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in the summer of 2020, I became a cleaner at the local health centre. Six nights or early mornings a week I vacuumed, scrubbed, mopped, wiped, disinfected and binned. Random thoughts occurred. Hoovering. Havering Hoover. I have hoovered. I will hoover. I have been hoovering. This carpet needs hoovered. Except it’s not a Hoover, of…

Clues to a ‘Shetland’ plotline. The dog can talk! Has anyone figured out the plot? There’s pet food in that fake cake fridge It’s to do with dogs…oh yes! I’ve got It! There’s crap upon the football pitch! A number two by the corner post! They’ve called  Perez; that idle sod Spends maybe half an…

The Church of Scotland is selling its soul, stone by ancient stone A serious house on serious earth it is In whose blent air all our compulsions meet Are recognised and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete Bruce Wilcock, our next door neighbour and legendary Yorkshire (via Shetland) blacksmith, toolmaker, boatbuilder,…

The ruin caused by developing a gigantic wind farm in Shetland I remember driving north from Lerwick for the first time, into a gritty winter darkness that, during my week-long stay, occasionally glowed but never lifted. It was early 1979, the first oil was flowing from the Brent field into the uncompleted Sullom Voe oil…

A warm drying wind from the south has wiped away the snow. It’s a day for being outside. It’s a day for wandering and wondering. Today we have the remnants of a southerly gale, blustering and buffeting up from Scotland and all that lies beneath. Three weeks of refrigeration and Daz whiteness has gone, and…

The central heating’s broken, we can’t have a launch party, and anyway, how do you celebrate the release of a book about death, funerals and a short history of embalming? It Tolls for Thee: A guide to celebrating and reclaiming the end of life. The old Hillswick cemetery is iced in, wind-hammered, the two weeks…

As fears grow over the risk to our islands’ from loaded tankers sailing too close to shore, the first time an oil tanker nearly came to grief on Shetland was in 1920. Twenty-eight years ago Shetland was reeling in the aftermath of the Braer wreck. Those of us who were in the South Mainland  during…

Machinery of human illumination At 4.00pm, it’s light, fading. At 4.35pm, it’s darkness, falling. A January Sunday in Shetland, beyond 60 degrees north. I drive up to the Eshaness lighthouse, one of the Stevenson masterpieces, about six twisty miles from our house. On the edge of Shetland’s most spectacular cliffs. On the edge of the…

As Covid vaccination begins in our local community, I look back at the 18th Century Shetland crofter who pioneered inoculation against smallpox: Johnnie Notions This is the day the fightback began in Northmavine, the northernmost medical practice on Shetland’s Mainland Our local doctors and nurses have pleaded with folk to wear masks, to wash their…

Shetland always has something new to discover The plan was to leave Shetland on 23 December and not return until this week, having spent a leisurely Christmas and New Year with the extended family on the Scottish mainland, probably in a holiday house. There would have been dogs, children and their partners, grandchildren, even my…