They serve some blackish-red liquid called Rouge de Manoir on the flight from Shetland to Glasgow, via Orkney, Inverness and, if the pilot feels like it, that faded herringopolis, Wick. They also give you packets of something called Pfeiffer's Pretzel Splits - 85 per cent fat free, and always sour cream and chive flavour. Two free drinks and two packets of pretzels are supposed to get you to Glasgow. It takes three hours and costs, at full fare, over £350 return.
At that price you'd expect something a little more interesting than whatever dregs of the European wine lake Rouge de Manoir is. You might expect, indeed, a complimentary bottle of 25-year-old Springbank, a caviar-stuffed haggis and a kilo of smoked wild salmon for every successful trip completed. You'd certainly hope for better than the casual announcement as we sat in a packed Saab 340 on the Sumburgh runway: a slight technical fault had developed, and the instruments were to be allowed to recalibrate themselves. "They have to know where planet Earth is," said the pilot cheerily. "Approximately. It should take 14 minutes." It reinforces your faith in aeronautical technology. They now have equipment that can find the Earth, given 14 minutes and an aircraft that is actually sitting three feet above the bloody planet.
All this is British Airways' fault. Not that British Airways actually runs the services in and out of our islands. Oh no, that would be too much like actually providing a service and doing some hard work. What they do is franchise the routes involved to the Isle of Man-based British Regional Airlines and Scotland's own Loganair, and rake in the profits. BRA and Loganair are not permitted to compete with each other on price or even on the same routes, and they fly in British Airways colours. Which is nice.
Once you could pay 25 quid and take the chance on a one-way stand-by seat on one of the charter flights to a small, council-owned airstrip called Scatsta, run by BP, operating partner in the gigantic Sullom Voe oil terminal. The council stopped that, essentially at the behest of the councillor then representing the airport used by British Airways. Or you can go by boat.
Ah yes, the boat. Flying is scary enough. In 12 years and hundreds of airborne hours between Scotland and the Zetlandic archipelago, I have only twice been truly terrified, and one of those occasions involved a Cessna flying upside down in a hurricane. But on the steamers St Sunniva and St Clair, I have lain and either wished I were dead or feared I was about to be dead.
It takes 14 hours to sail from Aberdeen to Lerwick or vice versa on the nightly ferry. But if the weather becomes a tad temperamental, things can get silly. How about a 36-hour trip, involving a day and night sheltering in Scapa Flow from the storms? One of the so-called "mini-cruises", always packed with pensioners, hitting such bad weather that ancient bodies were soon flying through the saloons and down stairways like all too brittle dolls? Or, most bizarrely from our family's point of view, the night we were all sleeping in our cabin on our way to the mainland when my wife, a doctor, was awakened and asked if she could treat a seriously ill French tourist. As the children slept on, oblivious, an RAF helicopter arrived to evacuate the sick man, and the winchman asked if Susan would come too, to keep an eye on him. Next minute she was dangling 50 feet above the funnel.
When the children woke in the morning, they naturally wanted to know where their mum was. I explained that a helicopter had come in the night and taken her to Aberdeen. They shrugged, asked no more questions and demanded a full fried breakfast. P&O supplied it for free. Damn right they did.
It is a taxing, tortuous 200 miles to Shetland from the mainland. A new bidding procedure for the ferry contract is about to begin, and anyone taking it on should recognise that this is the longest, most exposed, most dangerous ferry route in Britain. On the old Baltic ro-ro boats used, the bow doors are solidly welded shut. You don't take risks with seas like these.
Personally, I prefer to fly. Death by plummeting is usually over in less than 14 hours. And there are some signs that competing airlines might be allowed to use the council's Scatsta airstrip, thus giving the money-grabbing monopoly of BA a fright.
Maybe they won't serve Rouge de Manoir. But I bet they know how to find Earth in under 14 minutes. I know I do. At least, I think so. It's down the way, isn't it?
