the boats are out slow and picturesque in the bay - that is one or two boats. I forget how huge the world's population is. Two or three small boats would be busy. Meeting several cars on the road would be rush hour. I teach keep-fit on occasion to elderly people. It is quite common for us all to stop stretching to the ceiling, or relinquish our spinal twists on the odd sighting of a passer-by. Usually it is the same woman at the same time, en route to pick up her son from the village school. Six pupils started p1 this year. There is worry the school will not survive. I have done creative writing classes with elderly people and love hearing their stories of how things were. For one there were schools dotted up the coast every few miles, and the snow got so high they had to tunnel themselves out, and one woman was in her snow bound house for ten days, and the helicopter dropped baby food and how long or not the snow would last depended on the overnight frost. Here I am, the start of September and still a good heat to the sun and yet I am full of snow. Is that a tendency amongst writers, the first hint of autumn and there we are, corking the red wine and snuggling down by the log fire? I see the sea from my window, I don't mean as a distant glisten but as a close up hugeness. That doesn't change apparently but I may have to stop eating salmon. I mean, it doesn't sit well the closer up to salmon I get. I see them in the river, waiting for a spate so they can get up the river to spawn and die. And I see the same bloody man day in day out and he doesn't look hungry that's for sure and there he is, fishing, endlessly fishing. You don't need a permit at the confluence of river and sea and all the mighty salmon are there, waiting to complete their cycle and whack! One after the other, up we go, hit on the head with a stone we go. Can he eat that much? And yet, I smile! He is such a jolly fellow. Bad luck, I mutter under my breath, smiling. Then I think, for God's sake, what is one man fishing compared to trawlers combing the sea and lifting thousands in one scoop? I see them jump in the sea, or rather out of the sea. I see them jump in the river. How hunted - except on a Sunday. No line cast then. Or am I overly sentimental? Do the salmon offer themselves gladly to our feasting?

I know not. I eat fish, I see them hunted, it pains me. I eat fish.