Every time I walk across Willeys bridge, by the Pells, I look into the water, and as often as not I see a few fair-sized fish. The other day I met an old man on the bridge. He was peering down into the water.
‘Mullet,’ he said.
There were loads of them. But these fish weren’t there when I was a kid. I should know. I used to fish here in the early seventies, and never saw a thing. Except one day a guy exposed himself to me under the bridge. But I never saw any mullet.
On the occasion in question, I was fishing with my friend Joe, and my line got into a hopeless tangle. There was a guy fishing under the bridge. I walked over and asked him if he had any spare line. He pointed to his bag. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘take what you want.’
I found a spool of line. When I looked up, I noticed that the guy had opened his flies and seemed to be holding his dick out.
I went back up the bank with my line.
Joe said, ‘Are you sure he wasn’t just having a piss?’
‘Pretty sure,’ I said.
We settled down to our fishing. So did the guy. Nobody caught anything. We just sat there, staring into the water. If there had been mullet, we’d have seen them.
Which makes me wonder: why are they here now? WL