoying (good Northern word meaning to "throw". Diamond uses it in context of "Hoying it over the wall") the whole lot into the canal.

The Silverwoods (well some of them) protested on their return "But we neeeeeeed maggits for fishing...." but one look at Mum's face and they could see that the jokey "New House Rule" sign on the fridge, was about as far as this joke would run, and the maggits stayed on the front deck there-after. there was not, anyway, much appetite for fishing after Mrs S had been so badly mozzie'd and I don't think they got another airing, before they were indeed hoyed into the canal on the last morning as we were packing up.

Deefski.