Croft Madness & "The Don"

I was recently slandered publicly as a “buttfore” for my total lack of blog posts in the last month or so. After asking myself the obvious question “What’s a Buttfore?” I decided that the criticism was well deserved and it was probably time for another post. I guess I can just argue that the reason I didn’t write were because I was actually out doing all the stuff I would write about but in point of fact the real reason for the dearth of posts is the sheer madness that enveloped the croft for a period of approximately one month. This madness began, fittingly, with the worst day (weather-wise) that I experienced on the boat all summer, which was also the topic of my last post. The transformation of the croft from a peaceful sanctuary of inner reflection, deep thought and total personal freedom into the bustling summer rendezvous point that more closely resembles a hotel than a remote island cottage is one that I have never seen from the point of view of the invadee (the role my grandmother played so tirelessly for 20 years). I was always the rambunctious little child racing down from the village after just arriving on the island hooting and hollering my way right into my grandma’s kitchen. Until now I have never stopped to think about how terrifying that image must have been from the other perspective!

In a matter of a few hours the croft was piled high with luggage, groceries, general supplies and used teabags all signifying that the summer family gathering had well and truly begun. Over the next four weeks there was an ebb and flow of visitors that carried the house population as high as 22 and never below 8 with a walloping estimated total of at least 50 different family and friends joining in the festivities during that time. To say that this was a shock to my system would be a massive understatement. On the one hand, with the arrival of the family, I could look forward to four course meals, fresh baked bread and lots of entertainment. On the other hand I now hand to accept the fact that the house was no longer clothing optional and nothing would ever be in the place I had left it as a result of the manic tidying that seemed to be never ending. Those small things aside the overwhelming feeling when the hordes turned up for me was one of excitement. This excitement was much different than in any previous year because I was living at the croft and, for once, would be able to witness the entire month and still be around after everything died down again. I would liken it to an atomic bomb. I was not so involved in the launch preparations, largely because I was the one being bombed, but once the bomb made landfall I was right in the midst of the carnage. The clean up and recovery period is now well underway and most of the citizens have started to go back to living their lives in the way they had known before the explosion.

This is unfortunately the only picture I have of the dinner table and it wasn’t even during the busy time…at this point there are only about 15 people at the house and still 2 table extensions that have yet to be added

It would be impossible to catalog the entire goings on during this time but I’ll do my best to furnish you all with some of the more interesting details in my next couple of posts. I think it would be fitting to start with fishing seeing as that was basically the only thing that remained consistent for me throughout. The weather, which had been spectacular through June and most of July, began to take its first turn toward showing its vicious winter teeth. By the time we were into August the winds were significantly worse than I had experienced in the two months previous. Overall for the past 6 weeks I have been off almost as much time as I have been working and seventy-five percent of that is due to high winds. Even the days when I was working were increasingly becoming wild. One of the most significant impacts of a big gale, as far as fishing is concerned, is the unrest on the ocean that continues for a few days following the storm. I noticed that the biggest swells seemed always to come the day after we had been forced to stay ashore. Working during a storm the conditions are “choppy” but in the big day after swells it is very different, and much more tiring, experience altogether. I can’t think of a great word for it but maybe “undulating” comes the closest to describing it. Regardless of the word that best describes it the result was always the same…complete physical exhaustion.

This picture is a great one because it tells the story of a long hard day in the rain (note all our clothing hanging to dry) ending with spectacular rays of sunshine breaking through the clouds on our steam home.

I have since finished my season on the boat and in the end the weather had more to do with that than anything else. Jamie and I had planned that my last day would be the last Monday in August so that I could help with the landing from my last week and then have one last day out fishing. Once again Mother Nature proved that plans don’t mean shit when she feels like kicking up a fuss. I wasn’t to know it at the time but the Monday starting my final week actually turned out to be my last day on the boat. It was a pretty good day but I certainly didn’t give it the zest I might have if I knew that I wouldn’t be standing on that deck again. It wasn’t until that evening when Jamie phoned to say that the 3 of the next 4 days wouldn’t be fishing days and as for the one day that did look clear Jamie wouldn’t have a car to pick me up. As fast as I had been made a fisherman when I arrived on the island so now was I made a landlubber again.

I figure now is a good a time as any to put up a few random pictures that don't have fantastic stories behind them but are just worth a look...

This Conger Eel isn’t the biggest we caught but he was a good size, probably 3 feet long. This bastards are no joke and we have to dump them into the cage you see in the picture and set it aside to deal with when we have some spare time, it’s the kind of thing that you need to give all your attention to if you don’t want to lose a finger!

Me parking my ride (i.e. dragging the kayak 100 yards up the beach) after a tough day at the office

I knew I'd get a good picture of a really big starfish, this one is a solid 2-3 feet across.

This gooey stringy things are known to fisherman as "scorchers", simply put they are jelly fish tentacles that come flying out of the water attached to the rope and when it hits the winch they are sent catapulting in all directions. Get one of these in your eyes and your day is done. I had a slight sting on the arm once and it wasn't pleasant but luckily it wasn't serious. Apparently if you get one in your hair and don' notice it can run down into your eyes when you shower...needless to say I did my best to stay the hell out of the way when I heard Jamie yell "Scorchers!" every so often.

I feel that now, being done on the boat, it is an appropriate time to do a character sketch of a man who played a major role in my day to day activities but whom I very rarely had contact with. The man in question is the owner of the shellfish company that buys most of the shellfish caught in this area. I think I will call him Biff Dingo for the purposes of this blog. I have only had three encounters with Biff during my three months fishing and it is from those experiences that I color the brush with which I will attempt to paint you his picture. Bearing that in mind it is completely plausible that my assumptions and impressions of Biff could be entirely incorrect….but I’m pretty sure they aren’t…(apologies for no pictures of the landings but Scottish fisherman aren't too keen on cameras and landings are far to much work to accommodate a photo shoot)

I could hear the roar and strain of the engine even before I could see the big white truck emblazoned with name and logo of the local shellfish buyer “Biff Dingo Shellfish Ltd”. I felt the trucks pain as I watched how it was being hurtled around the narrow windy roads at top speed in order to keep on schedule to make the all important ferry to the mainland. Biff came racing down the pier almost daring you to believe that he wasn’t going to stop and then at the last minute slammed on the breaks and came to a skidding halt just a few feet from the edge of the pier sending a stack of fish boxes toppling over. He jumped out of the cab wearing massive blue and orange fishing boots and kicked a wooden palate to one side in disgust. All the fishermen kept steadily sorting and boxing their catches as they had been before he arrived. I had let the excitement of his entrance momentarily take my mind of the task at hand and returned to reality to the unpleasant sensation of a large velvet crab dangling from my finger, as if to somehow rub it in a second velvet dangled defiantly from a leg of the first. I swore, shook the pair lose and went back to sorting the box. The large velvets go into one box and the mediums into another to be loaded onto the truck. There are also the occasional egged, undersized or dead crab all of which we chuck in another fish box at our feet to dump back into the ocean at the end of the landing. The result is a feast for the hungry seagulls that have been hanging around just for that moment and also a reprieve for the few crabs that either had eggs or an amazing talent for appearing dead.

That morning all the boats had made their way to the pier half an hour early as per the request of Biff and we were all just finishing packing up the last of our catches when Biff pulled in. In typical fashion he was late and so the 30 minutes of sleep given up by everyone that morning was for naught. “Hurry up you lot, I need to go home and do a poo!” Biff Dingo now stood hands on hips on the lift bed of his refrigeration truck listening to the half hearted smattering of laughter from the fisherman in response to his coarse entry. Normally Biff sent one of his henchmen to take care of the landing but on this morning we were lucky enough to be graced by an appearance from the don of Mull shellfish himself…and we were impinging on his desire for a poo. Biff is the kind of guy that you meet and spend the whole time nodding and smiling as a torrent of mostly bullshit comes out of his mouth. As far as small to medium sized shellfish operations located on tiny Scottish islands go Biffs’ is hot shit…and unfortunately he knows it. He sets all the prices (based on god knows what scale) and drives all the fisherman mad with his inability to operate in a timely fashion and failure to provide them with the fish and crab boxes in which he demands everything be packed when he arrives at the pier. Biff’s role, as far as I can deduce, when he actually manages to drag himself off his toilet seat and down to the pier for landing is to lord over the proceedings like a small town judge in a one room courthouse. He normally doesn’t stray far from the bed of the truck where he can stand elevated above everyone else so they can all hear him as he pokes around the boxes already loaded into the truck making disparaging comments about the size, quality and general appearance of the shellfish inside them.

The complaints about the catch did not always end simply with words. One of my only other encounters began in the much the same way as the first with a landing and an impressive display of truck driving, this time reversing at top speed down the pier. Everything after that was going like usual and I was carrying boxes of brown crab up the pier to stack by the truck to be weighed. Suddenly a flailing velvet crab came whistling past my ear and bounced off the pier behind me. I looked up in time to see Biff grab another one from a box and hurl it out of the back of the truck. “I’ve had enough of these soft bloody velvets,” he roared as he sent yet another unsuspecting crustacean careening off the edge of the pier. What Biff was complaining about was that he felt some of the crabs he was picking up from the various fishermen were “soft”, meaning they were close to molting and so had weak shells. A crab in this state will rarely survive the long trip to Barcelona and can jeopardize the other crabs in the truck if it dies and begins to decay. On top of that the soft crabs do not have as nice a flavor as the hard ones. Surely the source of Biffs rage was some feedback from his Spanish contacts that there were too many dead crabs in recent shipments they had received. This complaint was now coming back to the fisherman in the form of the temper tantrum now on display on the pier in front of me. Biff definitely got everyone’s attention with his antics but I could tell that no one was feeling genuinely threatened. That suggested to me that it was a fairly commonplace explosion from Biff to send the message that he was keeping an eye on the size and condition of the shellfish he was picking up. He wanted every fisherman to know that he wasn’t afraid to make an example of them if he felt the quality of their catch had been declining. To top things off that morning a couple of our lobsters were refused because they didn’t meet the minimum size. At first it seemed to Jamie and I like another power display move but after taking a second measure of our own back on the boat we saw that they were indeed each one millimeter short. We took them with us and dropped them in Jamie’s secret lobster bank. The bank is a particular spot Jamie knows where smaller lobsters seem to thrive, “get ‘em next year, eh?” Jamie shrugged to me. The inherent optimism propagating that statement is the glue that keeps the fishing industry going. One cannot spend all ones time bemoaning the inevitable ups and downs of working the ocean because they would become all consuming. Jamie embodies the perfect balance of optimism and realism that are so important in his line of work and when all is said and done he probably will get ‘em next year.