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 chestnuts in the Hillswick Community Shop. 

That conversation with Peter took place 30 years ago but even then, things had changed. You could get Chateau Musar and Clynelish in Lerwick’s bluntly-named Wine Shop, Camembert in the Co-op. Whereas back in the 70s, when the first wave of oil workers arrived, the only place you might buy olive oil, garden guru Rosa Steppanova told me, “was in the chemist, for dissolving ear wax.” And in the far reaches of the North Isles, things were even more extreme.

“Until I went to board at school in Lerwick,” said Ross Cluness from Unst, “I thought bananas were always black.”

Living in Shetland, some 150 miles and 12 to 14 or  overnight hours by sea from Aberdeen, has always meant sacrificing convenience and access to goods and services. Uber and Just Eat just don’t function that well in North Roe. Though you can book a Tesco Home Delivery almost anywhere, if you’re prepared to wait for a slot until, oh, 2025. Sometimes there are even yellow bananas in Baltasound, brought in by rocket for the spacepeople. Legendary Partygate civil servant and country’n’Irish fan Sue Grey was in Unst just the other day, checking on the rocket launchers, munching on dried puffin.

When I first moved to Shetland in the late 1980s, I loved the sense of remoteness, of difference, and that was fuelled by the unavailability of things I’d taken for granted in Glasgow. Cinema, once an obsession, became an intrepid, bitterly cold huddle in the decaying hulk of Lerwick’s North Star, with a resident cat that would sometimes brush past your legs to particularly scary effect during horror flicks. Or there were uproarious gatherings in village halls to watch travelling 16mm shows. I still remember the utter joy on my son Magnus’s face as he watched that doggy masterpiece Beethoven in a packed Ollaberry Hall, commenting at top volume on every shake of a St Bernard’s slobbery jowls. 

You adjusted because you had chosen this island life, and oh, the compensations. Not just the scenery and seafood, but a cosmopolitan, sophisticated society, cultured and caring in ways from which the mainland had become estranged. Difficult, yes, sometimes alienating and sometimes frightening, crude and dangerous. Extreme, in everything from weather to tastes in dark rum and salt fish. But you knew that and you either coped or left. Or put your trust in mail order catalogues, took the island allowance and hoarded it against the day you escaped.

Now, Shetland and Shetlanders (including we soothmoothers, incomers through the south mouth of Lerwick Harbour, sometimes carefully termed ‘Shetland residents’) have softened. Upped our expectations. We desire, we need, we depend upon superfast broadband, 4G mobile coverage, the latest movies digitally displayed in a state of the art multiplex, complete with craft beer and matcha lattes. We demand crema art on our flat whites, charging points for our electric cars, probiotic kefir and year-round fresh fruit and vegetables, preferably including organic pomegranates. We’re demanding inter-island tunnels or, hilariously, £30m worth of ro-ro for an island with one road, 45 people and half a Honda Civic. Never mind, the Tesco truck will make it through! 

But. The wind gets up. Ferries don’t sail. Flights are grounded, the power goes down. Supermarket shelves empty. Snow blocks the roads. Buses and deliveries stop. Schools shut. Just like that, it’s 1952. And I’m hoping against hope the local shop has plenty of Laoganma Crispy Chili Sauce. And long life milk.

You can’t argue with weather, not located where we are. You can’t pay it off. You can prepare (coal, kerosene, diesel, petrol – welcome to carbonland); you can brew, bake, pickle, salt, bottle and turn stuff into jam, butter or cheese. And you can wait. Eventually, the wind will change.

And maybe it won’t. Living on an island, you have to accept and embrace the challenges. We have lived high on the hog here in Shetland for 40 years, fuelled by hydrocarbonated reserves that cannot be sustained

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We need to spend a bit of what money Shetland has now, on keeping our vulnerable folk, old and young, fed and warm. An then cut the fripperies. We’re a tiny community halfway between Scotland and Valhalla, clinging to a few interesting rocks. Deal with it. Love it. You’re not in Milngavie anymore.

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On Monday, we had the annual police report to the Shetland Area Licensing Board, of which I am a member. Lots of home consumption, we heard, with cheap ‘pre-loading’ meaning pubs and clubs are being entered by the already puggled. And younger folk, partly due to lockdown, have to some extent lost or never had the knowledge of how to behave properly in a bar.

To help them, especially in this Yuletide season, here are my 10 rules for public house drinking, almost certainly useless as they have been dredged from memories of my time in the 1980s howffs of Glasgow.

1 – in a busy pub, never push, jostle or do that thrusting-your-hand-towards-the-bar-with-cash thing. In my experience, this tends to result in broken fingers, teeth and/or noses.

2 – eye contact. Crucial with bar staff. Never shout at them. Avoid eyeclashes with everyone else in the bar you do not know well or want to get to know well. Especially anyone with tattoos or heavy scarring on their forehead.

3 – become skilled in contact avoidance with strangers. If you bump someone and worse, cause them to spill their drink, apologise fulsomely, especially if they have you by the throat.

4 – the round. Escalates unwanted inebriation. If there’s six in the party and each buys a round,  by the time number five or six is buying…you do the arithmetic. This once led to me projectile vomiting down the stairs of the Berkeley Suite in Glasgow. Buy your own and know your limits

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5 – do not steal someone’s seat when they are at the bar; do not ‘reserve’ a seat with clothing. A pit bull or German Shepherd will suffice.

6 – watch for the wee guy with stiff legs. Danger that he may be carrying a sword (or two) (Note: normally a Bridgeton/Baillieston/Byres Road issue in Glasgow; sometimes Bearsden).

7 – no vomiting except in closed toilet cubicle. See (4) above. Being sick is uncool unless you suspect a spiked drink (Google Average White Band original drummer).

8 – if an altercation breaks out, duck and cover your drink with one hand to avoid the inevitable shards of glass, bone and blood.

9 – designated driver? Order coffee first,  before any other drinks in a round. This will avoid unnecessary bloodshed.

10 – on reflection, just stay at home and read a good book…

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