Given the superstitions regarding women on boats I was extremely lucky to find a fisherman willing to allow me on-board his boat. My day out with Billy Hughes, a Scalloway creel fisherman, checking his creels enabled me to look back and up at the coastline from the sea and to feel to movement of the boat as I drew (when my freezing fingers allowed).
We chugged between the rocks and skerries in his small boat, stopping periodically as Billy brought in his creels, sorted through the catch (throwing most back), before moving on to place them again and to locate the next batch. The catch was two and half buckets of edible brown crabs (partans) and a box of assorted other less ‘exclusive’ ones. All bound for Spain. Not much for a fairly labour-intensive day’s work, but at this time of the year….’mebbe n’ so bad’.
We chugged between the rocks and skerries in his small boat, stopping periodically as Billy brought in his creels, sorted through the catch (throwing most back), before moving on to place them again and to locate the next batch. The catch was two and half buckets of edible brown crabs (partans) and a box of assorted other less ‘exclusive’ ones. All bound for Spain. Not much for a fairly labour-intensive day’s work, but at this time of the year….’mebbe n’ so bad’.
At the risk of sounding like a middle-class Romantic (try to imagine bohemian artist instead.. okay, maybe they’re the same thing), it is strange to think that whilst most of the country are driving like crazy through some concrete jungle to and from work each day, this is what Billy does alone most days of the year, whatever the weather, surrounded by this bleak and wonderful landscape.
What an experience - parallel lives indeed. It's easy to picture you, I can even smell the crabs and the exhaust from the engine!
ReplyDeleteHow many artists painting the sea view the shore from a small boat? I'm interested in the addition of motion of the observer / artist as another element to the mix.
(We often sit on grassy cliffs watching these little boats going from creel to creel, and envy the apparent freedom of the men on board - hmmm. Holiday fantasies! Sure we're not the first middle class Romantics (?) to do that though)
I just heard that you did this when we were watching Simon King on Shetland, going out with a creel fisherman, but called Richard as that would be too much of a coincidence! He was filming gannets diving for mackerel thrown from a fishing boat, which we saw slowed down 40 times, so that their wings seemed to disappear as they cleaved through the water making barely a spash - wonderful. Jayne
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