In this week....

I left my last post with the thought of an anniversary. Then I looked it up, and I’d been a bit previous by a day or two. In this week of 1993 in Shetland my diary said, amongst miscellaneous detritus:

Jan 3^rd

Woke at 6.  Phoned Station for new forecast. Southerly hurricane force 12–13 by 2000 tonight. Phoned Willie [farmer neighbour] and passed it on. Went back to sleep. 

What with the wind and my restless thoughts tonight I couldn’t concentrate on anything, and went next door to Willie's for an hour or two. Southerly hurricane at the southern end of the garden (and lifted off my feet down the drive) but back steps and porch were oddly calm. Back home, traced source of mysterious bad smell – found 5 mince-pie-shaped lumps of carbon in the Rayburn, put into the lower oven when I got back at 5 on New Year’s morning.

Jan 4^th

Got a nap this afternoon. Wind going back up to force umpteen by tomorrow morning.

January 5 diary page is empty. I rely on memory.

I was off sick at the time - for 18 months in the end (nothing to do with depression by the way) and the Coastguard were holding my job open for me. For four years I'd been in charge of my own brilliant ‘D’ watch (aka Delta Force) and I took proprietory interest in what everybody was up to at the Station, especially My Gang. 

I remember clearly that mother phoned, 0840 that morning, and woke me up. “I’ve been watching the news and there’s a ship drifting towards the south end of Shetland. It seems to have broken down. You’d be mad as hell if it was on your doorstep and you didn’t know, so I thought I’d phone. Sorry I woke you!”

I said all the right things, checked the BBC which was showing library pictures of the coastguard and saying nothing new, and went back to sleep. Ships were adrift off Shetland every other day of the week in my job.  

One mile away from me, while I slept, Merchant Vessel Braer struck the rocks at 1115.

The rest is public history. The immediacy of it was another country, but on the 5^th it was still just a ship aground, for me.

On the 6^th

I got up around 9 and padded into the warm kitchen. It was just light, the winter days being so short at 60º North. Looking towards the stone walled noost where my boat was kept, I saw my firewood (NO NOT MY BOAT despite the critics who would have loved to make it so – some people have NO SHAME when it comes to a good bonfire) – no, simply old fence posts (no trees to speak of in Shetland so I had the charity of my farming neighbours to feed the wood–burning stove) now piled up 16 feet high overnight. The hurricane winds had reshuffled them into a fantastic sculpture.

I spotted Willie walking up the path and went out to say hello. Then I saw him moving the timber pile single handed.

It wasn’t fence posts. He was lowering down my boat (which takes four men, or three men plus me, to lift her) from sitting on her stern end, sky–pointing like a gannet.  He was terse and preoccupied. I found out why when we walked up to the cliff edge and looked down, and saw a brown sludge filling the geo (Shetland / Old Norn word for small fjord) up to about 200 yards out. The oil had come in on the tidal subcurrents overnight and was trapped in the geo. 

Back at the house, I looked around. The exterior doorhandles were sticky with salt and oil. The rain puddles had a blue rainbow sheen. I couldn’t see out of the windows. Everything was blue. House, lawn, car, stone walls, fencing. The air was almost unbreathable, the oil blasted into aerosol by the wind. We were talking through the necks of our jumpers. Willie was shrewd and foresighted. He was already talking about compensation, and saying his sheep, mostly pregnant ewes, would have to be pulled into a barn. (The dairy cows were already in for the winter.)

The point being that the sheep would consume the oil on the grass. It would dissolve their stomach linings and kill them, and in some cases it did. Spontaneous abortions were another problem. Cats and dogs were to be kept indoors. Washing themselves would mean ingesting oil from their coats. The local shop ran out of catlitter. There was talk of our getting breathing masks handed out by the council but that was days away. We were tested for daily build–up of hydrocarbons in the urine, but it seemed that the taxi drivers at the airport and the local emergency workers were the first tested. No–one ever got around to me, and I was too sick to care. I never got my mask either. I did go to one meeting at the local community hall hosted by experts from London – institute of toxic diseases or something – and even in my altered state I could see that the graph, showing the rising levels in the urine, cut off at the previous day within one decimal point of Dangerous and still rising. Nobody pointed it out. After a lively and impassioned meeting, we sat in morbid knowing silence.

The planet’s media took root. There wasn’t a spare hotel bed in ninety miles. The CEO of Maritime Emergency Operations arrived and was given a billet way up north at Brae. Not ideal, when the Marine Pollution Control Unit (MPCU) command & media hub had been set up at Sumburgh airport, the southern tip, where a hundred new phone lines had been installed overnight, and the dispersant-spraying aircraft were based. It also meant that the Station was left in peace to get on with your daily Search and Rescue.

On Saturday 9^th I drove up to Lerwick and did a heap of shopping – for some unknown intuitive reason buying enough to feed an army, including wines and spirits and treats, and stopped by the Station on my way home. My boss steered me swiftly into his office for a chat and said, honest as the day, that I wasn’t looking at all well. We talked about the Braer and he told me about the CMEO.  I said I had two spare rooms up and ready, and Chris J Harris was welcome to choose one of them.  Got home and cleared away Christmas decorations, vacuumed, put away the shopping including 8 huge water bottles (our water would be contaminated for a while yet) & 2 jumbo Flash for windows, paths, car, cat  etc (sorry….joke..)

And so it came to pass that I had a paying lodger, receipts and all.

Press releases and conferences. Laying the table at night for breakfast, just like a real B & B. Effortlessly morphing myself into a media circus (this comes naturally) videoing stuff from all channels with split–second precision for when he got back, so he’d know in the face of tomorrow’s press conference where the media focus was pointing. Presenting him with a whisky and water when he got in, and wine with dinner. Lighting a wood fire and talking about it all. Being privy to stuff I swore to forget and wish I could remember now. He was a brilliant guest, and pleasant and fun. And of course Shetland Coastguard couldn’t resist talking about us ‘living together’. Confronted with this at some meeting at the Station, we laughed awkwardly and gave them their minute of fun.  Ha ha yeah yeah ….  Grow up!

A few days after the Braer grounded, Prince Charles came visiting. He went next door to Willie’s, and discussed winter cabbages and sheep and cows and carrots and what all. I have a photo of the press pack following them from his house down the road towards the dairy barns. I could put it up here if I could find it. Meanwhile, Prince Philip was at the airport, holding forth about the wildlife we were losing in scary numbers.

A week or so later, a good–looking cheerful young man appeared on my doorstep and came in for a cup of tea.. He was representing Bio–Remediation Services, and wanted to take some samples of my garden soil. Fine. Fill your boots, boy! The idea was that he could supply some substances to neutralise the contamination. He’d also taken samples from a potato farmer within half a mile of the actual wreck, but it turned out that my garden was the worst contaminated of any private land in Shetland and the only house closer to actual oil than mine didn’t really have a garden.

And then I discovered that this light oil, Gullfaks or Brent crude, quickly breaks down in the soil anyway, being a natural fertiliser – an organic unprocessed 'chemical'  – but didn’t I have the fattest healthiest carrots and peas and the tallest weeds known to man? I never saw the bright young man again, because I’d wised up by then. No hard feelings – he was genuine, within the meaning of the Act.

Coming soon - another teeny glimpse of Shetland Coastguard Life.

Meanwhile, here’s a picture of my then house of 14 amazing years ~ ‘Finisterre’, Noss, south end of Shetland, and mine’s the one in the middle of the shot, closest to the cliff. The red thing is the landing-on-water float of your local Coastguard helicopter.

Told you I loved living in the sticks! 
If I can get to the photo drawers (unreachable in spare room) I'll put up a couple of the oily ones.