January 2025

  • The origins of Up Helly Aa – an alternative history

    The tale of Virdablutt. A Shetland fire festival shrouded in mystery…and terror It is once more Up Helly Aa day in Lerwick, and time to revisit a story which has appeared in the international magazine Scotland Correspondent, The Shetland Times and elsewhere. Is this the true origin of Up Helly Aa, Europe’s biggest fire festival?…

  • Socks and drugs and lemon sole

    Three pieces of rhyme about hosiery, illicit chemicals and dodgy restaurants Cull Today I will cull The singles, the strayed The separates and loners Their partners mislaid The product of panicked Inadequate packing A rushed trip to Primark If Tesco is lacking That six-pack of hosiery Non-elasticated Cheap and disposable Undoubtedly fated To end up…

  • A Passing of Wind. The Shetland decapitations, episode five: A trip on Swaabie Airways

    In which a Nazi bomber is imitated, waste bird life is reprocessed as salmon feed, and secrets are revealed about Detective Constable McKinstry. The contract to run an air service between Fair isle and the mainland had recently gone to a start-up aviation company based in Ollaberry called Swaabie Airways, owned, run, piloted and maintained…

  • Six suspicious Shetland wildlife rhymes

    Stoats, otters, orcas, ravens, arctic terns, and…otters. They’re not all nice. Audio included, me reading. Shetland wildlife rhymes, 1: Whitrits* rule I do not like a whitrit, I do not love a ferret Unless you’re hunting rabbits they have very little merit They’ll raid your outhouse, kill your hens They slither and they slide Like…

  • A Passing of Wind, episode four

    Enter Geordie Piltock! Assault with a lobster! Chief Inspector Fotheringham-Smith, perhaps having been emotionally prepared by what Mary now thought of as the Latex Feargal Incident, acted with reasonable fortitude and calm when informed that this time, yes really, Birkadale was well and truly dead, but mostly missing and certainly in pieces. Hyphen fainted, though…

  • The facilitator speaks

    Thoughts on consultancy culture. From a consultant… I’m a consultant Come to my workshop, do Come to my workshop And I will consult with you I’ll facilitate and enable Put Post-It notes on the table (Write on them, write anything at all) Then stick them up on the wall Some may fall But that’s a…

  • A Passing of Wind, episode three: something fishy this way comes

    Death rears its ugly head on the Lerwick waterfront. And this time it’s for real A week later, on midsummer’s eve, there had been something of a development in the case. It was a Friday and The Shetland Times had just been published, bearing the front page headline “How to get a head” above a…