This isn't crab fishing. This is a test of my manhood

I'm on a beach in western France. It’s so early the Atlantic Ocean hasn’t even shown up yet.

Instead, I’m tiptoeing across a sharp and slippery landscape of craggy rocks and sand. The patches of soggy green moss look like a boatload of drowned clowns.

To me, a beach at low tide is like the barnacle-encrusted underside of a repressed subconscious, wriggling and crawling with things best left to fester in private.

But today I’m here to take them home and eat them. This is my first stab at crab fishing, under the tutelage of my girlfriend’s dad, Michel, who has been doing this regularly for more than thirty years.

I follow his lead, picking my way through a pockmarked maze of rocks far from the beach. Michel doesn’t speak much English and I don’t speak much French. But nothing needs to be said. I know what’s going on here. This isn’t just some pleasant morning excursion on a weekend visit to Zoe’s parents’ place. Oh no. This is a test of my manhood.

I must prove to Michel that I am capable of providing enough food for his firstborn child using only my wits and raw, trembling hands. At least, enough for a lunchtime starter with mayonnaise.

Michel knows exactly what kind of rocks the little bastards like to lurk under. He lifts one gently with a short metal hook and turns it slowly clockwise. I don’t see anything except a cloud of sand.

But Michel knows the crab mind: he thinks laterally, just like they move. He pounces and slaps his hand in the shallow water a couple of metres away, producing a clearly pissed-off crab. It’s about four inches across and the same muddy colour as the rocks, furiously waving its little claw-fist.

Michel tosses it in the basket slung over his shoulder.

“Like that,” he says.

“Right,” I say.

I adjust my expression of bemused disgust into a hunter’s focused gaze and start turning rocks with my hook, scanning the sandy murk for movement. Nothing.

On my third try, something that looks like a rock makes a run for it. Considering the complicated articulation required to run sideways on eight legs, he moves like lightning. Michel points, mumbling urgently in French, moving to intercept. The crab scuttles madly for open water. If he gets just a few metres, he’ll be free and clear. I pounce.

The crab wriggles uselessly in my mighty grasp, and I hold it aloft with a squint of revolted satisfaction. In the ancient battle between man and medium-sized crab, I have once again shown them who’s boss. I drop him into the basket slung across my back. 

“Good,” nods Michel.

He turns back to the rocks, and I notice that his basket has a lid. My basket doesn’t have a lid. 

“So… he’s just going to stay in there?” I call out to Michel, who does a sort of shrug-nod.

I stand still and wait a minute, listening. The crab doesn’t seem to do anything, so I start quietly turning rocks, with two successes in quick succession.

I can’t see the crabs once they’re in the basket, which hangs worryingly close to my buttocks, but I can feel their weight shift as they now start shuffling about. They’re going to be lunch in a few hours and, somehow, they know.

The anxiety is infectious, and not having a lid doesn’t help. I can hear them plotting.

I don’t see why one of them couldn’t easily start tossing its comrades up onto my back with a deft pincer swing. Or they could build a small crab tower to the brim and haul each other up. Then they could just scurry up to my neck and take me out with a crustacean nerve pinch or swift crab-stab to the carotid.

When they’re not plotting an escape, I can hear them protesting, surprisingly loudly, that this entire situation is fundamentally unfair and perhaps I should try being in the basket and then see how I feel about lunch.

All this noise is distracting.

After about two hours, Zoe arrives at the beach to see how we’re doing. Have we got enough crabs to feed everyone at lunch? We do a headcount.

Michel has 28. I have three.

“Very good, darling,” she says, pinching my cheek patronisingly. “But I’m not sure that’s enough for the two of us.”

“To be honest,” I tell her. “I’m really not very hungry.”