Zetlandic diary, week ending 19 November

Everything’s been off all week, pretty much. Ferries to and from the mainland, freight boats, most of the inter-island links. Supermarket shelves are being stripped. Fresh fruit has vanished, scurvy is endemic and there are reports of cannibalism in Ollaberry…

Well, not quite. Perhaps a few fingernails are being bitten as roof slates do that castanet flutter and the occasional caravan whisks past a second floor window

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It’s been a week o’ wadder. Winds have been constant around 40-50 mph in our neck of the bog, gusting to 70 and beyond. Seas are very rough, rummelling up in the big south easterly. But we know these conditions. Fences are secured with condemned Citröen Berlingos, garden furniture weighed down with surplus reestit sheep. As dusk creeps in after lunch, I make sure there’s a flashlight handy (“is that a torch in your pocket or are you just…”)  The power can’t last much longer. It’s already been off in some of the outer isles for days. Is there petrol in the generator? Enough. And I can tune the Rayburn to cope (after years of chimney fires); we’ve seen a lot worse. 

There was the infamous new year storm of 1991/92, when tourist couple David Caseley and Katherine Buyers were killed in winds gusting to 200mph. They were camping overnight in a birdwatchers’ bothy at Hermaness in Unst. It was completely destroyed. There was extensive damage throughout the isles, with 25 families having to be rehoused. Most fishermen were safely ashore for the holidays but I love the detail in news reports that the  Lerwick boat Vega “fished all the way through the storm and made a profitable landing of 600 boxes early in the new year.”

What’s it like, living through this kind of gale? Apart from my embarrassing non-Strictly tango across the Tesco car park in Lerwick on Wednesday, airborne shopping skiting in all directions? What messages I could get having to be retrieved from under ubiquitous HiLuxes, Rangers and L200s…along with sheltering sheepdogs..

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The truth is I love this weather. The sound, the sense of solidity our 300-year-old house provides, the sea banging and shivering on the shingle beach just 10 metres from our front door. The sudden silences as directions shift. The aroma of autumnal mulches, wrenched skywards, mixed with salt and seaweed.

It brings back an unlikely time and place: an early, perhaps the earliest childhood thrill, the terror and pleasure, of waiting with mum at Cessnock station, near our flat in Walmer Crescent. Glasgow’s Underground in the late 1950s. The smell, the sense of being deep in the earth under the city, and that sparky electrical ozone tang. Then the distant rumble, rattle and shriek of an approaching train, the weird wind driven before it. The noise becoming louder and louder, the pressure wave buffeting until it threatened to catch you up, send you birling down the platform like a skittle. You were paralysed with joy and fear. And then, magically, the train was there, all shouts from the conductor, fire engine red wood and metal trellis doors. Fag reek and sweat  Silence except the shuffle and scrape of people entering and leaving.

Imagine that moment of furious sound and hurtling, hammering air just before the train arrived, only with added bangs, crashes and creaks. Under vast skies in shades of black and grey. It’s dark, ferociously wet and most of all, it never stops. That’s been Shetland’s weather all week. And yes, I do love it. I wouldn’t be anywhere else.

Except on Sunday morning. I maintain the forlorn hope that we can arrive safely in Aberdeen, then head to Ayrshire and Glasgow for a week with grandbairns, children and pals. You can take this archipelago thing too far. And I might have a ride on the Clockwork Orange…

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No sooner had I mentioned sheepdogs than Bad Brad the Great Escapee (from the local farm) arrived, howling piteously above the wind and setting Old Fat Dex, his pal, off in a flurry of sympathy barking.

I gave Brad half a tin of Pedigree Horse, then let Dex out to say hallo; the two of them did that synchronised peeing thing male dogs do, and I considered kidnapping Bad Brad (who is also Beautiful Brad) and attempting to civilise him. But the last time he was in the house (this is a barn and hill dog) he peed on two beds and a couch and chewed a skirting board. So it’s back to the farm, old boy. Stop whining. Please…oh. OK, you can come in for a while…no. NO! Do not pee on the blood pressure meter!

Goodnight, Bad Brad. Now stop barking. You too Dex.

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The tremendously active community in Nesting has opened a local food bank at  the Aald Skül centre, to go along with the excellent Scrap Store and multifarious associated activities. Technically Nesting (North and South Nesting) counts as ‘nort’ but really it (especially, understandably, commuter-attractive South Nesting) gravitates more and more towards the Big City (Lerwick, pop. 12,000). Still, it’s in my (North) council ward and deserves every accolade. They’re heading in the, uh, right direction.

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Free school meals for ALL schoolbairns? Free bus and pedestrian ferry travel within Shetland? Motions coming up at next week’s meeting of the full Shetland Islands Council. Guessing there will be a report commissioned on the bus business and while I intend to vote in favour of free school meals and damn the cost, I know it’ll be defeated, as would any amendment extending free meals to all primary pupils. Which the Scottish Government has already committed to, but can’t get its act together to introduce. Meanwhile, I made sassermaet and macadamia nut curry the other day, and it was delicious. Bad Brad wouldn’t eat it though.

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It is a bad time for death in the isles. Not that it’s ever good, but there’s a lot about at the moment. Youthful tragedies and long lives coming to a not unexpected end.  I was particularly sad to see that George PS Peterson had reached the end of his  wondrous, fruitful life this week.

A native of and authority on Papa Stour, one of Shetland’s western isles, George was a poet, etymologist, author, preacher, teacher and a most kind and humorous man. He was generous to me about my contributions to The Shetland Times and with his departure goes a huge chunk of knowledge and insight into these islands, their history and lore.

He was dearly loved by his family, his many friends and a host of former pupils. The whole community owes him greatly.