Maybe, being at the whim of forces so immense, makes us more aware of how special and fragile our life is.
I went up to the Isle of Man on an old Lowestoft sailing trawler, the Keewaydin, recently, on the back of a near-gale, and noticed how the people back on shore looked as if they were only half alive, compared to the crew.
That old word ‘landlubber’ aptly describes the blobby formlessness of many non-sailors. Mall fodder.
I used to notice that local fishermen were more likely to be original in their thinking than most folk.
There was something fundamental about their pronouncements.
Perhaps their lonely hours at sea, one slip away from the fathomless, made them weigh things more carefully.
If you have an encounter with the sea that is more dramatic than most, the mark is emblazoned on you.
Like Harry Potter, you carried its vivid scorch.
A fisherman in Aberystwyth carried this mark as a pale intensity. His boat had run aground in a winter storm and he’d only escaped by by swimming ashore clutching a fender.
Even I got it.
I had tried once too often to sneak between some July gales, and got swept out on a sudden south-easterly.
The lifeboat from New Quay got me out of that predicament.
It was days later that the impact of the experience truly struck home.
There is another kind of mark that you need not let stain you.
It is easy to take on a grim callousness as you strain hard against wave and tide.
Fishing for a living, with its contradictory mix of human regulation and willful weather, can make fishermen surly and impatient and cruel.
The dictum of uncertainty is to take as much as you can get.
Our culture has never encouraged the economy of its smaller farmers, fishermen, or foresters.
Also the crabs and lobsters who crunch each other blindly, and the fish who eat any other if they will fit in their jaw do not set an example of natural kindness to follow.
I am a different man from the one who first fished off a beach in Llanrhystud. I cannot justify greed by need to provide.
More than that, my connection to natural places feels stronger.
Moving to Pembrokeshire was me forcing to change.
I appreciate the sea, the coast and the forest as magical and sacred.
If I catch a lobster or bass from a particular place it is a gift.
Part of us knows this all along. Expedience lets us deny it.
All the time though, that old grimness is there.
Like a worn spanner, it is probably worth keeping to hand.
Just in case.
If you're looking for work,
Try and find something better
Today you can't shirk
-What's tomorrow's weather...
You're better as clerk
Typing a boring letter
Than dreading the dark
Will shorten your measure.
[the winkle song]