Going home to Shetland

The view from my house looking West to the mainland

I have just booked a holiday to Shetland and I am now feeling like a child in the run up to Christmas. The October holiday cannot come soon enough. It will be no surprise to anybody who knows me that I miss Shetland terribly, for many reasons, and my friends are top of that list. However, there are some things that I miss, that might be unexpected. My daily commute to Lerwick from Whalsay was something that not many people envied. I was always surprised at how many Shetlanders hated travelling on the inter isle ferry. For the residents of Whalsay (a small island with a population of just over 1000) life was rather dominated by the ferries; their capacity; constrictions of the timetable; the cost, and of course, the vagaries of the weather.

I soon memorised the timetable; got to grips with the need to book ferries at peak times; timed the drive to the ferry terminal so that I wouldn’t miss the boat; and learned to accept that I couldn’t stay out late without booking the last ferry. Not that the last ferry ran very late, unless it was a very special occasion such as a wedding. Cinderella got a better deal in fact. However, despite the restrictions, I loved catching the ferry. It was the highlight of my day, and was undoubtedly better than travelling by train, underground or any other commute I have experienced before.

Even after nearly seven years I would still get the same buzz as if I was a tourist experiencing the journey for the first time. It was thirty minutes of heaven, twice a day, whatever the weather. Luckily I am a good sailor and never experienced seasickness, despite the Force 8 gales that would often strike terror into the hearts of some of my fellow travellers. Anything stronger than Force 8 and we would be temporarily marooned, with a day or so off work for the duration. One particularly bad spell of weather meant I had a week off work, but luckily the freezer was always well-stocked, and so were my bookshelves.

But on the bonny days, of which there were countless, I would go outside to the tiny deck and sit on the steps that led up to the wheelhouse and admire the view. I never tired of the scenery, which changed daily depending on the weather. There are not enough superlatives to describe the beauty of the Shetland Islands as viewed from either land or sea. You have to see it for yourself. Even photographs are a flattened, duller version of the real thing, whatever the skill of the photographer.

During one of my creative writing classes I was asked to produce some poetry, which is not something I have any natural talent for. But I thought I would be able to find inspiration in the view, and planned to use my time on the ferry for this purpose. I would stare out to sea, taking in the wondrous scenery, waiting for the creative juices to flow. Only they didn’t. It seemed that the more I admired the vivid textures of the landscape, the peat and heather covered hills, and the glittering sea, the more I felt that I could not capture it properly. It was too immense. Everything I started seemed immature, contrived, clichéd or worse and I became more and more miserable at my failure to compose something adequate.

But then one day, during a storm, when the ferry was diverted to the safer haven of the alternative ferry terminal at Vidlin, I sat and looked back at Whalsay and saw my house in the distance, a view I didn’t often see from this perspective. My house was situated on top of a hill, close to a small settlement of other houses, all belonging to people that I had come to know and love. I had a moment of revelation. I had come so far in life and I was finally home, safe and well. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t write a poem about the beauty of Shetland. I had other stories to tell. Over the next twenty minutes of the journey I jotted down the notes of the first poem I had written in over 30 years. The next day I wrote another; the day after that another. I cannot say with any conviction that they were any good, but I had got over that initial stumbling block. Poetry will never be my forte, but my daily journey on the sea inspired my first novel, Dancing with the Ferryman. (More about that another time).

In the meantime, if you are interested, the poems I wrote on the ferry are published on my website.



The view looking North West towards Fetlar, Yell and Unst