Listen to the interview

Harbour Master Rob Parsons is back from his holidays and back on BBC Radio Cornwall this week, with the latest update from Newlyn Harbour.

You can find the show here on Listen Again:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07jb7hd – Jump to 2:36:05. You will need a BBC account to listen

 

Alternatively, you can find the transcript below

 

Let’s cross to Newlyn Harbour to join Harbour Master Rob Parsons…

Where have you been for the last couple of weeks?

I’ve been in Bordeaux with the family….

 

What’s been happening in your absence?

In my absence my deputy has been very busy. It seems that as soon as I left, everything broke.

The… van blew up, the boxwash failed, which is [difficult] as the stuff comes from Denmark, and unfortunately the phone lines went down, so we’re still waiting for engineers that, you know, you phone through on your mobile and they say “oh yes, there’s a fault in the line further down the road and we’ll get to you within… two weeks”, and that’s not great when you’re running the largest fishing port in England, but, you know, it is what it is.

The reports I’ve had really have been that we’ve had a lot of scallops in. The fishing has been relatively light with the weather that they’ve experienced, and this morning we only had 120 boxes, which was made up with mackerel, hake and a bit of white fish, so that’s been the story of my absence.

But the scallops have been plentiful to a point. They’ve been going to places like Fleetwood, some to Newcastle etc… so I’m hoping with the tide as it is now, the gillnetters will be out and we’ll start to land a bit more hake over the next week or so.

 

So what’s on the cards for the week ahead Rob?

Oh it’s fun fun fun for me because I’ve got my first day back yesterday and all of this week is a financial audit, so that was a great welcome back! But no, they’re fine, and they’re in all week so the office is busy, and outside the case is more of the same

We’ve ordered some new boxes from France and the print came in wrong, so I had to moan about that, but it looks like, hopefully they can’t collect these 4,000 boxes as to go all the way back, I think, would cost just as much as to print new ones, so I’m fingers crossed that with their mistake we might have blagged another 4,000 red boxes.

 

What was the mistake? 

The [name] placing on the box is important, because obviously when you mix them in with other boxes you need to see that [it is] your box, when they’re stacked, so if they put the name too low down, when you stack the boxes, all you can see is the colour, and there’s a lot of people who use the greys and the reds so it’s too low.

And I made it absolutely clear, because I made that mistake in my first year. Being naive, I said  “yeah just whack it in the middle” and then it got lost by the merchants and the fishermen, so I wouldn’t make that mistake again, and unfortunately they’ve made that mistake, having made it clear, but there we go, we’ve got 4,000 red boxes that are just sitting there waiting!

 

Lovely to have you back with us Rob, we’ll speak to you again in a week’s time.