I got home - eventually!!!

This Christmas and New Year was wonderful. I spent it four hundred miles south of home with the lady that I love and the biggest wee man that I've ever known. Nine years old and a great guy. I hope everyone had at least half as much pleasure and celebration as me, this time around it was brilliant.

There was a problem though - getting home. I got the boat up from Aberdeen, Scotland to Lerwick, Shetland overnight, landing at seven-thirty in the morning and I caught the first bus up to Brae, which is about twelve miles from home. There is a bus that leaves the garage in Brae at about twenty to ten and goes up to Hillswick where I live and that was the bus that I stood waiting for.

Up to this point the journey had been fine. I slept well on board the boat, the first bus was on time to pick me up, all went well until the nine-forty bus came along. It drove up towards the bus stop, the driver waved - and carried on driving. The next bus is in the late afternoon so I invested twenty pounds, angrily, on a taxi.

After calming down I set out to find out why this had happened. I contacted the council who informed me that there is a summer-only service, from Brae to Hillswick at that time in the morning but it is only a summer service.

That, it turns out is true but it is also true that throughout the year there is a ten o'clock bus leaving Hillswick every morning bar Wednesday. To provide that service the bus leaves the garage in Brae at - yes, you've guessed it - twenty minutes to ten.

Surely this is a bit silly. During the summer there is a superb service up to Hillswick, available to all and sundry but off-season the residents of Hillswick cannot go home in the morning, people who wish to visit friends or family cannot catch a bus to do so, even though the bus is making the same trip that it makes in the summer. People in Hillswick cannot pop down to shop, or visit for a short time and then catch the bus home an hour and a half later.

All because a bus that travels up five mornings of every week of every month of every year only picks up passengers in the summer.

It's a long walk - or twenty quid in the taxi!!!