Originally Posted by
Templogin
Moving Away
I was working in IT support covering 10 offices and having to drive between them as there was little in the way of remote support. We had ISDN lines and when we eventually got email it was on dial up with 5mb mailboxes. Traffic was always a struggle. The pollution was killing me, but I was living the life of a single man and thoroughly enjoying it after years of monogamy.
One day though I looked around me and thought about what I actually had in life. I was living in what was little more than a wooden shack, paying a then ridiculous rent of £600 per month in a leafy village, so my property rich landlord could live comfortably in his large country pile. Sometimes I would find myself still at work at 4am, trying to fix a server which was only out of use for 3 hours a day, and not getting paid any extra or able to get the time back.
Everything in life seemed to be rush, rush, rush. Battling for everything down to the last parking space. There must be more to life than this, so I mulled it over for a couple of weeks before finally settling on somewhere to go. I had considered Australia, but if I had enough points I was only going to scrape in. I don't like hot weather or big spiders, and really wanted to live somewhere that I could speak English or a close approximation of it. I looked at the map and thought about where I had never been. Shetland looked promising. I read everything I could about it, and decided to give it a go.
I handed my notice in, had a house clearance sale, not that I owned much, and sold my scooter and ended up with £5,500. I got the train to Gatwick and a flight to Aberdeen, then the overnight ferry to Lerwick in Shetland. I arrived at 7am and went to the B&B where I was given a damp room in the basement for a week.
After 2 days, the only person I had spoken to was the woman at the B&B. I literally knew no-one, and not being the outgoing type, getting to know anyone was going to be difficult. I rang a friend south who told me to go into the nearest pub, buy a drink, and start chatting to someone. The pub contained one person, the barman, and he seemed to have little interest in having a chat. Never mind, I would start up a singles club, surely that would attract some 40 somethings. I bought the local newspaper and looked for details of advertising rates, and lo and behold was an advert for a singles club just starting up, so I paid my fiver and joined. I was one of the few blokes, and times were good!
Once the week was up I had managed to rent myself a place out of town, up a long hill. It was £90 a week for a two bed place. The landlord was gruff, but a nice guy underneath. I remembering him going out in his boat to catch fish and bringing me back some trout. Someone gave me an old racing bike, which had splits forming in the sidewall of the tyres. I rode it up and down the hill, went out on the hills alone and with others as much as I could. It had been the best summer for years and I was brown as a berry, slim and fit, and strangely popular!
I was applying for every job going, but was getting nowhere so I was living on the dole and a small amount of the rent was paid. I had to make up the rest put of my savings, which were dwindling fast. I took a course in Microsoft Office software that gave me more in depth knowledge of the desktop suite, and also an advanced course, then I got the 67th job I had applied for. It is a case of who you know here, rather than what you know. Before getting the job I had just about run out of money and had to give up the rented accommodation and throw myself on the mercy of the local council housing department. They put me up in a chalet as temporary accommodation for 2 years, but I ended up living there for 5 years as work was just a hop over the fence, a wander through a field with sheep in it, down a hill and along the road.
I got further training to take me to "instructor level" in all the Office software apps, however the job was only 3 days a week on a temporary contract, so I needed more work. I managed to find a couple more days a week working on a customer database booking appointments, then left that to set up reporting tools on an Access database, then worked in a personnel department. After two years the temporary contract came to an end and I was back on the dole looking for work. I worked in stores picking and packing, then an office job creating software solutions, usually in Excel, and running the simple accounts, then I moved back into IT, then out of that into another office job, then finally another job providing reporting from another SQL database. I reduced my hours down to 30 a week over 4 days. I lead a simple life, don't own a car, do own a big motorbike, but usually get the bus back and forth to work.
The locals are on the whole a friendly bunch, although there are some that don't like incomers. You will always be an outsider here, but the more you contribute the more you will be accepted. Life can be hard with the long dark winters. Many come from the mainland and only last one winter. I have had a couple of periods of depression including one period in hospital with six sessions of ECT. There are plenty of good things, safety and low crime as mentioned. Cheap travel on island. My bus is £2.05 each way for a 17 mile journey to work. Shetland is a group of islands, the inhabited ones connected by ro-ro ferries, but also an Islander aircraft. I think a car on the ferry to Islands within Shetland is a fiver each way. Travelling to the mainland is very costly.
There are some oddities up here. They still bury people as there is no crematorium. You won't find M&S, Costa Coffee, Next, Aldi, Lidl, River Island etc., etc. We do have Boots, Tesco, Co-op and Mackays, but everything else tends to be local. We have our own local radio station, which is an acquired taste, and the BBC has got a studio up here.
On the whole, do I enjoy it? Yes. Would I do it again if I was in the same situation? Probably not. I would have chosen somewhere warmer, somewhere further south. This place is a long way north. I think that we are further north than Oslo in Norway.