February 2022

Why I won’t risk falling over while conducting funerals or marriages It’s coming up for six years since I first began conducting funerals, mostly here in the Shetland Islands. Somewhere between 80 and 90, I think, the last in Unst, Shetland’s northernmost island, at the start of the year. These were mostly secular funerals, but…

“On the plane, you think you’re going to die; on the boat…you wish you were dead…” I’ve been remembering the old ships, the P&O vessels that used to sail between Aberdeen and Shetland come hell or the highest of winds. Battered old third or fourth-hand ro-ro ferries, rusty and rolling like buckets in the surf.…