Sunday 2 November 2014

Guess who, times five, once I caught a fish alive


Old Sugar didn't look up from his net as I climbed aboard as quietly as I could in the pre-dawn darkness, but he seemed to know instinctively that my head was pounding from the 28 tins and two bottles consumed only a matter of two hours ago next to the fire on the beach. By the time I woke up, it was a pile of white ash and all the other hippies were face-down on the soft-furnishings strewn a half-mile along the flotsam line.

"Yer fuckin' late - as usual. Make yerself useful and cast-off. We've lost an hour as it is."

He waited a half hour before he said anything else. We were a few miles out and the early morning sun was illuminating impossibly beautiful rock-formations on the little islands that we passed. I felt as rough as a badger's arse.

"Just because you've got a bloody book published, you think the bloody fish are just going to wait for you to get out of bloody bed to catch them. Well they're not. By the time we get to a shoal, there'll be half the bloody fleet waiting to greet us. Jeez."

I tried to coax some usable yarns from the grizzled old git, but he was not going to play this morning.

"And where have you been for the last couple of months? Nah - don't tell me, I can guess. Poncing around in town, talking to bloody T.V. stations and newspapers. Attending bloody literary festivals and eating sandwiches with the bloody crusts cut off."

There followed some inaudible mumblings as he rooted around in the bottom of the boat, then he re-surfaced to carry on where he left off. I suppressed the urge to throw-up over the side.

"And to cap it all - getting me to dress up in a fuckin' tuxedo and parading me up and down in front of a load of nancys with cameras, pretending to be a bloody fisherman. Well get this straight, Sheila, I don't have to fuckin' pretend. If I don't get those bloody fish in by sundown, I won't be bloody eating!"

I am beginning to think that I am not cut-out to be a fisherwoman.

13 comments:

  1. I'm getting too bloody scared to make a comment now. But I fucking know who it is and I bet she thinks it is all right. You have my permission to delete this if you want to.

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    1. You? Scared of commenting? Don't take it to heart so!

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    2. No, that's why I came straight back.

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    3. It is a great piece of writing and, as I said earlier, I am sure she will approve.

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    4. .. she will, I feel sure of it..

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  2. I don't know who this is, but I admire it nonetheless. The whole guest posting show begins to remind me of the wonderful game of 'Name That Motorway' on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.

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    1. Go to - 'A Wine Dark Sea', and meet my mate from down-under. She's a REAL writer.

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    2. Also, you reminded me that when we travelled for days on end between the North and the South of Germany, we had a road atlas which had a stretch of autobahn pictured on the cover, with pine forests either side - like all the other thousands of miles. The game was to recognise that stretch as we drove the 1000s of miles, and the joke was that we told each other that we had gone through it when they were asleep.

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  3. Your fine&hilarious posts are an invitation to take a look at the blogs of your followers, thank you! An Australian book strikes the eye: 'The Old Woman and the Sea', from a young authoress of course, who not gives a damn about the "-ess", I guess.

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    1. "doesn't give a damn", of course - but I was so impressed that I couldn't care less about bloody petty grammar here.

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    2. I m sure I left a comment reaction here, but it seems to have disappeared - sorry.

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