December 2022

On screen or in print, it’s a work of tremendous power I read Andrew O’Hagan’s Mayflies when it was first published, and wrote the piece reproduced below. It and much else is at http://www.thebeatcroft.com. Oddly enough, I now find myself in our wee Ayrshire flat, round the corner from where chunks of the BBC’s TV…

O Come, All Ye Unfaithful… Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) Walt Whitman, Song of Myself 51 A humanist funeral in Christmas week, and we are singing hymns and praying.  Not capital H Humanist, approved by the official societies of stern secularism. We humans are…

On day four without power: a reflection on snow, Shetland and survival I have always loved snow, and as a child I longed to be stranded by it, preferably somewhere warm and fully equipped with crispy bacon sandwiches and chocolate. At Christmas. This was the fault of two writers, CS Lewis and Arthur Ransome. In…

Island life, the joys and sacrifices. Embrace or leave. And Tom’s 10 rules for public drinking. Former Guardian writer Peter Hetherington liked Shetland very much. But he could never live here, he said.  “I don’t think my wife could handle the lack of sun-dried tomatoes.” Nowadays there’s panko breadcrumbs, gluten-free Belgian chocolate and tinned water…

From fine dining in Glasgow to council secrecy in Shetland Back on the Old Rock after a relatively smooth 12-and-a-half hours overnight from Aberdeen “atween wadders” as Zetlandic dialect has it. Our sleep fuelled by anti-histamines and the NorthLink ferryfood I always enjoy, in all its cheerful, bluff heftiness. Still, a steak pie is NOT…