The Roundup - Edition 70

A message from 
Rich Jones, Head.

I’ve only ever been fishing once, and it ended in disaster.

As a boy, I was captivated by Huckleberry Finn and Friends on TV. From my little corner of rural Somerset, it all seemed impossibly glamorous—steamboats, deep friendships, bayous, and even the abject poverty carried a strange romanticism.

They were always fishing on the Mississippi. I liked the idea of that.

So, like many children do, I set about trying to recreate the moment. My friend Geoff and I decided to go fishing. The only problem? I didn’t own a rod. So, as younger brothers sometimes do, I ‘borrowed’—without permission—my eldest brother’s prized fishing rod for the day.

Rods strapped to our backs, Geoff and I pedalled our BMX Chrome Burners off to find our very own Deep South fishing spot. Unfortunately, rural Somerset is not Louisiana, and the closest we found was the grim, diesel-stained bustle of Portbury commercial docks.

Not exactly the Mississippi. But Geoff had dungarees on, so we pressed on.

We sat by the smelly water and cast our lines. After about ten minutes, we were bored. Five minutes later, we’d abandoned the rods and were darting between tankers and cargo. When we returned, something had taken a bite on my rod—well, Robert’s rod—but I wasn’t holding it. I watched in horror as it tipped off the dock and plummeted into the water.

Panic-stricken, I jumped in to retrieve it, about 10 foot in fact. Geoff agreed this was a sound plan. I swam around hopelessly, getting more cross by the second. Then, horror struck…I looked up and saw my mum’s face emerge over the side.

She was not impressed.

I had told her I was off to the park. Instead, she found me soaked, stinking, and rod-less, being shouted at by an angry dock worker. I was gated. Publicly scolded in front of sailors. All my pocket money was redirected to the Robert Jones Fishing Rod Compensation Fund. And I was ill for about a week.

I’ve not fished since.

But I was reminded of this tale recently when a parent told me about his own love of fishing and how important it is—and how he uses it to support young people struggling with their mental health. What struck me most was how little he cared about actually catching anything. For him, it’s not about the fish. It’s about the stillness. The rhythm. The connection with nature and the natural world, and, more importantly, with yourself.

A pause. 

Something increasingly rare in a world accelerating at a frightening pace.

He’s right, I think. We are in danger of losing our ability to downshift. To dawdle. To notice.

Many of us are about to travel—our Senior School students are heading off on Late Summer Programmes to France, Yorkshire, Geneva, Southern Italy, Boston and many more. I’ve travelled a lot myself, and my strongest memories are rarely of the destinations. They’re of the journeys: a literal slow boat across Lake Victoria, an overnight bus through southern Jordan, even a National Express coach to Manchester with cracked vinyl seats and a dodgy gearbox.

As Billy Bragg once sang, “the chase is always better than the kill.”

For that parent, fishing is his pause. For me, it’s swimming. For others, it might be gardening, ornithology, baking, hiking, cycling, vegetable growing, DIY, Crossfit, painting... It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that it slows the world down to a more human speed.

At St Chris, yes, we’re exploring AI, digital literacy, and the world of tech. But we’re equally serious about laser cutters, green spaces, caring for animals, playing sport, painting, debating, listening, and simply walking.

Speed and pause aren’t opposites—they’re partners. Both needed. Both valued.

But if we lose sight of the pause—if fishing and nature and space become outdated ideas—then I fear we’ll simply burn out under the weight of relentless pace.

I won’t be going fishing again anytime soon… certainly not at the docks. But I do understand what it means now.

Robert is still cross mind.