February 2021

A warm drying wind from the south has wiped away the snow. It’s a day for being outside. It’s a day for wandering and wondering. Today we have the remnants of a southerly gale, blustering and buffeting up from Scotland and all that lies beneath. Three weeks of refrigeration and Daz whiteness has gone, and…

The central heating’s broken, we can’t have a launch party, and anyway, how do you celebrate the release of a book about death, funerals and a short history of embalming? It Tolls for Thee: A guide to celebrating and reclaiming the end of life. The old Hillswick cemetery is iced in, wind-hammered, the two weeks…

As fears grow over the risk to our islands’ from loaded tankers sailing too close to shore, the first time an oil tanker nearly came to grief on Shetland was in 1920. Twenty-eight years ago Shetland was reeling in the aftermath of the Braer wreck. Those of us who were in the South Mainland  during…