Hurting. Determined. And alone.
Tales from the supermarket, and from Hedley's Crotch
I read a lot of fish labels. Yes, that’s me standing at the fish fridge in Aldi or Tesco or wherever, turning over pack after pack and frowning, then putting the packet back. I’m frowning because once you read a supposedly informative label, you have to wonder. Here is an example from Random Supermarket:
Trawls, purse seine or hooks. Sometimes labels are even vaguer. Caught in “Greece, Turkey.” Sometimes they give apparent useful detail. The Food and Agriculture Organization has helpfully divided the oceans into Major Fishing Areas, and sometimes the labels tell you that too. This cod was caught in, dunno, Major Fishing Area 34. But “because of the methods used, it may have been caught in neighbouring areas.” So, fishing area 31, perhaps?
I wrote an earlier version of this where I said that all this information is a smokescreen. I wrote:
“How is a consumer supposed to know the varying benefits or not of a catching a fish with a gillnet or with a trawl or with hooks and lines? How do they know which method gets the most bycatch? How do they know which method avoids catching juvenile fish so you have a next generation to fish? How do they know what the seabed conditions are in a Major Fishing Area that is thousands of square miles of ocean, and what damage a bottom trawl might be doing?
They don’t, and they can’t, which is why these fish labels are stupid. They are as meaningful as the officials at airport security telling you to take your shoes off. They are as meaningful as the lad in the chip shop in Skipton who when I asked where his fish came from said “the sea.””
I scheduled this to be emailed out earlier today. Then first thing this morning, my waking brain told me to cancel it because my waking brain had had a vague memory. The Good Fish Guide. And here it is, and as far as I can tell, it’s quite brilliant.
You can search by fish, and then get info about where it was probably caught and — hurrah — what each of the possible methods entail. Bottom trawling bad. Hook and line better, at least for the sea-bed, if not for the fish. To all those people who have told me that it’s OK, they’re eating mackerel for lunch, and I have watched their faces fall when I said much of it is not considered sustainable any more, sorry, but it’s not me:
“3. OK” means “needs improvement” and you should seek an alternative if you can. Why? Because overfishing, of course.
I have never seen anyone standing in front of the fish chiller with their smartphone urgently checking which packet to pick, but at least it can happen.
Now I’ll just try not to be embarrassed that I didn’t think of this earlier, two years into researching a book about fish.
Weeds and trees
Last month, I received The Letter. The Letter — it’s actually an email — is what you are sent by the allotment inspections team when your plot is considered to be unacceptable. It can be unacceptable in a few ways: too weedy, too wild, too ignored. It can also have something called “a non-productive tree,” a term I profoundly object to. All trees clean the air and especially in a filthy city like Leeds, where air pollution is high, all trees are therefore productive. A local shopkeeper near my street recently filed an unbelievable plan with the council regarding a strip of wasteland he owns that adjoins my terrace (terrace here being a street, not a mansion balcony). He claimed he wanted to grow vegetables, and therefore he needed to cut down twelve trees. Twelve trees! Of course we all objected, not least because the man is a charlatan who sells out-of-date dairy and ancient sweets. Once my neighbour bought a packet of crisps from him, got it home and noticed it had been stapled together and put back on the shelf.
So the man’s proposal was nonsense, and we all knew it was nonsense. We are certain he wants to build on the land. On my terrace, there is a conservation scientist, a lawyer and a journalist, so we managed to create some persuasive and authoritative objections, pointing out that Leeds City Council’s environmental plans include planting thousands of trees; that the trees were part of an important habitat for wildlife; that they were an effective barrier against the nearby noisy pub garden (OK that last one was a bit Nimbyish). We also pointed out that elms are rare enough that a healthy one should never be removed.
But who cares? The council decided that as the trees did not have Tree Protection Orders on them, they could be felled, and they were. And now I spit at the shop every time I pass it.
On my plot, I was prepared to fight to the death — that is, to argue my case before the terrifying committee — about my “non-productive tree.” Then a friend who is on the committee pointed out that it was in my contract that only a certain percentage of my plot could be “non-productive”, and I already have a large rose and camelia bed. That still didn’t dissuade me. But then she said, “Anyway they’ll just send Phil round with a chainsaw.”
I capitulated, and sawed half the offending Christmas tree that I had planted and that looked quite happy in my orchard, and my heart broke a bit.
So I very much liked this piece by Alys Fowler in the Guardian today, on Laid-back Gardening. Leave the weeds, watch the worms, share with nature. I thought exactly this today at 6.30 am when I was on my knees pulling out couch grass (which I have just learned is pronounced cooch huh?) and noticing yet again how many worms were hanging around the roots. Nothing like constantly apologising to worms to wake you up.
I would like to leave the grass and the docks and the dandelions, but an allotment is not a private garden, and if I did, I would get another Letter. Don’t feel too sorry for me. Compared to my plot neighbours, with their paving stones and their woodchipped paths and their neat raised beds, my plot is still wild. But not wild enough.
Animal hero of the week: Sergeant Reckless
She was a Mongolian mare, sold for $250 by a Korean stableboy who needed to buy his sister an artificial leg after she stepped on a landmine. She was chestnut, with a white blaze (along her face) and three white socks. She was bought by the Recoilless Rifle Platoon, 5th Marine Regiment, US Army, to be used as a pack-horse and ammunition carrier. The stableboy had called her Morning Flame (and cried when he sold her); the Marines called her Reckless, after the heavy and terrifically destructive Recoilless weapons that their unit used. The men took to her, letting her roam the camp, and she took full advantage, eating anything. “She was known to eat bacon, buttered toast, chocolate bars, hard candy, shredded wheat, peanut butter sandwiches and mashed potatoes.” As well as scrambled eggs, beer and poker chips. Col. Andy Geer wrote about her in the Saturday Post in 1953, about her habit of seeking shelter when it rained, but not in her stable.
Upon her appearance, a marine would say, “Here’s Reckless,” while the rest simply pulled up their legs or shifted a sleeping bag or two to make room.
She was given military training, learning to lie down under fire, and to run for a bunker when she heard “incoming.” But still when she first experienced the weapons firing from her side, during fighting near a place improbably called Hedley’s Crotch, she freaked.
“Though loaded down with six recoilless rifle shells, she initially "went straight up" and all four feet left the ground the first time the Recoilless Rifle was fired. When she landed she started shaking, but Coleman, her handler, calmed her down. The second time the gun fired she merely snorted, and by the end of the mission that day appeared calm and was seen trying to eat a discarded helmet liner.”
In battle, Reckless was splendid. She learned the required routes quickly and would set off on her own carrying ammunition and weapons, under heavy and appalling bombardment and fire. In the three-day battle of Battle of Panmunjom-Vegas, she was hit by shrapnel twice, but she still made 51 trips carrying up to eight 10kg shells. On one day, she covered 35 miles. This battle was so terrible, soldiers could not compare it to any other. Col Geary: “Enemy in-coming artillery and mortar shells were judged to be at the rate of 500 rounds a minute. Losses were staggering. Capt. John Melvin’s D Company of the second battalion (over 600 men) was shot away from a full complement to sixteen men in less than two hours. E Company of the same battalion suffered nearly as badly.”
For her courage under fire, she was given the rank of corporal, then sergeant, then staff sergeant. She also got two Purple Hearts and lots of other gongs. Of course she became famous back in the US, where she had never been and nearly didn’t reach as she was so seasick. She recovered, enough to eat her new horse-blanket adorned with medals. Forza, Reckless!
“When the 5th Marines held a regimental parade honoring the heroes of the Vegas battle, Reckless passed in review with her unit. She had become a celebrated marine. Generals and colonels came to call on her; newspapermen interviewed her and she appeared on television.
None of this, however, can be said to have affected the distance between her ears. She was content to do her job, live on marine chow and, of a hot day, have a beer before turning in.”
In 1957, the Saturday Post published a short update.
“Last month Andy Geer got a phone call from Camp Pendleton, California, where Reckless had been pastured with other horses, announcing that the Sergeant, who is lady, had that day foaled a son, named Fearless.” (At least they didn’t call him Feckless.)
Staff Sergeant Reckless died in 1968 while under general anaesthetic, after she had fallen onto some barbed wire. No-one dared stuff her but she became at least five statues.
One statue incorporates hair from her tail and displays a quote from her fellow Korean War veteran, Harold Wadley:
The spirit of her loneliness and her loyalty, in spite of the danger, was something else to behold. Hurting. Determined. And alone. That’s the image I have imprinted in my head and heart forever.