Scotland Is Not for the Squeamish by Bill Watkins

Author:Bill Watkins
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Scarletta Press
Published: 2011-06-24T04:30:00+00:00

Just before the start of the next short day, I take a walk around the narrow stone-laid streets of the picturesque town. Lerwick looks like it grew from the living rock of the harbor inlet. The streets are so narrow that the fingertips of outstretched arms can touch the shop fronts on both sides. It’s a bit like wandering the rabbit warren alleyways of Tangier, but Morocco never knew this climate or such tall blond people. For all its isolation, Lerwick not only sees itself as the center of the Atlantic fishing grounds but looks to the world at large. The Pacific and Orient Steam Packet Line was founded here by a local lad and P&O steamers are still going strong, providing island-linking ferry services as well as luxury cruise liners.

The weather has stayed warm. Not that this affects the locals; they seem as impervious to heat as they are to cold and wander around in below-zero temperatures wearing less clothing than I would wear on a summer’s day. “Scratch a Shetlander and you find a Viking; scratch a Viking and you’ll find yourself in hospital,” as the old saying goes.

Having walked around the wee town, I take my rest on the harbor wall. Hissing mats of exhaust bubbles surface from aft of John Robertson’s boat. Like a blowing whale in a red rubber suit, a corpulent figure erupts from the greasy depths. He flips up his mask and waves a greeny-black lobster at me.

“Hey, pal, put this in that bucket over there, will you?” He throws the leggy crustacean over and I chuck it in the pail where several others are crawling about.

“There’s hundreds of the buggers down here!” His heels go up and he vanishes back down to the work at hand.

He surfaces a while later and another diver appears with him. We take to chatting while they change their air tanks.

“Aren’t you cold in those wet suits?”

“No, not really, the air is usually colder than the sea, and the Gulf Stream heats things up at this time of year. If we want a really warm glow, we just think of the money we’re making!”

Out in the silvery mouth of the bay a small rowing boat is dropping a necklace of wicker lobster creels baited with dead fish. Leaving the orange marker buoy floating behind, the fishermen heave back toward the shore.

“The plot thins!” says the first diver, with the merry twinkle of a ruse gleaming in his eye. He whispers to his buddy, and they both slip quietly into the water; a trail of bubbles marks their progress toward the distant creels. When they return, I ask them what they’ve been up to.

“Come back at the turn of the tide and see.”

Later as the tide ebbs, I wander back to the pierhead to find the divers now dressed in their regular clothes and enjoying a beer on the harbor wall. The reappearance of the unsuspecting lobstermen has them in rib-nudging fits of schoolboy giggles. They let me in on their secret.

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