The Loneliness of the Long Distance Book Runner by Bill Rees Page B

aligned in two rows either side of an aluminium gangway wrapped in meshing. At one end, looking as if it had been tapped on as an afterthought, floats a shed where refuge is sought when storms stir.
    In the boat we laboriously scoop and scatter foul smelling yellow pellets, using short handled shovels to extract them from big plastic bags. Adorning the bags is a picture of a salmon arched athletically above BP’s insignia.
    We saturate the salmon congested waters with mackerel, processed at great expense, Alex has told me, and then compressed into tablet form. Each bag contains seventy poundsof mackerel. Wrist muscles throb. We diligently scatter the pellets in an even spread, whereas Jake isn’t above surreptitiously tipping out, in one cumulative plop, all the contents of the bag.
    The waves are rising, but haven’t yet reached a menacing height. The boat chugs contentedly enough towards a more sheltered part of the loch where the company holds the bigger salmon captive. Today there is to be a harvest. Lorries descend on the company’s station, two inlets down the jagged coastline.
    Some landlocked lakes teem with tiny salmon, tricked into accepting the freshwater environment as the river stage of their life cycle. Simon says that hired helicopters haul these fish out to be conveyed rapidly to salt loch waters. Chemicals in the tablets will turn the farm reared salmon the pink colour that wild salmon acquire naturally.
    ‘How many?’ asks Jake.
    ‘A biggy. One thousand six hundred,’ Alex answers, probably thinking of his bonus. Mark sighs, appreciating the magnitude of the toil involved. The wind strengthens. Tethered to the platform, the boat begins to pitch and roll. We watch the approach of a barge carrying crates half filled with ice. The barge is being pulled along by a squat craft powered by a noisy engine. The crew is a youthful bunch of burly locals. They assemble two waist-high benches near the crates before untying the ropes. One net is heaved upwards, so as not to disturb an outer net, which is interwoven with wire to deprive the seals of an easy meal.
    The salmon splash madly, as if sensing their fate. Self-torpedoing, the salmon are easily ensnared in landing nets. The fish are tipped out, wriggling and gasping, onto the first bench, soon slippery with the slime of blood, scales and water. Claspedby their tails, the fish are dealt blows by Alex’s club-wielding gang. Only the heads are battered, the odd eye is dislodged.
    When they are flung onto the second bench, it is then our job to propel the dead and dying fish into the ice packed crates while keeping count. It is tiring work. Once begun, the cull always needs to be completed.
    The barge is set loose on the sea, bound for the old barn that reeks of creosote. Beside the barn is a slipway, marking the culmination of a sharply undulating road that runs behind Jake’s cottage. It tests the nerve of the lorry drivers charged with transporting the fish to supermarket.
    We sit in the floor of the shed, which inside is lined with posters that show the various stages of sea lice infestation. Mark makes the tea while Jake and Alex eat Mars Bars. Farming the seas burns calories. Alex is pleased with the haul.
    ‘How much do you want for the books?’ His question takes me by surprise. I hope he’ll appreciate the effort I’m putting in. I try my luck.
    ‘Three hundred pounds?’
    Okay. Deal done. Simon thinks Alex wants the books more for show, to give a sheen of intellect to a job that is essentially labour intensive.
    I find it difficult to envisage Jake trudging back out for the afternoon feed.
    But he does. The rain stings our faces as we go our separate ways, dragging bags to our assigned nets. On we work. Black smoke is coiling into the sky. The company is burning the discarded plastic bags.

A Book and a Memory, Chirk Castle Bookshop, 2004
    Madeleines, dipped in tea, are famous for sparking involuntary memories in Proust’s novel À la recherche