Last Friday, being short of something to do now that I have joined the serried ranks of the part-time worker, I drove to Eyemouth, in the Scottish Borders. The town was busy, and I found virtually the only free car parking space, in a small triangular car park behind the public conveniences. It was an uncommonly warm day for early autumn, with a soothing breeze from the west. However, the sun could not penetrate the shield of grey cloud that hung over the town. I walked the promenade. A young woman jogged along the sand, followed by another, running along with a miniature dog that looked more like a knitted rat. A blowsy woman with dyed blonde hair and the figure of Nurse Gladys Emmanuel of ‘Open All Hours’ fame wished me a good morning and I returned the compliment.
The harbour reeked of dead fish and seaweed. A rainbow slick of oil covered part of the surface of the water. The tide was low and the recently uncovered rocks were green with weed. I saw near the jagged rocks what I took to be a boulder of an exceptionally smooth and round aspect. Suddenly the boulder moved and I saw that it was a plump and glistening grey seal. It lifted its head, looked inquisitively at me with its splendid dog-face, and slipped under the rippling water without a sound.
The herring-gulls turned out to be quite tame, not rising shrieking madly as they normally do. They stood on waste bins and the timber barriers that stop cars carelessly driving into the harbour. They glared malevolently at me with their beady little eyes, the red spots on their vicious-looking beaks accentuating their slyness and insubordination.
I took a seat in the working
area of the harbour. A middle-aged
tourist with a stomach like the grey seal’s was enthusiastically taking
pictures of anything that moved, and a lot that didn’t, whilst his wife, in
horn-rimmed spectacles and Zoidberg flip-flops, sat patiently in the next bench
to me. A workman was caulking the hull of a fishing vessel and the din of his
hammer reverberated right across the harbour.
A column of smoke rose up from a nearby brazier, in which his tools were
being heated.
A most peculiar boat stood on
blocks at the side of the harbour. It
was ancient and constructed of what I took to be wrought-iron. The hull-plates were held with rivets and the
superstructure contained a huge spoked wheel, which I assumed was for the
dropping of primitive fishing nets.
Almost in the middle of the boat was a single, ridiculously tall and
slim funnel, betopped by a cap upon which a seagull was jauntily perched,
eyeing the town. The boat was the length of a cricket pitch, with a flat bottom
and a narrow beam. She had been
black-leaded all over, and she looked like the pithead windings from some tiny
obscure colliery in the Welsh valleys.
I wandered back to the promenade
and sat on a bench overlooking the sea.
I ate a Co-operative ‘Meal Deal’ for lunch. A couple of mute swans swam happily around
one corner of the bay. Three old women,
female equivalents of the ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ trio, sat cackling
and laughing on the bench across from me.
A couple of new age travellers, one male, one female, reclined on the
next bench, smoking herbal cigarettes. The smoke drifted on the wind into my
nose. It smelt like they were burning an
old tobacco-pouch. The female was a wizened gnome with a pony-tail and an
orange-and-black hooped sweater, whilst the man was an underweight stick-insect
in a baseball cap with a face burned almost black by the sun and as lined and
whorled as a sea-urchin. A very obese
couple stood against the sea-wall. I
hoped they wouldn’t push it over. They
both had dyed hair and they waddled along the promenade like twin penguins,
their flesh wobbling like jell-o.
A fishing-smack hove into view,
returning to the harbour. As it came
closer, I could see it was named ‘The Tsar’ and I was pleased to note
the correct spelling. Two men were on deck, fussing about with the morning’s
catch. One wore gold-rimmed spectacles
and an orange apron. I noticed that two
more seals were following The Tsar right into the harbour. Orange apron bent down, picked up a couple of
herring and tossed them overboard. Both
seals caught their fish as niftily as if they’d been fielding at short fine-leg,
and slid gracefully away under cover of the water to enjoy their dessert.
Eventually, it was time to
leave the town and I got up stiffly and reluctantly, having been absorbed in
people-watching for over an hour. I like
Eyemouth. It’s unpretentious. It might be a little seedy and down-at-heel
in parts, but it’s my kind of town.
