THEY'RE BACK!

Yesterday morning, I went for my quarterly (roughly!) appointment at the hairdresser's in Mounthooly Street, Lerwick.  Duly shorn of my "mooskit" locks, I took my predetermined walk home by the "scenic route", calling along the Spar shop in Thorfinn Street before walking down Breiwick Road.  For part of its length, this follows the line of the lower "Battery Banks" and the Waari Geo, where Lerwick Swimming Club members used to meet in the days of my youth, when men were men and women were a bunch of hard cases.  (I hasten to add that I never swam myself, being an asthmatic wimp, with miatonia congenita and a wonderful sense of self-preservation, coupled with a tendency towards cowardice).  Nowadays most of the swimming is done in the more benign climate of the Clickimin Centre pool, although, given a warm summer day, the beach at the Sands of Sound, and others throughout the islands, will still ring out with the shrieks and laughter of people "gyaain in for a dip" in the sea.

I digress, however (a filthy habit - I know!).  I walked down the road named after Breiwick Bay, which I was now surveying (for what I couldn't tell), when suddenly I heard the unmistakable rasping calls of the arctic tern.  Sure enough, two of the graceful "sea-swallows" were diving, swerving and ducking over the shallow water at "Da Sletts", and shrieking as if engaged in a heated domestic argument with each other.  This sound of the "tirrick" is definitive of the Shetland summer, and it's nice to see them back.  A pity the fine weather of the past week seems to have left us, but maybe that will return too!