A HAUL OF HERRING AND A PILOT BOAT

I anticipate no gasps of utter astonishment when I reveal that the latest works to appear in the Tait Gallery are both seascapes.  They were both commissioned.

One of them is the third in a series featuring the Gamrie dual-purpose boat "Silver Wave" (BF372).  She is pictured hauling a good shot of herring, attended by the ubiquitous flocks of gannets, fulmars and gulls, as the crew perform the back-breaking operation of getting the heavy shot aboard.

The other painting is of the Lerwick pilot boat "Knab", viewed from the headland from which her name derives, as she re-enters the harbour after performing another "escort" duty.  This was the first of two vessels to bear the name, built in the late 1980s and replaced by a more powerful state-of-the-art version around 2005 (I'm not sure of my exact dates here!).

I'm currently working on a painting of the local tall ship "Swan".  I'd originally planned to have prints of this ready for my first pre-Christmas stall at Lerwick's Toll Clock Centre on Saturday 17th November.  It now looks as though I'll miss my own deadline by a week or two, but I should have the giclees available by the end of the month.  Watch this space!

SIMON KING'S SHETLAND

I watched the final episode, as I did the previous two, of Simon King's Shetland, on BBC2 on Thursday evening. As did, I suspect, most of the population of my native islands, I couldn't help being affected by his obvious love for this archipelago and its wildlife. It has to be said that the summer he picked for this enterprise was one of the best in living memory, although I suspect that, had it rained for most of the time (as it did only 200 miles south in Aberdeen), his enthusiasm would have been none the less. After all, he did see the other less beneficent side of the place during a winter visit too.

The series had some breathtaking scenes, such as abseiling down the cliffs of Noss to place mini-cameras at a gannet's nest, and the winter crossing of a burn in spate at the beach "up nort". It also had its comical interludes, such as the visit to Lastditchology, and little Savannah chasing a "shalder". All of these elements, and the spectacular otter, killer whale and gannet photography, combine to make this a memorable series.

Now I wonder how Shetland is going to cope with the multitude of visitors who will descend, like a plague of clod-hopping locusts, on the islands next summer. No doubt they will experience the other, more familiar, kind of "simmer dim" - the one which is permanently shrouded in permadrizzle! I always feel sorry for these damp cagoule-clad pilgrims wandering the hills and roads in a fog of misery, their eyes glazed in an expression which says, "Why didn't we go to Benidorm?"

Seriously though, Simon and his family have produced a masterpiece here. The superb camera work (which was not without its problems), coupled with the presenter's knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, his subject, have resulted in one of the best ever showcases for Shetland. Whether this was his intention or not, he has produced, for the wildlife of these islands, what Aly Bain's Shetland Sessions did for its music. That is no mean achievement, and he is to be congratulated on it.