the corner office

It was my turn to do a little repairing and I had a week off in Shetland in January. In winter it's dark and remote and otherworldy and beautiful. I replied to Airbnb's "tell the host why you want to stay here" question with a standard "relaxation and sightseeing," to which the host replied "that's fine, but at this time of year the weather can be pretty foul," and I thought it best not to reply, "I hope so."

It had snowed a week or two earlier, but the weather was mild for most of the time I was there. Slightly disappointed, but it allowed me to get out and about.

And then I got my wish: Storm Eowyn rolled in towards the end of the week, in all her red-warning glory, at which point things got a little interesting.

I was staying up north and I'd planned to drive to the airport (which is pretty much on the southernmost tip of the mainland) on the morning I was due to fly, but that was going to be smack in the middle of the storm. Between the unappealling prospect of driving through the storm, or getting stuck on a remote road with telephone poles or power lines blocking the way and nobody in their right mind planning to race out and clear the way for me or anyone else until it had all blown over, or I don't know, a wind turbine blade blowing loose and landing on me or something, and the much more likely prospect of the flight being cancelled, and not wanting to have to arrange accomodation in the middle of red warning storm which might flatten and destroy everything, I decided to head south a day early and ride the storm out in Lerwick.

And so I did. I ended up driving through the start of the storm, crawling along the winding roads at an embarassingly slow (but to my mind, safe) speed, while all the locals just zipped along as if all was perfectly normal, gusts or no. No telephone lines or wind turbines seemed in any trouble as I drove by them. By the time I got to Lerwick the storm was livelier, but I still saw two elderly women out jogging. Nobody seemed much perturbed by the storm at all - I could see winds and rain from my guest house window and people tootling up the road in their raincoats. The people of Shetland are made of stern stuff.

Needless to say my flight was cancelled, so I had an extra day in Lerwick. I'd also realised that while it was nothing to snort at, the red level warning was a bit misleading - it had been a blanket warning for much of Scotland, but the brunt of the storm had hit Scotland proper, and Shetland was only catching the edge of it. Still, I went out for a walk around the headland on the Saturday, and I was almost tipped over a few times. If you're in a constant wind you can just lean into it and walk, but when the gusts are stopping and starting, you lean into the wind, it suddenly stops, and then a second later smacks you again as you're trying to regain your balance. I felt a little silly but since other people were out doing the same thing, I didn't feel too bad.

I'm still wary of holiday highlight reels, but at the same time I have a bunch of photos I'd like to post. It makes sense to add a bit of context, and flesh out at least a few of them with enough rambling to allay (my own, if anyone's) fears that the blog is just descending into a glorified Instagram feed. Whether you consider that to be a bad thing or not might depend on your views on my photos versus my ramblings, but either way, there's more of both to come.