Cars, boats, coffee, golf, music and more boats
This week:
Car problems
Caffeine starvation
The horrid moneyed elitism of tournament golf
Full blow-by-blow account of my tortured night aboard ship from Aberdeen to Lerwick (unedited version of the Shetland Times column)
News of the Tall Ships Race coverage
Playlist and Mixcloud link for the Beatcrofting show
It’s been a week of automotive difficulties and disappointments.
First, having collected my daughter Martha from Sumburgh Airport (about 65 miles south of our house), our 2016 Toyota HiLux crewcab pickup, ostensibly one of the most reliable, bomb-proof vehicles on the planet (having just passed its MOT with no advisories) started making howling noises as we left the car park. Stopped in a lay-by just north of the airport, a trail of rainbow puddles behind us, it became apparent that the power steering had lost its lunch. Fearing for the welfare of sheep, cyclists, other motorists and indeed ourselves, given the impossibility of swerving without the help of several arm-wrestling champions, I decided to stop, phone the RAC (vast annual cost) and wait for help.
Now, in Shetland there are no dedicated RAC patrols. Toyota dealer Jim’s Garage in Lerwick has the recovery contracts for the RAC, AA, Green Line and various insurance companies. We’ve been dealing with them for the past 30 years and they’re excellent…but you need to go through the RAC so they can get paid for an emergency call-out.
And that was a problem. If you phone the RAC, they tell you to use your smartphone and go online. Which would be fine if you didn’t then encounter a “we’re experiencing problems with our website” message. There’s a bypass number for non-smartphone users and, after an hour or so, it became clear from talking to the operators, that (a) he had no idea where Shetland was, and that (b) somewhere on the British mainland, a hapless RAC patrol was trying to reach us.Probably in Borough Market, London.
So I phoned Jimmy at Jim’s, the actual person who would be coming to recover us in a recovery vehicle I’m all too familiar with. Nothing had come in from the RAC, but he was heading our way anyway, so he’d pick us up. Back to Man-at-RAC for a terse geography lesson and an explanation of how his employer actually functions in remote areas through surrogates. Soon we were heading for Lerwick, the pickup picked up and Susan on her way from Hillswick to collect us. The HiLux would be ready next week. A popped power steering pipe, apparently.
No matter, because my ancient (22 years and counting) Audi TT was sitting at home and usable in the interim. MOTd until October, I was popping it in for an exploratory test prior to flogging it, having decided my sports car days are well and truly over. Too many hood-down bonxie attacks.
Result? Failure on emissions and…leaking power steering. That’s the thing about Shetland. You have to do a lot of steering.
*** *** ***
I gave up caffeine for 36 hours (Thursday night through Friday into Saturday morning), prompted by an overdose on Thursday involving late night espresso followed by a very ill-advised diet Irn Bru. Shaky doom-mongering lack of sleep ensued.
So it was a caffeine-free day on Thursday, feeling increasingly headachy, tired and with flu-like symptoms. Also disgust at the taste of some decaffeinated instant coffee. Camomile tea before bed, a reasonable sleep and a double espresso this morning. Functioning again. Just about.
*** *** ***
It’s the Open Golf from Hoylake this weekend, and not being able to watch it live on the BBC is a natural outcome of golf’s continuing and horrid moneyed elitism. Golf’s soul has been well and truly flogged.
I am a BOG (Bad Occasional Golfer). There, I’ve said it and I feel better. I’ll be in Troon during next year’s tournament, so I checked out the ballot – the ballot! – for practice day tickets currently being held by the Royal and Ancient Society of Moneygrubbing Swingers. £55 a day. I’ve been to Open practice days before and it’s not like watching golf, really. I remember Podraig Harrington battering round Troon checking distances, in the freezing cold, and it was a dull, glumness-inducing experience. So I’ll probably be in the Harboour Bar, watching Sky. Or sneaking up from the beach through that secret dunes tunnel.
*** *** ***
Last week’s overnight trip from Aberdeen to Lerwick without a berth became a column for The Shetland Times, published in the same edition as news of a survey of ill and disabled passengers on the ferry service. It turns out that fit and well passengers have been able to hog cabin space while folk in wheelchairs (and drips!) had to spend the night upright an duncomfortable int eh ships’ public areas. This is a disgrace and easily fixed. But we frequent travellers need SercoLink North and the Scottish Government to realise that much as they’d like this to be a profitable cruise line, it’s not. It’s an essential lifeline service first and foremost. So scrap the niceties, the first class lounge and ridiculous pods. Put in horizontal couchettes, reinstate shared cabins.
I’m 67, have had two heart attacks four stents, cancer and a mini-stroke. I do not want to sleep on the floor anymore. But if I have to, here’s how to prepare.
(This is basically the Shetland Times piece with some of the original aggression and sarcasm reinstated, along with practical equipment lists)
Survive the Savage Sea
How to deal with a Northlink night if you’re cabinless, podless or seatless
Tom Morton
I had my NorthLink pod survival kit ready: a rucksack containing the following items: proper blackout eye mask, silicone earplugs, noise cancelling headphones (for use with smartphone), fleece blanket, inflatable footstool, memory foam neck pillow, aerosol of Febreze to perfume trainers once removed. Camping towel. Vick’s ointment for smearing below nose to alleviate aromas of other nearby people, notably unwashed smokers. Wet wipes, toothpaste, toothbrush and 10mg promethazine (aka Phenergan) tablets. The basics.
Unfortunately, Susan, afflicted by locum logistics, had to head home early and, cabinless of course, took the pod pack with her. She survived, although described the pod experience as “sweaty and insecure.” I know, I’ve been there and so, probably, have you: slippery seats, a locked room full of all-gender strangers snoring and belching, and far too close for comfort. Relief to think the cabin we’d booked for three days hence was still available for my use. I’d follow normal Northlink survival protocols: get on board, take 10mg promethazine, eat loads (I like Hrosseyland food – it’s predictable canteen comfort) and drop off to sleep about oh, 7.30pm, waking with the purser’s first call, fuzzy but functioning. (Promethazine is an over-the-counter anti-histamine and for me at least, an extremely powerful, fast acting sedative. Do NOT drink alcohol if you ever take it, don’t drive for at least eight hours and prepare for some very odd dreams. Though that could be the steak pie).
I checked my booking. No cabin. What! A foolish oversight, surely? Never mind, I was flexible, datewise. But I needed a cabin and carspace. A combination unavailable for at least 10 days, according to the website. Tall Ships duties dictated a return to Shetland sooner than that. I phoned the Nice Women of Orkney who speak from the Kirkwall NorthLink bunker. I’d have to put together another pod kit and slither my way to Lerwick in pools of sweat. But on 15th July, the only date with carspace for ages, there were no cabins, pods or reclining seats. Nothing but bar and restaurant benches (and those only suitable for folk under six feet, due to Northlink’s evil, tallist insertion of wooden barriers to prevent lolling/stretching). Oddly, I had booked the Magnus Lounge. This would turn out to be crucial. Maybe they’d let me sleep there. Soft leather couches!
It turned out that the sailing to Shetland on the 15th via Orkney, was bringing back both archipelagos’ Island Games teams, plus the usual summer tourists, windfarm workers and general jetsam like myself. There would be 600 human passengersaboard. It was time for the Northlink floorspace survival kit.
Fortunately Trespass in Irvine were having a sale. As a veteran of T in the Park when it was at Kinross and you went armed with at least a baseball bat, I knew what to look for: foam sleeping mat, gel camping pad, camping pillow, fleece blanket (it’s too warm on board for a sleeping bag, and anyway, no clothes were being removed). To Boots for earplugs, eye mask, wet wipes and Primark for pull-up trakkie bottoms. Baseball bat probably unnecessary.
On arrival in Aberdeen, It was straight to Duthie Park for dog-emptying (he’d be comfy in the car; the Northlink kennels are terrifyingly noisy pits of canine despair,) and thence to the docks, where all was…very busy indeed. Aboard ship, it was relatively calm, compared say to a post-County-Show Stromness to Lerwick P&O trip. I remember one of those which had to be fully staffed by riot-trained cops. Was that the time a football team removed all the plumbing from the Stromness Hotel? Those were the days! Now, with 600 passengers, most sternly warned they were to be community ambassadors, only the comatose bodies strewn in every passageway were silently disruptive.
Anyway, I inserted myself and survival kit into the Magnus Lounge, bagged a sofa, ascertained that it closed at midnight and no, said NorthLink, I couldn’t sleep there. Really, the Magnus Lounge concept is deeply flawed. It’s part of the crazed cruiseship concept dreamed up for what is a lifeline service. Nobody needs what is in essence first class accommodation. The space could be used for couchettes. And not more pods. They’re just half-baked dentist’s chairs, with extra sweatiness.
Still, I paid my £20 and was glad. Because although the 40 places in the Magnus Lounge were all booked (” we could have sold them three times over”) no more than 20 or so people actually used it on the 15th, presumably because they were all in their cabins. And I really got my money’s worth: two free drinks from the bar; unlimited hot drinks (hint: only the black coffee option on Northlink’s bean to cup machines actually tastes of coffee) biscuits, terrific home made tablet, fresh fruit, and a vast, help yourself continental breakfast to look forward to. Plus able service of meals at the same price as next door’s canteen.
I dozed, read (600 people trying to access WiFi meant very limited iPad usage, ie none) and munched all the way to Orkney, when the refugee ship aspect of the trip changed: the Orcadian Island Games team and assorted tourists left. The boat sat about four feet higher in the water. Everyone who got on presumably went straight to their cabins, as the ship now seemed populated only by the bedless waifs and stays. Like me.
There were now clearly reclining seats available, but I had my survival kit and horizontal is better for my 67 year old twice-attacked and much-stented heart (an associated arteries). The cinema, dark and quiet, was busy with bodies, and there were already sleeping forms on many bench seats. A bunch of youngster loudly demanded that someone switch the lights out. I formed a (b)rucksack nest in a corner and laid out gel pad, mat, pillow and blanket. Then I lay me down as the ship headed out into a rougher sea than expected.
I’d forgotten I’d be lying not on a floor but on a barely carpeted steel deck. Every slam, pitch, wave and swell reverberated, and the rolling, fortunately not too bad, tended to rock me twixt table and wall. I slept fitfully, changing position as one body part after another grew numb. The (expensive) eye mask was worthwhile, as the ceiling spotlights were truly oppressive. At one point I awoke with the sensation that a giant weight was compressing my body. But it was just being caught between steel plate and gravity.
I got to 5.00am, and that was enough. I packed my little encampment – no change of clothes and I’dshower at home. I felt like I hadn’t slept at all. Stepping through the scattered mounds of assorted humanity, none more than half my age, I made my way to the open deck, and rejoiced that I had survived to see such a beautiful morning. Also up and about was erstwhile Tesco manager Paul Clelland, heading north with four Italian Juventus footballers for a sports camp. They were in a cabin, he in a pod. “I made the sacrifice” he said.
At 6.30am the Magnus lounge reopened, and I fell on its contents like a hungry bonxie. Hard boiled eggs, rolls, cold meats, cereal, yoghurt, cheese, croissants, pan au raisin,, coffee, fruit, shortbread. Then a soft sofa until Lerwick. Down to the car deck behind a man carrying an enormous and stair-averse bearded collie. Will my dog have disgraced himself in the car? No.
The drive north to Hillswick, Dexter duly watered and walked at Clickimin, was dreadful. I didn’t feel safe, was headachy,exhausted gritty behind the eyes. And that’s surely a major problem with the lack of proper accommodation aboard these overnight ferries. What if you’re facing a long drive once you disembark? Anyway that won’t be a problem in our next trip, in August. There’s no car space.
Pod survival kit: memory foam neck pillow. Fleece blanket, blackout mask, earplugs, inflatable footstool. Febreze or strong aftershave/perfume. Toothpaste, toothbrush, Vicks ointment. You get a shower token but towels must be hired at the shop. Northlink supply a thin blanket, pillow and eye mask but bring high quality ones of your own.
Floor survival kit: camping pillow. Camping mat, gel camping seatpad (a godsend for the heavy-hipped); good earplugs, proper eye mask (really good one essential due to spotlights) decent fleece blanket. Wet wipes. Toothpaste etc. Vick’s ointment not necessary as there’s more space and fewer noxious odours in the forward bar.
Check with your GP before taking Promethazine. Other antihistamines like Quells and Dramamine are less sleep-inducing.
Finally, here’s the Beatcrofting show for this week. On Mixcloud but not on 60 North Radio this week or next, as we prepare for four days of live coverage of the Tall Ships Race’s stay in Lerwick. Link to the livestream at the end of this newsletter. Starts midnight plus one on Wednesday.
https://www.mixcloud.com/tom-morton2/beatcrofting-with-tom-morton-22-july-2023/
Richard and Linda Thompson — Wanted Man
Karine Polwart — Harder to Walk These Days than Run
The Blue Nile — From Rags to Riches
Frightened Rabbit — Swim Until You Can’t See Land
Big Country — Chance
Average White Band — Pick up the Pieces
Mylo — Drop the Pressure
The Beta Band — Dry the Rain
Donovan — Sunshine Superman
Idlewild — A Modern Way of Letting go
Del Amitri — Roll to Me
Eurythmics — Thorn in My Side
Roxy Music — Virginia Plain
10cc — The Wall Street Shuffle
Stealer’s Wheel — You Put Something Better Inside Me
Elvis Costello — Welcome to the Working Week
Mixcloud link for Beatcrofting:
https://www.mixcloud.com/tom-morton2/beatcrofting-with-tom-morton-22-july-2023/
Tall Ships Race live video and audio feed from midnight plus one on Wednesday (my commentary starts Wednesday 10.00am)
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