In many ways statues are a daft idea, unless they are a bit wonky or abstract. When they go for realism it doesn't quite work for me. Sorry Michelangelo I'm sure you did your very best. So, this is a fisher woman statue in the town of Nairn, it popped up in my Twitter feed as things often do, providing more random thought provocation. I did think about my two old grannies, now long gone, born two centuries ago almost. One was proper fish-wife, from Lerwick to Yarmouth she followed the shoals, the other less so but she was still working hard in a struggling fishing community. Times were hard.
I don't much like this sombre statue, not sure what it's supposed to convey. I guess it might make people on their caravan holidays stop and think for a moment on their way to the fish and chip shop, like Mollie Malone in Dublin. My grannies were well worn down by the fishing, the hard work, the fickle nature of the industry, the exploitation of labour and successive government's indifference to the workers. Meanwhile fishing remained (and remains) one of the most dangerous professions.
There was little romance in gutting wet, stinking fish on a frosty afternoon on a cold quayside ... for pennies and broken fish. OK, maybe the statue is a reasonable tribute but it doesn't really do justice to the lifestyle and industry that came and went as the unsustainable methods and get rich quick boat owners destroyed the fish stocks and left a hollowed out set of communities*.
*See also mining, ship building, iron and steel, railways, engineering/car manufacture, oil and agriculture. A kinder, gentler form of "Highland/Lowland clearance.
The Sunday morning (quiet) rant is now over.
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