(Scarborough, 17:07pm, August 1, 2007, f 4.0 - 1/250 - ISO 100)
I took this picture on a visit to Scarborough last year. I was there again a couple of weeks ago and the building is in the same derelict state – OK there's a different car blocking the entrance but you get the picture. The building is one of the few remaining stores that used to support a once thriving fishing industry. In fact you can just see the words Emulator on the wall – this was one of the last steam trawlers to sail out of Scarboro, tho it would have been scrapped (no heritage funds to turn old ships into museums in those days) about 50 years ago. One of my uncles used to skipper it. Another had a trawler torpedoed beneath him (he and his crew survived) back in 1915. (Better make that a great, great uncle.) Now, all that lies in wait for these buildings is a revival of the property market when no doubt they'll be turned into trendy living accommodation for weekend visitors.
where long lines once hung
now apartments and loft space
for the nouveau riche
It also reminds me of my old Aunt Margaret
FETCHING IN THE LINES
My Aunt Margaret was a fisherman’s wife who spent most of her adult life working in the warehouses on the Scarborough Fish Pier. When I was young, she was my baby-sitter and evenings would be spent listening to her holding forth on her two favourite topics. These were the Old Testament, with a strictly fundamentalist, Elim pentecostal interpretation – and the Soviet penal system.
She admired the fact that Joseph Stalin, like the Lord Jehovah, was quick to smite down anyone who opposed him.
After discussing the metaphorical symbolism of Adam and Eve’s nakedness, or some other tale from my Children's Illustrated Bible, we’d have a supper of soup, accompanied by large hunks of bread.
It always annoyed my mother (whose idea of a rigorous physical workout was – and still is – taking her mink coat for a walk) that Aunt Margaret would hack the loaf into wedges, rendering the leftovers impossible to toast the following morning.
I now realise that the long years spent in the raw cold on the pier, mucking the salt-slaked long lines clean of debris, then skaning the mussels from their shells to provide fresh bait, had turned the knuckles of Margaret’s hands into arthritic claws, incapable of wielding a more subtle knife cut.
