November in my 2027 calendar – now available here
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“Fishermen are Weird”
I swam one new year’s morning at Portishead. We swam over to what is called Portishead Pier, though in truth it’s really just the remains of the footings of the pier, and on a high spring tide can be entirely submerged. From land, it is gated, and the combination lock is known only to fishermen.
The fishermen studiously ignored us as we, though not knowing the code to the gate, still demonstrated easy access to the pier by swimming over to it, climbing onto it, faffing about a bit, jumping back in and swimming away again. They looked neither impressed, nor particularly upset, neither welcoming, nor actually angry. They looked like men resigned to being in one place for long periods of time, for fun, and doing nothing very much. No doubt we looked like idiots who spent very short periods of time in cold water, for fun, and made an unnecessary fuss over it.
Back at Clevedon Marine Lake we gave a full report of course. We told the tale of the fishermen, the pier, and how you can swim over it on a high spring tide a handful of times in the year.
But the best comment of the day was Chris pondering the silliness of fishermen and saying, whilst donning budgie-smugglers in January “it’s weird how they seem to do the same thing all the time, regardless of the weather.”
Postscript
For reasons of aesthetics and decency, I have drawn Chris dressed for swimming and not actually putting on budgie-smugglers: it’s not that kind of calendar. I’ve also had to show the fishermen at Clevedon Marine Lake instead or this picture simply wouldn’t have made sense. We do get them. They are, I suspect, of a similar nature to the Portishead fishermen.
