“Help me up with this,” groaned Kitty to her twin grandchildren.
“They’ll be here to collect it soon and it needs to be out on the pavement, ready for the pickup”
It’s Monday morning and the huge bundle that needs to be lifted is a trawl net which Kitty has spent the last week crafting at home. The twins help their grandmother and after much puffing and panting the net is laid to rest on the pavement outside the front door, like some sleeping sea monster.
The twins are allowed to play outside in the street, keeping an eye on their grandmother’s creation and listening for the lorry that will come to collect it.
The twins love the beginning of the week because then the “back room” has some light coming in through the window. Gradually, over the coming days, the room will become darker as their grandmother works on the trawl net suspended like some kind of thick, lace curtain from a pole across that one window.
Each week there is a pickup of the finished net plus delivery of the twine and instructions for the size required for the next week. Nets for cod, herring, mackerel, whatever is needed. Kitty’s nimble, but work worn fingers will work tirelessly. A beatster of the old school. Her younger working life spent in one of the beatster sheds down on Whapload Road.
The net making week starts again and Kitty enlists the help of her two young grandchildren. They will keep her furnished with threaded needles to aid her work as she winds the spools and knots the twine.
While the twins are at school and her husband Alfie is at work on the fish market, Kitty continues with her task. Her hands move automatically in a steady rhythm, her thoughts turn to times past…
Her footsteps echo and seem to bounce off the walls of Lighthouse Score as Kitty makes her early morning trek to the beatsters shed on Whapload Road. As she descends the steep pathway, the denes come into view. The early morning mist is clearing, as the sun’s first light appears.
Kitty dons her work apron and gazes from the door of the shed onto the harbour where dozens of trawlers are moored up, home from the fishing grounds.
She and her fellow beatsters are part of the life blood of this busy fishing town. It is them that mend and make the nets for catching the “silver darlings”.
A tarry smell hangs in the air of the shed, a long, wooden building. Hooks down the sides, a workstation for the women whose skills are in great demand.
Those skills will be in even greater demand in a few months when Britain finds itself at war. The Lowestoft beatsters, Kitty amongst them, will work tirelessly to produce camouflage nets for the naval shipping. The Lowestoft trawler men, Alfie included, will have their boats transformed into minesweepers and the brave fishermen of the town will risk their lives to help keep the seas safe.
The back door slams and the twins rush in from school. “What’s for tea nanny?” they cry.
