The booming metropolis of Hillswick

Today really is a bad hair day. There is no milk left and I'm a coffee addict so there is only one way around it. I'll have to struggle into the booming metropolis of Hillswick, here in Shetland.

Goodness knows how long it will take me to get there and back and what means of transport will be available I don't know.

As soon as I've conquered the problem, I'll let you know, ok  

What sort of day was today?

A good day or a bad day - well, there's a bit to consider, I suppose.

For a start I slept in and that's not the best way to kick it off, now is it? And it's Wednesday and that means that there ain't too many choices, are there?

Let me explain. You have the choice of getting the bus to town on a Wednesday at half past seven (I've possibly mentioned this before) in the morning and travel on the bus home, leaving town at ten past five in the early evening, or finding some other means of transport and if like me, you suffer from epilepsy (oh, I've mentioned it before as well) then you don't drive so you need to find other means to travel.

Well you can walk, it would keep you fit and if you timed it right then you would only (ONLY!!!) have to walk eleven or so miles to Brae where you could get the necessary bus. At least it's not Sunday though, no bus coming or going that day. Perhaps they all spend the day praying for their souls. They possibly need to (Please ignore that one Jenny.).

Or you could thumb a lift, that was what I did today and a lady that stays in the village picked me up after I'd walked four or five hundred yards. Brilliant, that was that problem sorted. Thumbs up, thank you!!!

I had come into town for a hospital appointment that would last about fifteen minutes so I went to the Harbour Cafe for breakfast and it was great, always is, my stomachs idea of paradise. Then it was off to the library, where I could go online and spend some time wastefully but happily before getting it done (I won't describe any) and then having plenty time to do the next bit of necessity - the shopping.

And this is where I got angry - very, very angry indeed.

I wandered down to my favourite, absolutely supermarket - the Co-op, walked through selecting my grub and then heading to the checkout. It was all added up as I put it in the bag and the girl gave me the total. I pulled out my wallet and handed her my card, only to be told "No, sorry". I was a bit put out because I had checked it this morning. I suggested she put it through again and she did - and came back with the same. I needed the food so I wasn't in a position to say "Stuff it" and walk away so I paid cash for as much as possible and left the rest behind.

I was a bit put out so, as I walked out the door with only half the food required, I decided to pop down to the bank and find out just what the score was. The first question to the teller in the bank was to tell me how much was available from that account. His immediate response to that, after checking, was two thousand, two....you get the idea, plenty to pay for a weeks food so what had happened there? Had the Co-op made a mistake or was there a problem with their BT link to the British mainland where the Royal Bank of Scotland would deal with all the payment malarky, or was it the Bank themselves?

Whoever made the mistake made a big one. There are now people in the shop who saw what happened, what do they think? I have to go back to "a shop" tomorrow, probably a different one and get the food that I tried to buy today.

I will contact each and everyone of them and complain profusely, making a real nuisance of myself and I'll stand proud for doing it too. If we don't then what will happen? That's right - nothing!!!

Then I got the bus home. Thank God for that!!!

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!!!