Diary of a Shopkeeper, 24th January

Rocket preparing for lift off from Unst Space base. (Artist’s impression.)

‘It may be Up Helly Aa,’ said Willie Pickle, ‘And it may be cancelled.’

‘It is, and it is,’ said Kiwi Kate.

‘It may be very sad for all those horny-headed boat-burners up there.’

‘Surely it’s their hats that are horny, not their heads?’ I said.

‘Furtiver!  I just refuse to let them get off with this.  It is an outrage and a disgrace and…it’s outrageous.’            

‘And disgraceful,’ said Kate.  ‘What is?’

Willie snorted, and looked at me across the cheese fridge as if I’d be as astonished as him at Kate’s ignorance.  I had no idea what he was on about, but nodded anyway.

‘The space port, of course,’ he cried. 

‘What space port?’ said Kate.

‘The Unst one.  You must’ve heard the plans?’

‘I read about it,’ I said.  ‘It’s supposedly going to be at Saxa Vord, where the RAF base used to be.’

‘Perxactly.  And take that name for a start,’ said Willie.  ‘Imagine naming a space base after a packet of salt!  Are all the rockets going to be painted red and white?  Will the fuel tanks have to contain an anti-caking agent?’

I laughed. 

‘It’s not funny, shopkeeper.  The Americans have Cape Canaveral, the Russians have the Baikonour Cosmodrome.  At least the names have a bit of poetry to them.  What’s Shetland got?  A sodium-chloride-based condiment!’

‘You want to watch taking too much salt,’ said Kate, ‘It’ll raise your blood pressure.’

‘I don’t think Willie needs much help getting his blood pressure up.’

‘What have you got against it anyway?’ said Kate.  ‘To be honest, the words ‘Who gives a Helly Aa?’ come to mind.’

‘They’ve already got more than enough money up there,’ said Willie, ‘What with their oil and their fish and their reestit mutton.  They don’t need a space base.  It should’ve gone to somewhere that really needs a boost.’

‘Like where, Willie?’ I asked.

‘It’s obvious: Swona, the land of my far-back forebears.  It could do with some job creation to get the place repopulated.  In fact, I wrote to Boris Johnson suggesting just that.’

Kate raised her eyebrows at me over Willie’s shoulder.  ‘Did he write back?’

‘He did not,’ said Willie.  ‘Not even that courtesy.  But then I realised why.  It’s the feral kye.’

‘Are they against repopulation?’ said Kate.

 ‘No one’s asked them yet,’ said Willie.  ‘The problem is, the space shuttle needs a runway a mile long and quarter of a mile wide to land safely, which of course is just about as big as the whole island.  So you’d have to put this huge strip of tarmac down the middle and the kye would graze around the edges.’

‘But surely they’d stray all over the runway?’ said Kate.

‘That never used to be a problem for the Loganair planes coming into the likes of North Ronaldsay,’ I said.  ‘They just cleared the beasts off five minutes before the plane was due.’

‘No go,’ said Willie.  ‘Let me tell you, a space shuttle is just a wee bit bigger, and travels just a wee bit faster, than a Britten-Norman Islander.  Once you saw the shuttle coming in over Caithness, there wouldn’t be nearly enough time to clear the kye off the runway.  Result?  Hairy mince everywhere.  And they’re a protected species, you ken.’

‘So that was the end of the Swona space port?’ I said.

‘That was it,’ said Willie.  ‘We followed the rules and protected our rare breeds.  But the Shelties?  Huh, they just do what they like.  And that’s how they get ahead.’

‘Us Kiwis say the same about the Aussies,’ said Kate.

‘And it’s equally untrue,’ I said.

‘I’ll tell you what’s true,’ said Willie.  ‘As part of the Unst space base they’re going to build a bird hide.  So you can see the rockets blast off, then sit where you are and wait for the whimbrels to start flying about.’

‘You could have a long wait,’ I said.

Willie shrugged.  ‘Well, with Up Helly Aa cancelled, there’s not much else to do up there.’

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 28th January. Other diaries continue to appear weekly. I am posting them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.

Willie Pickle seems to have been reading about the Unst space base here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-55704869 and maybe here: https://www.shetnews.co.uk/2021/01/18/key-milestone-reached-for-space-centre-as-full-plans-are-submitted/