Nice Catch!

Watching what goes on outside our boat is better than having a TV anyday! Yesterday I heard a rather loud SPLASH and thought that perhaps someone else was having a swim ~ it's been happening a lot lately, there's a funny sounding couple that keep diving in and swimming around a bit further down. It baffles me, the water is so disgustingly murky and polluted, but they seem to love it.

So back to the splash, I opened the hatch, peered out, with a bright and chirpy 'Morning' to the regular fishermen who were already three hours into their morning fish and saw a man with a pair of shorts on and a woolly hat, holding a line and tugging on it. A couple of people were with him, watching for whatever he was about to haul up. Nothing was coming, his line was stuck. I thought he was the same man that had been pulling out motorbikes and cycles further down the canal a few months earlier, but he said he was just a regular fisherman who was fed up with his line getting stuck and so had come down with a rake to try and fish out whatever it was that kept tangling up his line. Fair play.

The only problem was that his line was stuck. Well and truly stuck. I noticed that the funny sounding couple who loved swimming were actually sitting on the edge of the canal further down and mentioned that perhaps they would dive down for him to try and untangle it. He left his line with one of the keen onlookers and ran down to ask them for the favour. They declined saying they'd just dried off. This meant his only other option was to get in there himself. So he took off his shoes and started to lower himself in.

Now the other fishermen were showing some interest, in the kind of 'shake-your-head in bafflement at the crazy things some people do' way. I asked him if he was mad and hoped he would go home and have a shower afterwards. He said it was quite refreshing and he wasn't going to swallow any of it and didn't have any open wounds. Then up came a bike, his helper hoiked it out, quite a nice looking one at that, if you saw through the oily gunk. The line was still caught though, as he pulled it further, up popped a wheel of a shopping trolley...

'Ah, I remember when the boys threw that in, you should keep looking though, there were definitely two!' So he pulled himself out of the water, for the trolley was caught up in his rake and untangled it all, then threw it back in and caught the other trolley. 'That's great' he said, 'now I've got a clear path to fish in.'

I popped out for the afternoon. When I came back I asked if he'd caught anything more than the bike and trolleys, 'nah' was his reply, but he seemed quite happy enough. No real edge of seat clinchers here I'm afraid, but this is the real -life TV!

Fishermen

Now, those that know me will know that I am the daughter of a notoriously bad fisherman, not bad as in no good at catching things but bad as in one of those that had a women in every port and has more children than fingers and toes ~ I kid you not, but that is another story, and I'd better not get into that one right now or this post will end up as a harrowing novel!

Fishermen.  What does that word conjure up for you?  Quiet, introverted, peaceful chaps, at one with the earth and water, pursuing a relaxing hobby? Perhaps if we were moored somewhere up in the Pennine's that would be the case, but central London?  Let's see, noisy, rowdy, always up for a fight, often throwing each other in the canal, complete alcoholics, very friendly mind and mostly useless at catching anything except blue bags and the odd scooter.  Perhaps I'm over-generalising and it's not really like that at all, in fact maybe it's the drunks that go to the local church's AA group and then gather for a can or ten on the canal that join the fishermen and give them a bad name!  Yes I think that is it.  There are some very pleasant fishermen that come and sit opposite the boats, all day, catching very little, but peacefully passing the time away.  Polite and civilised conversation comes from their mouths, if anything at all.  It doesn't take much though for them to get involved with the local drunks, and it's not exactly like they can walk away, they're all set up for a day's fishing, with their chairs, rods, nets and gubbins.

I don't think that I'm complaining here, I'm just painting the picture.  We don't have a television on board, and really there is no need, for when they get going, the conversation and activity is quite enthralling and entertaining ~ often x-rated!

Here's a sneaky picture of a group of them, some of them are new faces, some are regulars. It's a relatively sober picture...

One chap lost his leg last year and now has a prosthetic one.  When he first lost his leg, before the replacement part came, he had a motorised wheelchair which was very handy for him to pop up to the local off licence in for more beer.  He's definitely one of the louder characters, but also a fisherman.  See, it's wrong to put people in pigeon holes.  (Most definitely, too small for starters).  The couple on the left are not fisher folks, they are without doubt drinkers, the women can get really lary and scary with it! I'm relieved I'm on this side when a woman kicks off after one too many...