‘I’d like a copy of the Times,’ said the visitor from the south. ‘Yesterday’s or today’s?’ the shopkeeper asked. ‘Today’s, of course.’ ‘Come back tomorrow.’
Life on Unst has its idiosyncrasies, but personally, I blame the weather forecasters for giving the nation the impression that the place may not even exist. Their London-centric maps of Britain, showing Scotland fading into the distance, leave us off entirely. Not surprising, as we are the most northern of the Shetland Islands and nearer Bergen than Aberdeen. Newcastle is to us the deep south.
Yet we hold a key position in defence. It wasn’t a coincidence that when Kim Jong-un started building rockets, it was announced that the RAF base on the island would be taken out of mothballs.
