Young families ship off to Fair Isle in search of lost values. Ageing hippies retreat to benefit from the inspiration that slants through the wind and the rain. Young idealists find themselves there, and dream of being a part of the place. Earnest volunteers take part in the splendid sweat of repairing a dry stone wall, and Canadian cruise liner guests survive the swell to stand on its shores.
I was just twenty when I first found myself on Fair Isle, and I fell squarely into one of these categories. I saw the sweet surface and I was beguiled. A simple story of an isolated community, tenacious against the forces of the elements and modernity. 70 islanders surviving a fierce North Sea and battling to maintain a world in which quality of life depends more on family and community than on material goods or corporate success. I saw Fair Isle as an example to us all, a fantasy made real in the far reaches of Britain. I wrote about four generations of the same family working together to bring in the sheep, and about the ingenuity of creative entrepreneurs who were able to live well in this old world. I basked in the spirit and the commitment of the people who actually lived this dream.
I am glad to have been able to fit these things into my vision of what the world can be. But I wonder what it was about that younger me who joined in working the sheep, raw with blisters, that thought this story lost power if it was tainted with shades of grey. Because of course the real story of the isle could not be so simple; the real story is told in the gravestones marking loss at sea, in the disappointment of new arrivals who could never quite belong, and in the whisky that numbs loneliness as well as cold.
Human efforts and dreams and disappointments are right there, there; there’s nowhere for them to hide. Seeing this was hard, for the me of then. She didn't want to discolour the beauty she saw. The me of now, though, is still captivated by the place. I often stand on the swirling cliffs in my dreams.
I was just twenty when I first found myself on Fair Isle, and I fell squarely into one of these categories. I saw the sweet surface and I was beguiled. A simple story of an isolated community, tenacious against the forces of the elements and modernity. 70 islanders surviving a fierce North Sea and battling to maintain a world in which quality of life depends more on family and community than on material goods or corporate success. I saw Fair Isle as an example to us all, a fantasy made real in the far reaches of Britain. I wrote about four generations of the same family working together to bring in the sheep, and about the ingenuity of creative entrepreneurs who were able to live well in this old world. I basked in the spirit and the commitment of the people who actually lived this dream.
I am glad to have been able to fit these things into my vision of what the world can be. But I wonder what it was about that younger me who joined in working the sheep, raw with blisters, that thought this story lost power if it was tainted with shades of grey. Because of course the real story of the isle could not be so simple; the real story is told in the gravestones marking loss at sea, in the disappointment of new arrivals who could never quite belong, and in the whisky that numbs loneliness as well as cold.
Human efforts and dreams and disappointments are right there, there; there’s nowhere for them to hide. Seeing this was hard, for the me of then. She didn't want to discolour the beauty she saw. The me of now, though, is still captivated by the place. I often stand on the swirling cliffs in my dreams.