CULTURE


‘Our life in Shetland works to a different rhythm – and quite possibly a better one’


rare delicacy. But neither the collecting of them (which involves getting the boat just a little too close to the rocks for comfort) nor the eating of them outside the Tokyo izakayas I used to frequent in my expat days really does it for me. Seaweed, on the other hand, does. Neither


my husband or any of our guests are entirely convinced, but I figure that if I can make every- one eat enough sea vegetables we could be self sufficient at Vementry, at least over the summer. I got Xa Milne of seaweed condiment firm Seaspice to introduce me to the basics of seaweed collecting and cooking a few years ago and now find myself spending our beach walks scouring the rocks for pepper dulse (the truffles of the sea, says Xa) while collecting sugar kelp for crisps and gut weed for salads. Visit us on a windy day (so any day really)


and you will see our washing line hung almost entirely with drying kelp. It is the kind of thing that sounds like hard work from a distance but which makes perfect sense when you haven’t much else to do. And it beats Sainsbury’s online shopping any day. When we first went


to Shetland I couldn’t


quite see how it would fit into my idea of how 94 WWW.SCOTTISHFIELD.CO.UK


Clockwise from top left: A trio of junior Shetlanders; the family farm at Vementry; pepper dulse is the truffle of the sea; Sandy collecting mussels.


FIELD


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life should be. Now I do. Normal life in main- land Britain is endlessly hectic. But our life in Shetland works to a different rhythm – possibly a better one. Sometimes when I am sitting in the kitchen in Shetland looking out at the rain and the wind (and the rain soaked children, who don’t seem to much mind weather) my mind drifts off to the Seychelles. But writing this, as I sit at my desk in Edinburgh, listening to the drilling and banging of the home refurbishment next door and worrying about what I might say in a talk I am giving in London on Friday, my mind keeps drifting off to Shetland.


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