It was never the way I intended to go, bludgeoned to death by a full grown salmon falling from a clear blue sky. Except of course it wasn't a clear sky and the salmon was already dead, unlike me. Every so often I get these thoughts, in receive mode as it were when the signals are strong and clear. Good atmospherics and word balloons. Premonitions in a haze. Voices and visions, unexpected situations with unintended consequences. Turns out that a freezing, falling fish exerts a fierce physical force.
So it was that when I fell flat post the salmon strike, there came a long moment of silence and icy stillness, like a bright Arctic morning witnessed by nobody. For me time stopped as it had already done for the poor fish, those around froze and gasped. Unhappy witnesses. His fish fate was already sealed, mine was more of a chance happening. Uncovered by the current crop of risk assessments and safety equipment, I was alone and exposed and the fish had hit me fair and square. Then I hit the hard floor.
A black hole opened up and swallowed me and the rest is unreported history despite this actual (vague) report. The coroner was philosophical and calm, the local press hysterical in a parochial way that added no value, social media remained indifferent, it seems my name and demise counted for little; "how could this sort of thing have happened?" they whispered. Maybe some money changed hands. Don't ask me I'm a dead man killed by a dead fish and I'm no F Scott Fitzgerald either. File under "unexplained industrial accidents in the Scottish seafood business sector".
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