We had been stood at the bar of The Tin Pub for most of the afternoon drinking pints. It was sunny and hot outside but the bar with its thin walls of wood and corrugated iron was cool in the shade of the trees that towered over it. The door out into the back was open leading to the garden and lawn down to the sea and the boats sitting in Kitchen Cove. There were voices and the shouts of children from the beach and occasionally one of them would make the walk up along the dark track for a soft drink or ice lolly.

We weren’t drunk but some of the talk had started to curl at the edges.

‘What’s best?’ I asked him. ‘Old hooks or new hooks?’

‘It has feck to do this with the hooks,’ he said.’ You can shine them up if you like and they’ll go faster through the water and if a hook is bright enough then it might catch their eye but it’s the feathers that make the difference.What colour do you use?’

For the last week I had been using an old bent line left over from last year. The hooks were rusty and the feathers had been white once but were now bedraggled and grey.

‘A new set of feathers is feckin’ useless. You might be tempted sometimes you’ve not caught any fish to get some bright new ones all nice colours but there’s a smell to them in the water and the fish will keep away. If you’re not catching fish it’s because they’re not there and it is feck all to do with the feathers.’

‘There may come a time if you’re careless, your line gets caught on a rock and the line snaps or if you’re like that feckin’ idiot Jack Mackerel you don’t tie your knots and you need to use some new feathers.’

‘If you need to use new feathers then you need to get rid of the smell and the way to do that is piss on them. Take them out of their packet and tie them to the line and get the knots tight and then lay it straight out on the ground and give them a watering.’

He looks at his pint glass which is empty. ‘Tom Cutter swears you need to drink plenty of this stuff to make them work well.’

He looks up to Sean stood behind the bar.’ We’ll have two more now before the day’s finished.’

Sean turns to fill up the glasses and the man laughs.’ We’ll have these and maybe another and then we’ll go piss on some feathers!’