The Exception That Proves The Rule

I have had a bit of a dramatic time. We had a fire at home just before Christmas, no structural damage or injuries but the whole upstairs was badly smoke damaged. We spent Christmas in an hotel which wasn’t as a relaxing experience as I had imagined. We lived in the hotel for nearly two months until we found a house to let temporarily while the builders got on with the repairs. Apart from anything else it has meant that we have had a couple of times when we had no internet, which is a great excuse to pretend you haven’t received an email or had the connection to reply, even if you had. No more excuses though, we moved back in to our house just before Easter and we had the phone and internet back on Monday.

As you can imagine the last thing on my mind has been fly fishing or fly casting. Well, almost. I certainly haven’t picked up a rod for about four months but the endless hours rubbing down, and painting, the lounge proved to be an ideal time for the mind to try and distract itself from the tedium. Things pop in, get mulled over, and almost instantly forgotten but, the one thing that has stuck in my mind is the expression ‘the exception that proves the rule’. Really? can someone explain that to me? Because the more I look at it or think about it the less sense it makes. On any fly fishing/casting forum I can pretty much guarantee that the exception is generally the excuse for some people to prove the rule must be wrong then, the exception proves it. Perhaps I’m an exception, if so, what does that prove? Anyway, rules are meant to be broken, it’s a very exceptional rule that isn’t. What is an exception? it’s a stand alone event. How can something that happens infrequently or only in certain circumstances prove that the rules regarding something that happens frequently are correct? A conundrum.

The moral of the story is, don’t have a fire and have to spend endless hours with either sandpaper or a paintbrush. Take up fly casting, it’s far less thought provoking.