Haaf

The ‘haaf net’ fishermen of the Solway Firth know the shape of the estuary bed. They know where to put their feet. Piles of stones, a bit like the ‘cairns’ found on top of mountains, mark the underwater topography letting them know where they can stand safely. At low tide these stone piles appear.

The fishermen decide who will stand where in the river by using dominoes flipped in the hand of a chosen man. Often they’ll arrive just in time for the tide, racing from their jobs or between doing different chores, they'll sneak away to fish.

The clock is important to the haaf netters, they know the time of day by the tides. In this sense they have more in common with sailors than the anglers found further inland.

One of the older men who'd been haaf netting all his life told me he also collected pocket watches as a hobby. He talked to me in detail about the refined internal mechanisms of these antique watches whilst chest deep in the cool weight of the firth.

About a mile away on the estuary bank stood the radio transmitting towers of Anthorn radio station, its from there they regulate the atomic clock. Tall, spindly, circular and fragile amongst the crops, like a crown dropped in a field.

Feeling the tide push past, it was as though at once there were many clocks ticking ; the regulating rhythm of the tides going in and out, the salmon making their migration around our bodies, the atomic clock and the pocket watches of the collector. They were all ‘ticking’ and the water was getting deeper.