Forty years after the first ‘hippies’ came to the island, and with only eight full-time residents, Andy Holt asks if there’s still hope for the future. He believes there is.

The 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic has rekindled memories of two Shetlanders who were involved in the tragedy, writes Jim Tait

Scalloway man Walter Gray, who with his wife later founded the Walter and Joan Gray Memorial Home in the village, was working as a radio operator for Marconi on the east coast of Canada at the time of the disaster.

Nobody ever expects to become a cancer patient, in spite of statistics. The shock of knowing you’ve got a tumour isn’t helped by being told that your treatment means a stay in Aberdeen, away from your family and friends just when you need their support most. Luckily, for us Isles people, and folk from the northern coast of Scotland, there’s CLAN Cancer Support.

The long sleek hull emerged from the early morning fog, the blunt bow cutting through the water as the diesel engines propelled the U-boat steadily north towards Lerwick.

A few men moved about the deck watching the coast move steadily past while one figure, wearing a thick white sweater against the cold, looked out from the conning tower at the southern entrance to the harbour beginning to form in the distance.

“If you don’t have steel toe caps, I’ve got spare boots,” says the genial Richard Wemyss, Shetland Arts’ Head of Operations for Mareel. This is not so I can give either his employer or Richard himself a substantial kicking, it seems, but to protect my feet from falling architects, accountants or other extraneous objects that may be loose in the construction site down at the North Ness. I have a pair of ultralight Magnum Tactical Boots, as favoured by the very best riot police, so I make sure I’m wearing them for my journey into the Heart of Artiness.

Dave Clark, former Council Chief Executive, remembers what it felt like to return to his boyhood home.

The aircraft looked so tiny, parked there on the tarmac, They had always seemed so large as a peerie lad. The Viscounts, then the Hawker Siddeley’s that replaced them. Were all my childhood memories about to be challenged – or, God forbid, destroyed?

We’re lucky to live in a place that’s seen as a bit different. From a film point of view, it means that visitors brought their cameras with them – and so there’s a good hoard of relatively early films of Shetland life.

Outdoors tourism in Shetland takes many forms – some people come for the ornithology, the whale watching or the coastal scenery. Others come to see the Northern Lights or the simmer dim. And each year a certain number of people visit Shetland to go hillwalking.

Shetlander Ronnie Smith has announced his retirement as Scotland’s head of all teachers, the General Secretary of the union the Education Institute of Scotland. Chris Cope visited him in Edinburgh.

Among charity shops, it is a legend. It is the motherlode, the Aladdin’s Cave, a treasury of delights for those of us who love to sift through the second-hand. It is El Dorado. The real Treasure Island. People speak of Whalsay’s Shoard shop in hushed voices, plotting expeditions, trying to fit its famously short opening hours around ferries and the other distractions of life.