The Loneliness of the Long Distance Book Runner by Bill Rees

Author:Bill Rees [Bill Rees]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908069863
Publisher: Parthian Books
Published: 2011-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

After a cold night it’s good to be up and moving. There is time only for the briefest of introductions to Alex who says he’ll check out the books after work. I have left them in the boot of the Princess, which has defied expectations in getting me here, a journey of some 700 miles from London.

We walk to the water’s edge. Jake fights to light a cigarette. The lines of age curve chaotically all over his narrow reddened face. Swathed in dirty yellow oilskins, he crouches to get down low in the boat. By resting his good arm against the gunwale, Jake smokes, free of the wind’s interference. He is shocked out of his reverie when the boat rocks with the sudden presence of Alex. Mark and I hurry to board the boat as its engine is jolted to life. I keep my eyes fixed to the metal gangway. Slip, and the sea will numb every nerve in the body. Death is unlikely – providing you’re fished out within five minutes.

His fingers glow red with defiance. Paralysed with arthritis and yellowed with nicotine, Jake’s hand is little more than a cigarette holder. The good arm attains an equilibrium of sorts, but his body still shakes, needs more than a dram to control its mutinous movements.

‘You all right lads?’ he asks with vigour.

‘Not too bad,’ I lie. Jake had called round with a bottle of malt, which didn’t see out the night.

‘You’ll not be inquiring after my welfare lads?’ says Jake, who I now know has the capacity to drink a loch full of Glenfiddich.

‘How are you feeling?’ we say in chorus to which Jake replies ‘Fucking awful. Spring time in Scotland. Hah!’ he adds, looking around. Clouds scud across the sky, darkening the day. The sun can only shed a cold light upon the perennially soggy Highlands.

Salmon swim sluggishly. Jake sees too many salmon in his life; his clear blue eyes stare into the nets, rigidly secured and weighted down. In total there are twelve nets, aligned in two rows either side of an aluminium gangway wrapped in meshing. At one end, looking as if it had been tapped on as an afterthought, floats a shed where refuge is sought when storms stir.

In the boat we laboriously scoop and scatter foul smelling yellow pellets, using short handled shovels to extract them from big plastic bags. Adorning the bags is a picture of a salmon arched athletically above BP’s insignia.

We saturate the salmon congested waters with mackerel, processed at great expense, Alex has told me, and then compressed into tablet form. Each bag contains seventy pounds of mackerel. Wrist muscles throb. We diligently scatter the pellets in an even spread, whereas Jake isn’t above surreptitiously tipping out, in one cumulative plop, all the contents of the bag.

The waves are rising, but haven’t yet reached a menacing height. The boat chugs contentedly enough towards a more sheltered part of the loch where the company holds the bigger salmon captive. Today there is to be a harvest.

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