Salt Story update #2

To continue on the book thing, about two weeks ago Old Salt, Bernie and I were filmed for a book trailer. Apparently book trailers are like movie trailers, sort of. I think they exist mainly to help online buyers click 'add to shopping trolley' but also to outline the premise of the book in a visual media, over about two minutes. (Sorry, I'm trying so hard to concentrate but I have a trembling, brindle, chicken-killer Wolf at my feet. There is a storm coming tonight. He's placing one paw on my lap and pleading with me to save him.)

Okay. So I rang Old Salt and told him they wanted to make a book trailer and that we had to go fishing again. He was into it. He's been living out at the salmon camp since February so we agreed to meet there. The film crew drove down from the city. They followed me along thirty or forty kilometres of winding roads to the camp. When we turned up at the beach, we nearly ran over a tribe of kids and dogs on the dirt track.
"Is that your dog?" one of the urchins asked me as I pulled up, pointing to a black dog.
"No, it's Old Salt's dog. Hi Bernie, Hi!" I cried to the retriever. I haven't seen him for ages and we lolloped towards each other. Big hairy hugs. Bernie is one of those dogs who still has all his bits and the personality of one who doesn't.

I introduced the film crew to Old Salt. Him and Parsley were sitting on plastic chairs, chatting, looking out to the reefs. Caravans, buses and tents were crouched all over the place. Toddlers trundled around on plastic toy motorbikes. The big black dog who always brawled with (the now disappeared) Digger yelled at me and then stalked away.

We drove around the four wheel drive tracks to the next beach where they were to film me walking along white sands and dunes, looking windswept and interesting. "So did you have to outline theoretical frameworks in your assessments at uni?" I asked them on the way. "Like, do you get into Foucault, or Derrida's stuff? Lacan? Bataille? What about Barthes on the Photograph? Camera Lucida? I'm reading that now. Wow." I could feel them crunching in the back seat of the ute as we crashed through the karri forest track's corrugations and potholes, groping for their delicate camera equipment and perhaps thinking, didn't she write a book about being a deckie? Who the fuck is this woman?

After they filmed me walking up the beach and down and back up again, Old Salt drove down with his boat and it was time to launch.

It didn't go that well. Old Salt and I haven't launched a boat off the beach for six months or more. I nearly drowned him on film. Damn. My only defense is that launching a seventeen foot boat into surf is always a debacle, well for Old Salt and I it is anyway. And see those huge waves? That was just low tide. Wait til the tide and the next set comes in. Gnarly.
Once upon a time I was driving the trailer back up the same beach after dropping Old Salt and the boat into the surf. I heard shouts and screams and saw people running towards my wheel tracks. I thought I'd run over someone's kid or dog but the shouters were running towards Old Salt. He'd been toppled by the boat in the waves and knocked unconscious.

Yeah, well. Anyway, hopefully the bit where I nearly turfed him into the surf this day won't be on the book trailer. But as soon as I get some footage, I'll put it up on A WineDark Sea, near drownings and all.
Promise.