I was lucky to spend my childhood in Shetland. This was the view from the front door in the early 80s. Look at that freshly thatched shed? There were more around the village. I have been back a number of times and now there are none. A long tradition of craft lost so recently.

This is Joe. He thatched the hut and he sold may family the land on which we built our house. He served on motor torpedo boats in the war and took us maceral fishing in the bay. Like most Shetland fishermen of his era, he couldn't swim.

This is the house my mum and dad built and there, in the foreground is another of Joe's thatched huts.

We were incomers, 'soothmoothers', named after the southern entrance to the harbour in Lerwick, through which the ferry brought new arrivals to the island. The house was a Scandinavian kit, and these popped up all over.

This was the time of the North Sea oil boom and the population of the islands doubled as soothmoothers flooded in to support the oil rigs out in the North Sea. My family left the military in Cornwall to work in aviation in Shetland.

While my mum ran oil flights to Aberdeen, my dad maintained helicopters and was winchman for the search-and-rescue crew.

While the house was built, we lived in a small caravan behind the dunes of a beach just down the road from St Ninians isle. Here in 1958 a schoolboy excavated an early medieval treasure under a stone marked with a cross. 'X' literally marked the spot!
https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/st-ninians-isle-treasure/

I was exposed to archaeology every day. Look, here I am looking really interested at visiting one of the four known blockhouse forts in the world. All are in Shetland.
https://canmore.org.uk/site/515/ness-of-burgi

And at the weekends, I used to hang out with my friends in Levenwick Broch. Although, when I say hang out, it was mostly hiding from the wind and horizontal rain or trying to find action man after he'd slipped down between the boulders. https://canmore.org.uk/site/908/levenwick

What's a broch you say! Well, luckily you don't have to imagine too hard as Shetland has a near complete example of one of these Iron Age marvels at Mousa.
https://canmore.org.uk/site/944/mousa-broch-of-mousa

Shetland is covered in Brochs and even today I become childishly excited every time I encounter one. I hope you have enjoyed this and once the pandemic is over, visit Shetland. Thanks!
https://canmore.org.uk/site/593/burland
https://canmore.org.uk/site/1049/lerwick-south-road-clickimin
https://canmore.org.uk/site/498/loch-of-houlland-esha-ness