Cross-country Ice-fishing – 4

Excerpt from the book Sports the Olympics Forgot This book describes 40 sports that ought to be played but aren’t, because I made them up.

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When Josiah Floantin arrived soon afterwards he saw Edgar Parent’s hole and forgot the rules because he unpacked his rod and started to fish. The Fish Judge immediately disqualified him because contestants must cut their own ice-hole and so Floantin trudged back to the start swearing at his own stupidity.

An exhausted Wally Mercer was the next person at the lake; he took off his backpack and sawed a hole over the deepest part of the lake. He dangled his rod in the water and within a minute he had caught a fish – he showed it to the Fish Judge who was immediately suspicious. The fish was a deep-frozen mackerel and had already been gutted and skinned. The Fish Judge looked in Mercer’s pack and found the wrapping from the local store – Mercer was disqualified on the spot and banned from the contest for 15 years. Mercer claimed that the lake was so cold that the fish had been frozen on its journey to the surface after he’d caught it but couldn’t explain how a mackerel had swum to Manitoba from the Atlantic Ocean.  Mercer had to ski back to the start.

Published by Julian Worker

Julian was born in Leicester, attended school in Yorkshire, and university in Liverpool. He has been to 94 countries and territories and intends to make the 100 when travel is easier. He writes travel books, murder / mysteries and absurd fiction. His sense of humour is distilled from The Marx Brothers, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and Midsomer Murders. His latest book is about a Buddhist cat who tries to help his squirrel friend fly further from a children's slide.

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