Bog Myrtle & Peat

We went to sea in the summer, timing our trip to the moment when the tide fell furthest from the shore. The Solway’s best when it’s empty, and we were scratching for food in the wracks of rock and kelp which rise around the mud. Conditions were perfect around dawn that day, so I met you there in my shorts, knowing that when we found water it would be warm enough for wading. I held the net and you carried a hook which has sometimes been used to winkle lobsters from their grottos. It was hard and heavy, and just the tool for teasing old men from their homes. But lobsters are only an occasional bonus on this shore, and we were more interested in prawns and razor clams, which we call spoots.

We walked for half an hour to the sea, pushing a crest of gulls before us. And when we came to the water, you began to pour salt in the dimples were the clams had been. Nothing would happen at first, and then the mud would start to churn and belch upon itself like a chundering dog. And then the shells would come plunging into the morning, bright and frightened as a damaged U-boat. They’d gasp and shiver, and all we had to do was pick them up. I stayed behind to watch them lunge as you walked ahead. You knew that once they had been forced from cover, they wouldn’t go back. So I would pick each one as it came, and you walked in loops without pausing, covering the mud to recover the clams at your leisure, dear old hand that you are.

When we had gathered enough, we walked back to the rocks and the deep, inventive pools by the shore. You showed me how to sweep the net along the fringes of each rock, and I hardly knew what you meant by prawns. My mind’s eye went to a wineglass filled with pink and half-shelled tails, never making a connection to their point of origin. Of course I knew about those glassy sprites which creep and trill on the edge of an extended palm, confiding only for the narrowest moment before vanishing in a swirl of sediment. Every child knows those prawns, but while it’s fun to reach for them with a bucket and spade, it’s impossible to catch enough to cover your tongue. They’re too fast, and with insect eyes they’re surely never food anyway. But you showed me how to sweep beneath the weed with a net designed to scrape and gouge across the barnacles. In a few moments and with little more than two attempts, you had caught enough to fill a dish. They’re not so big as you’ll find them in Pembrokeshire or the Channel, but they’re bigger than anything which lurks in the weeds off Skye and Rhum. And they’re worth having boiled in a kettle on the rocks; even I could see that.

Beyond the prawns, the nets came up laden with ribbonfish and crabs. In half an hour, we’d caught gobis and a redly furious rockling which belched the sea from his belly. We’d two pounds of prawns a piece, but for all we watched for the chance of a lobster, the moment never came. You told me to watch for the prawns where the stones broke into cracks and burrows. When those holes are empty, prawns will hover at the doorway, facing outwards and ready to flee inside. But when they’re occupied by a lobster, the prawns will face into the hole and stare like dogs at a bear. They’re looking after themselves, and the habit does more good than they can tell. Because when they face the terror of an occupied hole for long enough, a human will see them – and infer the meaning – and use every trick which comes to hand to catch and boil the blue consumer.

That morning went well, and we had reached the final pool by the time the sun touched Cairnharrow. We were working side by side to the depth of our bellies in the water when you stood suddenly back. Reaching out beneath the weed, something dark and heavy rolled into your net like dollop of warm treacle. And finding the mesh bottom, it turned in a single movement and spilled back up and out and over the metal rim. You couldn’t have held it if you had tried, but you only said “oh”, as if you had remembered something you should have told me before. I teased you about that afterwards, because nothing bigger had ever happened to either of us, and all you said was “oh”.

The young otter swam down across your thighs and quietly towards me, but there was no panic or desperation in the movement; no froth or foam of anxiety. With only her mask and her bottom showing above the water, she slipped away beneath my arm and back towards the shingle shore, as if the time had come to go, and we’d been only watching.