LOWER VOE

The latest creation to appear in the Tait Gallery is a landscape depicting the area around Voe Pier in Shetland.  The picture incorporates a fair number of features, but I hope it doesn't look too crowded with detail.  In the back of my mind is the notion that I might enter this into an art competition, run by the Oldie magazine, which, it is proposed, will provide an antidote to the kind of charlatan-produced ordure sponsored by Charles Saatchi and his ilk.  I have no expectations of winning, but at least I will have entered something which reflects the spirit of the contest.

The trouble with the competition is that I'm only allowed to enter one work for it, otherwise I might have hedged my bets with a seascape (which best reflects my normal artistic output) and perhaps a harbour scene.  There would probably be far fewer seascape entries (we nautical painters are much fewer in number than workers in other genre), but the chances are that the judges will have had unfortunate experiences (if any at all) with lumpy seas. This may well cloud their judgement as to depictions of it, leading them to a bias in favour of landscapes, portraiture and still life.  I've only got one shot at this, and I'm thinking of entering the painting shown above.

The painting is of Lower Voe, viewed from the pier, looking roughly north-eastwards .  I used one of my own digital images of the scene, and I've added a couple of children playing in "da ebb" and a few lobster creels, "burrups" and netting to replace the stack of yellow fish-boxes which was in my original photograph of the scene.  I thought that the bright gold would be too much of an eye-pull from the rest of the picture.  I've taken a small amount of artistic licence, therefore, but it is still far from having Saatchi inclusion potential - it doesn't smell!  I'll leave that element of ambience to your own sensual memories and fertile imaginations!

Whatever happens to the original painting, it's going to be available shortly as a giclee print.  Come along to my Saturday stalls at the Toll Clock centre here in Lerwick (starting on 23rd June).  They'll be for sale there in A3 and A4 size, along with many other good things.  See you there!

BLACK FRIDAY

I should never have got up on Friday.  By remaining in bed, I would have avoided personal injury, bad news and another defeat at the hands of modern technology.  Mind you, I would have missed the more pleasant events of the afternoon.

I don't recall exactly what business I was about, early that morning, when my feet got "wittered" in an old jumper which had fallen off the back of the armchair into a dark place between it and the storage heater.  I fell forwards and landed in a stupefied heap in front of my computer desk.  I rolled over onto my rear end, and began to survey my bits for damage.  Remarkably, my knees had escaped with only a small skin-burst low on the left one.  The worst injury seemed to be to the middle toe of my right foot, which is now a rich colour combination of crimson and purple.  The last time I saw that colour was on my rump, after I'd done an involuntary bum-luge down a slush-covered flight of stairs in Captain Flints pub on a winter's night some years ago.  I sported a full-colour portrait of Armageddon on my backside for weeks afterwards.

I managed to get to my feet, and found I could still walk without much difficulty, although my right foot was painful.  I slapped a band-aid on the graze to my left knee, had a bath, and decided to check my physical faculties with a walk down to Bolt's shop for my Shetland Times and other essentials.  My progress was a bit slower and more cautious than usual, but I got back safely.  After reading the news and some of the views in our local newspaper over a cup of coffee and a hobnob (a practice repeated in homes, offices and workshops all over the islands every Friday morning), I got down to some work.  I have two commissions and two "stock" works" under way at present, and I hope to have at least one of these finished during the incoming week.

I had made up my mind to visit my mother in Overtonlea Care Centre, where she is now a permanent resident, in the afternoon, so, after lunch, I made my way to "da Street", where I drew Mum's pension from the main post office, and £100 from my own bank account, and caught a taxi down to Levenwick (an expensive business, I know, but I won't be using that mode of transport very often!). I had completely forgotten that the residents of the home have their church service on a Friday afternoon, so I ended up providing some unrehearsed bass vocals to the hymns there.  I stayed to chat with my mother for another hour or so afterwards, coming away with some administrative work to do for her, and a feeling of how strange the day was turning out to be.  The misty conditions added to the feeling of strangeness.

Back in Lerwick, more bad news awaited me in the form of an email from my Swedish client, whose package had arrived damaged.  The painting (shown in the last post to this blog), which was on good quality canvas stretched over a deep-profile frame, had not been holed or torn (photographs of the damage to painting and packaging had been attached to the email), but ridging had occurred due to compression onto the frame-edges.  I suggested that he pack damp cloth between the stretcher bars and the back of the canvas at the places where the ridging had happened, and leave it for a while.  Fortunately this seems to have worked, and I have another satisfied customer.  This, however, is no thanks to the carrier, into whose hands I had placed the sum of £210 for safe delivery of the package.  No insurance was available to me from the shipping company, and I'm surprised that anyone wants to send anything of value by this means of transportation.  I had used polystyrene sheeting and bubble wrap for the interior protection, and this was inside thick cardboard secured with copious amounts of parcel tape.  The item was clearly marked "Fragile".

In the evening, further fragility was exposed in my temperament and technological capabilities when I attempted to copy some of the documents I had been given earlier by my mother.  No matter what I tried, the machine seemed to want to enlarge the documents and print only the middle section of each of them.  I went to bed that night in a poor state of mind and health.

But are we down-hearted?  On Saturday, the fog lifted, I corrected the error in my copier operation, my Swedish client emailed to say my plan had worked, and I put in an excellent day's work at the easel.  Even my toe was hurting a bit less.  Fortunately, black Fridays don't come around very often.  And, when I think of how dark are all the days of some people in the world, it puts my minor misfortunes into a more healthy perspective.

I hope to have an illustrated post here within the next few days.  Have a nice week.

IT'S A BIG ONE!

Since this photograph was taken, I have had my hair cut.  You'll no doubt be relieved to hear this, although it is a sad fact that even the most skilled hairdresser cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and the ravages of time are now all too evident on any image of me nowadays.  On the plus side (there's always at least one!), it adds a certain edge to my curmudgeonliness!

The painting featured in the photograph has now been carefully and stoutly packaged, and it will begin its journey to the man who commissioned it (who lives in the outskirts of Stockholm) with a short trip to the office of Streamline Shipping tomorrow.  According to the information on the Royal Mail Parcelforce website, the package will exceed their acceptable dimensional limits for transportation by about half a metre.  This is regrettable, as the carrier will probably charge more, but it can't be helped.

I'm sorry for the fact that I have become a stranger to my own blog recently.  I just haven't had the time to post, as there has always seemed to be something making more imperative demands on my attention than putting together some readable posts for this journal.  This is something I take quite seriously.  If I can't put anything worth reading together (and there are many subjects I want to address in these pages), I'd rather leave it until I can devote more time to the exercise.

So it is with my usual abject apologies (as well as some relief that I have posted anything at all!), that I leave you with the image of the "Force 9 Following Sea", which, along with the dimensions of 36"L x 53"H, is all I was given by way of instructions from my client.  From his response to the images I have sent him, I think he is pleased with it!  I hope to be able to post more regularly soon, and I thank you for your patience.

"NORT TROW"

The title of this piece refers to the name given by Shetlanders to the north Mainland of Shetland (Mainland being the name of the largest island of the archipelago).  Where exactly "nort trow" begins probably depends on whom you ask.  To someone from Voe, it probably starts at the Mavis Grind isthmus, whereas to folk, like me, from Lerwick and the central and south of the island, it most probably begins at Voe or Brae.  It is universally agreed that it ends at the Point of Fethaland, the most northerly point.

Wherever it begins, it was hither that my old school pal Robin Barclay and I hied on the morning of Tuesday 27th March.  We had arranged to go for a run in Robin's 4 x 4, accompanied by our cameras, and the weather turned out exceptionally fine for our excursion.  Robin is one of the old classmates who made up the hanging party for the ill-fated Catterline exhibition last November.  As it turned out, the hanging was the only good part of it, but I couldn't have reasonably foreseen that at the time.

Last Tuesday we called first at Weisdale's Bonhoga Gallery to see what was on display there.  We then continued on our way to Voe, where we gave our cameras their first exercise around the pier area.  Lower Voe is one of the most attractive locations in Shetland, strongly evocative of Norwegian west coast villages with the maroon-painted wooden buildings clinging to the steep hillsides around the voe-head.  We had an excellent bar lunch at the Pierhead Bar and Restaurant there.

At upper Voe, the main road splits into two, the right fork taking the traveller past Dales Lees to Firth, Mossbank and the north isles ferry terminal at Toft.  We took the left turning, from which the road skirts Olna Firth, and then Busta Voe on its way through Brae.  My intention had been to steer my old schoolmate in the direction of Muckle Roe, a place I had not visited since my last call there with the Bank of Scotland mobile unit around 1970.  It turned out that Robin had never been there before, so we duly crossed the bridge and took the left turning which led us along the Busta Voe side of what used to be an island, access to which was gained by stepping stones (use of which must have been a hazardous undertaking in inclement weather!) until a footbridge was built in 1904, upgraded to take vehicular traffic after WWII.  Judging by the fair number of new houses along the couple of miles of winding road between the bridge and the Little Ayre, Muckle Roe is now within easy daily commuting distance of the oil terminal and other mainland workplaces.

I have unfinished photographic business in Muckle Roe.  I'd known it was a mistake to have that coffee after my meal at Voe, and my bladder was at bursting point by the time we got back to the bridge.  Since no toilet facilities were evident, I had to employ the 4 x 4, on the mainland side, to shield myself from the eyes of the populace, as I pumped the bilges en plein air, so to speak.  Duly relieved, it didn't seem appropriate to cross over again, so I got a few photographs of the bridge area, before we continued our run northwards.  The weather was still beautiful, and it was only the grey colour of the ground which reminded us that March was not yet out.

We headed for Hillswick, and called at the craft shop, which was closed until May.  We carried on west as far as Braewick, and I can't recall when I was last in this part of Shetland - probably never in better weather.  Robin wanted to go to Ronas Voe, so it was back to Urafirth to get back on the road north.  We ended up down on a "taing", known as the Blade (I found that out from an OS map afterwards) at Heylor, looking across at the red granite mass of Shetland's highest natural feature, Ronas Hill.  A "skarf" was diving around the mussel ropes in the cobalt blue waters of the voe, and I found this place completely enchanting.  As far as I can remember, I've never been at this lovely spot in my life before.

We toyed with the idea of heading even farther up to North Roe, but Robin reckoned there wasn't enough time left, as he had to be back in Sandwick around 5pm.  We did call along Ollaberry on the way back south to Lerwick.  The breeze had been gentle, the sunshine warm, and the day perfect.  Sometimes I feel ashamed at how little I've seen of my native islands, and cross-country hiking will never be an option for me nowadays.  However, it's amazing how much beautiful scenery can be enjoyed from close to the road.  I'm looking forward to making more use of my camera, next time I'm "nort trow".

Now, as yesterday's snow is still clearing from the shady sides of the "hill-daeks", I recall the balmy conditions of a week ago, and ponder on the fickle nature of the Shetland weather. Fine days are not to be wasted here, and I'm glad I took full advantage of last Tuesday's sunshine.  I hope we get some decent weather this summer, but I'm not holding my breath!

DISABILITY

Yesterday, as Shetland was shrouded in thick fog, which is still persisting as I write this, my sister Mary and I joined the rest of the mourners at the funeral of our first cousin Jeemie Nicolson.  About 150 people gathered in the Scalloway Hall for this occasion, which was more enjoyable than most funerals I've attended.  True, there were a few tears, but the singing was excellent, led by the North Ness Boys, with their mother Lorna playing the keyboard for the service.  We all gave Jeemie, who had been so able physically and intellectually for most of his life, but had been largely absent in mind for the last few years, a rousing send-off as he embarked on his last voyage.

My memories of him will always be of a very able and talented man.  I recall, as a boy, looking at his photographic slide-show of Sierra Leone, where he had been working as a mine geologist during happier times for that country in the 1960s.  Later, when he took a share in acquiring Shetland's first purpose-built pelagic purse-seiner (the "Wave Crest", built in 1969), I used to go for trips to the herring fishing with her.  How I enjoyed these overnight trips in pursuit of the shoals of herring. Slightly physically disabled, I would complete my day's work at the Bank of Scotland and, still in my bank suit, I would go aboard the boat for another adventure.  I would witness the spectacle of two or three shots of herring being found, ensnared and brought aboard, and be back in Lerwick in time to start another shift at the bank in the morning.  Happy days indeed!  Later, Jeemie sold his share in the boat and began a new career as a successful author, columnist and editor.  Then disability took possession of his mind, as it has taken many another brilliant one, but at least his writings remain as living testimony of his ability, for all the world to see.

Disability, whether in mind or body, is a subject fairly close to my heart.  I had to remain seated for the whole of yesterday's service, as the hall seats were too low for me to get up quickly enough to stand for the entrance of the cortege and the hymn-singing.  Someone in the row behind me (to whom I owe a debt of gratitude), along with Mary, lent the necessary assistance to get me on my feet again at the end of the proceedings.  Disability is socially embarrassing!

My brother and my nephew still smile when they think of our niece's (or cousin's, in the case of our nephew!) wedding in the Long Room at Busta House, Brae, in late February of last year.  They sat either side of me at the ceremony, and grabbed an arm each every time we were called to stand - it was so well done, I think that no-one noticed it was happening!  Regrettably, neither of them could make it to Shetland for yesterday's service - despatches tend to be more difficult to plan for than matches.

My "krang" is host to a whole catalogue of minor ailments, all of which embarrass and debilitate to a degree.  I have been asthmatic since pre-school days, and have also suffered from a condition known as miatonia congenita, which manifests itself in the form of a muscular spasm triggered by any sudden impact or movement.  It has caused me to fall over on countless occasions when able-bodied people would just have staggered before quickly regaining balance.  As a young man, I did my best to minimise the drain on confidence, which stems from this condition,  through taking on jobs which involved physical labour, although I'm not sure what my bosses thought of my work performance!

After contracting mumps at the age of 11, I have been completely deaf in one ear (yes, this 'ere ear - and all the other jokes!).  This means, in effect, that I hear in mono, whereas everyone else around me has stereo reception.  In normal one-to-one contact, this presents no problem, but in social situations this can be crippling.  At parties, even with a moderate amount of back ground noise, I can see people looking at me with their lips flapping, but I can't hear a word of what is being said to me.  In my "courting" days, my ex-wife was highly amused by the lengths I'd go to to counteract this.  If I found myself seated on the wrong side of her, I would develop an odd and intense interest in the wall behind us, in order to get my right ear inclined towards her!  I suppose the fact that I was once married to a beautiful woman is tribute to the success of my efforts to counteract this disability.

At parties, after beginning to try lip-reading what everyone is trying to say to me, I tend to tire of this effort after a couple of hours and a few soda-pops, and drift off into a world of my own, this earning me the reputation of being either stuck-up, anti-social or just plain stupid, all of which are simply untrue.  Debilitation and embarrassment go hand in hand here, and I avoid going to parties if I can.

Over the years, I have added a broken pinkie on my left hand (sustained at work in 1978 and undiagnosed by the overstretched A & E staff at the hospital), and an extremely painful condition in my right knee, which appeared suddenly in the spring of 2006, was only treated in late 2007, and which has left me a legacy of back problems due to the counteractive measures I took to maintain some sort of forward momentum on foot during the eighteen months I endured the pain from my knee.  I've never quite recovered my former strength of limb, and it's this that makes getting to my feet, from a low seated position, so difficult.  Exercise helps, but I'm stuck with the social immobility of disability, and I empathise with others who are similarly affected.

My mother, now well through her 96th year, returns from a fortnight's respite care tomorrow, and I hope to be able to help her settle in back home at Whiteness.  She has suffered from arthritis (including numerous replacement operations) for at least half of her long lifespan, and has had severe mobility issues for the last two decades.  For now, I'll settle for being fit enough to paint pictures, post to this blog, and give my mother the help she needs to make her life tolerable.

LET'S MAKE A DATE!

Scotland's glorious leader, King Alex 1, is fond of his dates.  I don't mean the brown sticky things that used to come in long-shaped tins and which I decided, at a very tender age, were never going to be part of my staple diet.  I mean significant dates in Scottish history, such as that of the battle of Bannockburn, on the 700th anniversary of which he plans to hold the "independence" referendum.  On that momentous day (the 24th June 2014 - I looked it up!), he hopes, Scotland will become a nation again. 

I've got news for him - Scotland will never be a sovereign state as long as it is subject to the tyrannous rule of the European Union.  To be a sovereign state, one has to have complete freedom of legislature, executive and judiciary, the constitutional elements in which the independence of a nation is enshrined.  But King Ted sold all three of them down the river Rhine on January 1st 1973 (there's another good date for King Alex).  Since then, the UK can only legislate as far as the lords and masters of Brussels and Strassbourg will graciously allow, the executive (civil service) is similarly constrained in its actions, and our judiciary (of which Scotland could once be justly proud) is now subject to whatever overturning edicts might emanate from that august, weird and wonderful institution known as the European Court of Human Rights (whatever that consists of).  When I hear politicians talking about British sovereignty, I wonder who they think they're kidding!

Now the winds of change are blowing through Europe (to misquote Harold Macmillan out of context!).  The financial systems of weaker member "states" are destined for meltdown, one by one, unable to adjust to the strength of the euro, and ending up in hock to the more robust systems, led by that of Germany, which will succeed in doing financially what Hitler failed to do militarily, and completely control the rest of Europe.  Once again, the UK will survive, after a fashion, not having signed up to the euro.  Perhaps King Alex has been smarter, in his intended adherence to the pound, than I have been giving him credit for.

All that is some distance down the rocky road.  In the meantime, King Alex will only reign over a satellite European province, attached geographically to a slightly bigger UK satellite, and his government will have no more power than a provincial administration.  He's very Scottish, King Alex.  The trouble is I feel no Scottish blood coursing through my veins, and I shudder to think what will happen to my beloved Shetland Islands, when and if Scotland votes "aye" to "independence" (which is what most aye-voters are being led to think they are voting for!).  Shetland stood practically alone in voting "nein" to European integration back in the 1970s, and I confidently predict that it will vote "nah" to Scottish "independence" too.  Not that this will make much difference - Shetland will be dragged to whatever grisly fate awaits Scotland in the years to come, and our islands now have a big part to play in King Alex's plans!

I've got another date for King Alex - well, it's only a year, actually, as, to the best of my knowledge, the day and month are not a matter of record.  It is 2018, when it will be 550 years since Shetland and Orkney were pledged to Scotland by a cash-strapped King of Denmark, who was obliged to provide a dowry for his daughter Margaret's marriage to James III of Scotland in 1468.  It was only a pledge, redeemable on production of 20 florins of the Rhine, which the Danish monarch didn't have handy at the time.  Somehow it was never redeemed, and the northern isles have remained politically attached to Scotland ever since.  And for some time after the wedding, Shetland had a pretty bad hangover under the yoke of the Stewart kings' cousins, who were in charge of administration of the newly-acquired territory.

Now Shetland has something that King Alex badly wants - a rather lucrative arrangement with the companies which are producing most of "Scotland's oil" around our far-flung islands.  The fields such as the Forties, Claymore and Tartan complexes off Aberdeen are past their peak production, and Scotland needs revenue from the northern North Sea and the new Continental Shelf exploration areas, because without it he hasn't got enough funds to fuel the projects which the SNP were rashly promising prospective voters at their recent party conference.  The trouble is, who is going to do the negotiations for the islands this time around?  I think that King Alex may just have the edge over us this time.

There are difficult times ahead for my beloved Shetland Islands.  The fishing industry, which was once Shetland's biggest employer, is under more and more pressure from insane legislation emanating from a completely unsympathetic European Union, which, in turn, takes the advice of a multitudinous arraignment of conservation lobbyists and wildlife pressure groups (who gain most of their support from ill-informed and emotionally charged city dwellers), who would have the whole of the sea around our shores designated as a protected area for tourists to gawp at predatory species of marine mammals and seabirds.  Most fishermen (the most endangered of all species!) have now left the industry to work in the aquaculture and oil industries, and the few remaining Shetland boats are frequently crewed by eastern Europeans, Filipinos and Africans.  To compound the problem, other European member states do not feel obliged to be constrained by European fisheries legislation, and countries outside the EU are awarding themselves vastly inflated quotas for their fleets, further applying pressure to finite fish stocks.

Our other indigenous occupations, such as crofting and knitwear manufacture, are also in decline, and our own oil terminal is seeing its throughput steadily decreasing.  According to some folk involved in the industry, Shetland is pricing itself out of the forthcoming oil installation decommissioning work.  Vociferous organisations of nimbies, who see Shetland as somehow sustainable as a guano-covered rock in the ocean (perhaps they see fertiliser production as a new industry!) are doing their level best to prevent renewable energy projects from getting established.  Tourism is vastly overrated as a source of income for anyone who doesn't provide accommodation or passenger transport.  Just ask anyone who runs a small retail outlet how much he/she makes from tourists, and I can pretty much guarantee that the answer will be somewhere in the "not a lot" category.

In fact, I predict that the main occupations of Shetland residents during the reign of King Alex I of Scotland will be drug dealing and the inevitable consequences thereof.  The increased workload of the Shetland Islands Council's Social Work Department and the NHS will no doubt provide employment for some.

On the glorious 14th June 2014, King Alex I hopes that Scotland will vote "Aye!" and start building the polytunnels which will help sustain it during its future as an oil-fired banana republic.  There isn't anything else - most Scottish indigenous industry has either disappeared or is in the process of vanishing.  But what the heck!  Scotland will be a nation again - well, sort of!  If it could negotiate independence from Europe, it might achieve independent nation status, for what that's worth.  But that isn't part of King Alex's plan, is it?  Unfortunately, Shetland IS part of it, and I wish, with all my heart, that my beloved islands had a plan B.

THE "HARVEST HOPE"

My family moved to Sandwick, in Shetland's south Mainland, from Baltasound in the north isles, around Christmas-time in 1954, when I was 6 years old.  Our nearest neighbour was George John Stove, one of the crewmen on the "Harvest Hope", depicted above.  The painting was commissioned by Colin, the son of George John, and my earliest memories of life in the new parish were what seemed to be endless sunny days of  fun with Colin and the other children of the district.  Colin is now an eminent physicist, his particular area of expertise being the use of sonar in geological exploration, and he was part of the hanging party which helped with the setting up of my recent exhibition in the Creel Inn, Catterline (of which more later).

The "Harvest Hope" was built in 1949 by Stephens of Banff for Alex and Robert Duthie of Lerwick.  She was 57ft long and 27 tons gross and net.  She is pictured approaching the north mouth of Lerwick harbour in strong north-westerly winds, with the Green Holm and the Brethren skerries to port in the background.