Plus playlist and streaming link for this week’s Beatcroft Social show on 60 North Radio, an Ian Bairnson special

Hallo there. The Mixcloud link for this week’s Beatcroft Social (goes out 7-9pm Fridays on 60 North Radio) is here and the playlist is at the end of the newsletter. But first…some thoughts on St Kilda, cruise ships, remote islands generally and slow convocations of amateur cyclists in Shetland…

I was on Hirta, St Kilda’s main island, some 34 years ago to research a piece for The Scotsman on the 60th anniversary of the archipelago’s native population being evacuated. It was then still an army outpost, manned – no women – by soldiers I remember thinking were a somewhat oddly-shaped bunch. Including the most overweight person I’ve ever seen in a military uniform. They were there to track missiles, fired from the range headquartered at Benbecula, 40 miles to the east.

The Commanding Officer, who had specifically requested that I bring some much-desired Hob Nob biscuits with me, confided that this was, literally, the last post for the oddities and least fit members of Her Majesty’s khaki-covered forces. He was young, fit and keen on wind surfing. The soldiers’ NAAFI canteen had been renamed the Puff Inn and was known as Britain’s most remote pub, welcoming passing sailors, birdwatchers and Russian spies. For years afterwards I kept the Puff Inn Zippo lighter I bought that day. And the contact details for someone called Boris.

St Kilda was then (as now) a World Heritage site owned by the National Trust and the Ministry of Defence leased its facilities there. Now the range is operated by the unpronouncably private  Qinetiq. Elsewhere on the island, there were National Trust and RSPB volunteers, at least a few of whom seemed – unsurprisingly –  somewhat the worse for wear, swigging whisky in a restored cottage on the famous High Street. 

I’d arrived on an overnight crossing aboard  one of the huge rustbucket landing craft operated back then by the Army in its seagoing  form. These vessels, designed during World War Two for landing tanks on beaches, were flat bottomed and hideously inappropriate for the open Atlantic. I have never been as sick as I was aboard that thing. And we hadn’t even left South Uist when the vomiting began. Mind you, I had dined previously on cockles. I’ve never eaten those dastardly bivalves again.

We did have a little cruise around the other St Kildan islands on the way back. And it was all very impressive in a doom-laden, misty, vomit-inducing, seagull-defaecation kind of way. So I do have some sympathy for the retirement tourists aboard the Spirit of Adventure, a  58,000-ton cruise ship operated by Saga Cruises, which was pictured manoeuvring in Hirta’s Village Bay recently, belching exhaust fumes and presumably skooshing passengers’ pee and poo into the pristine ocean. Sparking outrage. 

Photo from the Isle of Harris Facebook Page, by Paul Motion

The thing is, we currently have these monstrous floating holiday camps arriving in Shetland, mostly Lerwick, almost daily. The passengers erupt onto dry land, quickly suck up notes  from cash machines, monopolise any 4G signal they can latch onto and take photographs of council houses. Then they go back on board ship for the all-you-can-eat buffet.

That’s unfair. There are guided bus tours, and more and more lately there are guided cycle outings. Clutches of helmeted visitors, clad in hi-viz and on acoustic velocipedes, find themselves toiling up the two main hills out of Lerwick, admiring the golf course and the new industrial-chic Baptist Church, Tesco and the Co-op, not to mention the Shetland Hotel, very possibly the ugliest hostelry in the history of mankind. Worse than anything in Aviemore.

The seaborne cyclists have been infuriating some motorists, and sparked serious concerns from my fellow Shetland Islands councillor Neil Pearson at a recent meeting of the Community Safety and Resilience Board. These convoys of puffing tourists were “ticking time bombs”, he said, due to their invisibility in our frequent spring and summer fogs, and general two-wheeled wobbliness.

The cruise ships now come equipped with their own bikes, so Lerwick’s hire firms aren’t benefiting, and there’s no local knowledge or briefings along the lines of “cycling in Shetland is basically very unpleasant due to wind, stray sheepdogs, sheep and Toyota Hi Luxes. And wind.”

Meanwhile, over on the extreme edge of the Hebrides, There will be no tourists landing from cruise ships on Hirta, where there are no bicycles and indeed, no roads. There are, however, a lot of sheep and the issue of bombs and missiles arriving unexpectedly from the still-operating range over to the east. Which might be a bit upsetting for the tourists. Not to mention the cruise ships. 

Spirit of Adventure, indeed…

No doubt Boris or his one or two of his colleagues are still keeping an eye on things, though.

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This week’s Beatcroft Social contains a half-hour tribute to the late Ian Bairnson, Shetland guitarist extraordinaire. Listen here on Mixcloud.

The Dahlmanns — Lucky

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers — You Got Lucky

Katrina and the Waves — Do You Want Crying?

House of Schock — Middle of Nowhere

Dave Edmunds — Slipping Away

The Social Soul Selection:

Lee Dorsey — Ride Your Pony

Johnny Johnson and the Bandwagon — Breakin’ Down the Walls of Heartache

Gil Scott-Herron — The Bottle

Edwin Starr — 25 Miles

Dusty Springfield — Live It Up

Jangle and crunch:

Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson — Once Bitten Twice Shy

Raspberries — Overnight Sensation

Faces — Pool Hall Richard

Nick Lowe — Cruel to be Kind

Graham Parker and the Rumour — Soul Shoes

Be Bop De Luxe — Ships in the Night

Marshal Crenshaw — Cynical Girl

Bryan Ferry — A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

Fink — Pilgrim

Dennis Wilson — River Song

Goodbye Mr Mackenzie — Now We Are Married

Ian Bairnson:

Pilot — January

Alan Parsons — Dreamscape

Kate Bush — Wuthering Heights

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Ian Bairnson — Comfortably Numb

Tam White — More

Panarama — Dry Ice