Sunday 4 June

Staying in Hospital Cover because of the weather. Fortune dances in the wind around the snubbed anchor chain. Going tomorrow if forecast is OK, so I get food ready – cutting, slicing, chopping, bagging – carrots, onions and a cabbage. Also red pepper and garlic and ginger chopped fine for tonight’s stir fry – which is a fantastic success with Jack, due mostly to his nephew’s BBQ sauce! (And a bit of me.)

Have read Servants of the Fish by Myron Arms, an intelligently researched and written account of the collapse of the cod fishery off Newfoundland. Due to overfishing, what a surprise! And even fishing out the spawning grounds, would you believe? Like Easter Island the last tree. Now they’re busy clearing down the food chain, and in another of J’s books, I saw one man say “Maybe we don’t want the cod back”, because they’re wiping everything else out to make a current living, and can’t wait to see whether the North Atlantic cod can ever recover – maybe 20, 30 years, if that? They never recovered off Cape Cod. Tragedy and greed.

Also reading Ahab’s Wife, by Sena Jeter Naslund, and I’m back 180 years to Nantucket Island and whaling days. Beautifully written – lyrical and weirdly bizarre. Might be a girls’ book – J tried it and didn’t like it.

History is all around in New England. Many names are Indian, or ‘New’ something from the settlers, names copied from home, whaling days of the 19th century, and more current, Martha’s Vineyard – all shades and ghosts.