Rocks in the Sea
In the late 1990s and early noughties, I worked a lot in the Thames Valley and London and spent a lot of time along the M4, at its peak doing 30,000 miles a year on top of the job (which wasn’t classed as a driving job like a travelling salesman might be so I still had to do a long days work in addition to the driving) although that's essentially what I was doing, just selling tax advice, that is how to pay the right amount of tax and no more, but the right sometimes almost meant the legally lowest In ways which antagonised Her Majestys Revenue & Customs.
The odd drive to deepest Cornwall or West Wales felt really remote. I used to lose my mobile phone signal and feel really cut off. I started developing a story about myself which was that I don’t like driving more than 30 minutes from a motorway junction or anywhere without a phone signal.
Rock 1 - The Isle or Man
I recall being sent to the Isle of Man to review what was known as Umbrella companies. At the time these were complex tax minimisation arrangements that were being heavily used by the ever growing IT contracting sector in the UK which had bounced back rapidly following the dot-com bubble bursting in the late 90’s, the Isle of Man offering an off shore avoidance of U.K.taxes.
The capital, Douglas was like 1950’s Britain. I think someone said they hoped that Boots would open a chemist in the high street sometime in the next 10 years. The taxi driver taking me back to the airport, over the Isle of Man TT course, roads which have no official speed limit, took great pleasure in topping 100mph while telling me he refuses to pay his BBC licence fee ‘to the British’ because the BBC has no Isle of Man TV! The place is smaller than Bristol which also has no Bristol TV!
We all live on rocks sticking out of the sea, but its a true fact that the smaller that rock gets, the more your sense of detachment and remoteness changes too. The more obvious your rock in the sea is, the more everyone else is becomes outsider. You can be remote in wilderness woodland, but when it’s connected to a continent your sense of disconnection is different to being on a rock in the ocean.
British people have this rock in the ocean islander mindset and its noticeable to continental Europeans because their sense of a rock in the sea is much weaker than people who are mentally, and physically and visibly on an island. The Isle of Man is just a more of an obvious island than the UK.
I decided that small rocks in the sea weren’t my thing.
Rock 2 - Shetland Islands
So in 2006 when I was told I had to go to Shetland Islands to work on a job that involved the sale of the largest fishing boat in the pelagic fleet, a boat called the Altaire, I was filled with dread. I didn’t even know what pelagic meant. The world wide web had been invented by this time and I could find a picture of Shetland airport. It was a worn out line in a grass field. Surely this couldn't get worse. It kind of did when I found out that I would be helping out these two:
My knowledge of whats known as ‘share fishermen’ increased rapidly. Share fishermen is an ownership arrangement of a fishing boat. Going back in history, remote islands used to have fishermen who would cast out a line to catch fish. This developed into a fisherman in something no bigger than a rowing boat, which then got larger so that more men could be taken further out to sea. The risks of such a living are massive, so fishing families, typically 6 or so families, would buy the biggest boat they could afford to fish from, and over the generations the boats have changed from rowing boats to larger wooden fishing boats to the larger metal fishing boats, to the large metal high tech boats of today. The latest Altaire looks like this.
Each family owned an equal share of the catch and its revenue, each would work the boat and contribute towards the cost, and the families would bear the financial loss of the boat, as well as the loss of lives if it came to that.
Boats then got handed down from father to son. So the boats of today would still be owned by the same families, even though they are now large and technically impressive boats. The comfort that these boats provide along with the safety from radar, decent weather forecasting is leagues apart from the wooden boats of old but despite that, I still have massive respect for anyone who chooses this as a living. Its not an easy lifestyle.
From a U.K. tax perspective the Inland Revenue has special arrangements for taxing the income of share fishermen to help cope with the fluctuation from differing sized catches, but still, these guys probably still resent having to pay the tax to the British.
I flew into Aberdeen airport where connections to Shetland fly from. That in itself was an experience. Aberdeen airport wasn’t a normal airport. It was the hub of travel to Scotland's oil and gas fields. Large helicopters were constantly coming in and out of the airfield. Security was ultra tight for the time. Explosive swabs of hands and laptops were conducted on everyone and more people were patted down than normal.
The flight to Shetland was essentially the local bus. It was a twin propeller plane with a single seat on one side of the aisle and double on the other. It had a handful of locals on who I wanted to keep a distance from, but I think anyone from the mainland gets a grilling so that on landing the whole island can know who was inbound and why.
I had assumed there would be a natural hatred of the English, but to my pleasant surprise, Shetlanders assured me that they hated the Scottish to. I was also pleased to be told, by very proud locals, that someone had tarmacked the field where the plane lands, so the airport now had a runway… with lights!! Things were looking up. Until I landed.
On landing the wind came in from the Atlantic horizontally. You could barely hear yourself talk above the gale. It wasn’t rain that was blowing, it was an icy sleet coming from the Artic. When walking you had to lean into the wind. I was collected by two people I would be working with, also not local, who had hired a car. The drive from Sumburgh airport to the capital, Lerwick was a coast road with no lines, no lights, no side barriers between you and the sheer drop to the sea.
In the Shetland islands you can never escape the sea. You are always on the coast. The wind is so harsh it affects the growth of plants on land and anything over a metre tall twists inland against the prevailing wind.
We continued our drive in the pitch dark, icy snow blowing directly at us, visibility was zero, until we hit a bend and all three of us felt the car lose traction and slide silently towards the sea. Everyone in the car held their breath and braced. I can’t remember how long that moment lasted, but as I think about it I can remember every millisecond along with the distance we moved across the road out of control. I think there is a mechanism in your brain that slows down your perception of time when your life is under threat to improve your ability to respond to the situation. This was one of those times but all I could do was watch the cliff and the coast come closer.
As the car came to a halt, the three of us were silent. Until the guy driving said, “this is not how I want to die, nor the place I want to die in”. I was in silent agreement, as the fear of ‘what if we hadn’t come to a halt before the edge’ was still present in my thoughts.
We continued our drive as carefully as we could until we reached Lerwick. Lerwick is a remote harbour, the type of place where, if you do find yourself as an ancient Britain on this part of rock you naturally find that place where there is most shelter and greatest possibility of survival. Lerwick is about survival.
All I can recall about the hotel really is the polished wood panelling and the fact that each time I went to the bar a local would say “you from the mainland?” or “you working on the Altaire?”. What I hadn’t realised was that there was politics within share fishing and their families. Involving mainlanders in your affairs was frowned upon, and doing things that broke the hereditary chain of the boat, (this family was selling to a company from Southampton) gave rise to anger on the island. It changes the community in a community that doesn’t welcome change. We were not welcome on this rock in the sea.
But despite my story, that I didn’t like remote places, I did like the Shetlands and I did like the people who lived there. There is something strange but also incredible about people who choose to exist on rocks that you can literally see jutting out of the sea. The landscape is always so inspiring. The people, like the rock itself, which has to force its way out of the sea on a daily basis just to remain in existence, have a sense of resilience. And despite the power of the sea, in human terms, nothing changes, yet in terms of the Earth, this was once rock that was on fire pushing its way upwards through the sea, which over time cooled and allowed plants to grow, birds to land and nest, and ultimately, in the last blink of an eye, humans to settle. The living is tough, but also, probably healthier in many ways than the bustle of a city.
Since then, its surprising how many rocks in the sea I have visited which have become part of my story.
So over the next few weeks, barring any news or current affairs that I decide to write about, I will do a series of updates about some of those rocks.
You can read about my visit to a rock called Utö here.
Next week I will mention Cyprus
Then Iceland.
Then Sicily and Malta.
And perhaps after I have returned there in 2022, Mallorca.
Each of these rocks are very different to the U.K. and each other. But in every case I can still notice the islander mentality that exists in these populations.
And me telling myself I don’t like remote places becomes a story. It’s a fairly trivial one. Unlike other stories we tell ourselves which can me more significant and limiting. They become our comfort zones. It’s always worth checking these stories because in many cases, they are just not correct and could keep you in boring comfort zones which are not as interesting as the world once you step outside of it.
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