By an excess of zeal, I was at Ouaisné Bay at three minutes short of 2.30 p.m. Clearly, the thing to do was look in at the pub on the shore and seek a fortifying drop of this and that. Sam was already there, fortifying himself diligently.

We grunted, then sat for a while in a silence broken only by the steady sip-sipping noise of two born landsmen about to embark on a sixteen-foot boat captained by another landsman with a Nelson-complex. George stamped into the bar and stared rudely at us.

‘Hullo, sailor!’ we cried in unison. We had not expected him to smile, so we were not disappointed.

‘Waiting for you for five minutes,’ he said. ‘Can you tear yourselves away? Got any dunnage?’

Sam’s dunnage consisted of a slim volume of verse wrapped in a plastic bag to keep typhoons out. Mine was a sou-wester and full oilskins (because the meteorologists had predicted calm, sunny weather), one flask each of hot soup, hot coffee and the cheaper sort of Scotch whisky, my sandwich-case and a pot of cold curried potatoes in case of shipwreck or other Acts of God. George carried a battered, professional-looking ditty-bag full, no doubt, of sensible things.

The boat, I must say, looked splendid in all its beginning-of-season paint and varnish and carried a huge, new outboard motor. George’s ubiquitous Plumber, who also acts as his waterman, helped us to launch; the new motor started without trouble and we sailed away across little dancing blue waves which stirred even my black heart. There was a light haze which was probably thicker further out, for the doomily-named La Corbière (‘The Place of Ravens’ – our friendly neighbourhood lighthouse) was giving out its long, grunting moan every three minutes, like a fat old person straining at the seat. We recked not of it. In no time we were the best part of a mile out and George bade us troll our lines for mackerel. We trolled, if that is the word I want, for half an hour, but to no avail.

Puffins, shags and smews passed overhead, puffing and shagging and doing whatever smews do, but they weren’t interested in that bit of water. Moreover, there were no gulls feeding, and no gulls means no fry and no fry means no mackerel.

‘There are no mackerel here, George,’ I said, ‘moreover, we are going too fast for mackerel; two or three knots would be better.’

‘Nonsense,’ he replied.

I kneaded a piece of Marmite sandwich and a piece of cheese ditto into a lump on a larger hook, added a heavier weight to my line and almost at once boated a fine big pollock. George glared. I slipped Sam a lump of my mixture and soon he, too, had a good pollock.

‘Keep it up, George,’ I said, ‘this is the perfect speed for pollock.’