Unravelling Shetland

Thursday 10^th June

The weather was fine again. We are so lucky to have good weather to complete this job. The number of times I have tried to install work in bad weather and some of the situations I have found myself in would be hard to believe. I have, for example, found myself ankle deep in running water because it was raining so hard in a Welsh valley in December attempting to install ceramic tiles. That installation job was truly the worst I have ever had the misfortune to try to do, and ended up with the builders having to smash off the concrete structures that they had chemically sealed to the top of the wall and transport them to a shed, where I succeeded in applying the tiles with a huge gas fired heater blasting. What a nightmare. I know better than to try to attempt the impossible now, but sometimes it causes a lot of delay and hassle. I have just installed a ceramic relief on a wall in Herefordshire last week and that was delayed by 5 months! I was all set to install it in November when the weather turned very cold, and I can vouch that the temperature in England did not rise above 5 degrees until March! What a long winter. By then, the protective cover they had put up for me had gone, and as it was then raining, I couldn’t do the job either. Then in between running up and down to Shetland and waiting for good weather, in the end it got installed 2 weeks ago, but boy was it worth waiting for! The weather was perfect – 20 degrees and sunny, so the cement behaved itself and set quickly, and the grouting was no problem at all.

In Shetland one would imagine it could quite easily have been cold and raining, but we hit the jackpot, at least for the first two days.

Today we tiled the sides of the toadstools. I used paper- backed mosaic sheets, which are applied tile side to the cement and pressed firmly in place. Then, when the cement has gone off (at least 24 hours later), the backing paper is peeled off and the tiles are revealed. The funny thing is, the Hungarian tilers had never come across this kind of paper-backed tiles before, and started off by applying the cement to the paper side! So I put them right. Admittedly these days most mosaic tiles are backed with fibre-glass mesh, which brings a whole new meaning to the technique of mosaic tiling. For years I have been using the reverse technique, whereby the tiles are stuck face down on to brown paper, and then the backing paper is peeled away as described above. Now it is possible to work face up, by sticking the tiles face up on to mesh, which is how I made these mosaics. I imagine the tilers have just never used the old-fashioned variety.

Again we worked really well together. There were a few moments when I thought I may not have enough tiles of the right colour – that would be difficult, because in Shetland, you can’t just go to the shop and pick up some more. In fact you can’t do that on the mainland either, but at least you can get next day delivery. When you’re stuck way up in the middle of the North Sea things do take longer. Peter told me that was the hardest thing about tiling here. Tiles can take weeks to arrive, even when the delivery date is due weeks before.

By the end of the day, all the tiling using adhesive had been completed.

Weather watch for tomorrow.

Wednesday 9^th June

The tiling begins

Without even time to unpack a single bag, I was at the school at 8am to meet the tillers, who were already there. It has been hard to find the tillers, but in the end, just before leaving last time, Martin the builder gave me a card he had picked up in the building centre. Peter, a Hungarian tiler, agreed to do the job, and had been to see the plans and had looked at the concrete, once finished, in my absence, so he knew what to expect. I am sure that when I contract builders to do these jobs for me, I am asking them to do something rather unusual. Most of the time Peter is tiling bathrooms, kitchens, floors. Then he comes to me and discovers that I want him to tile some three dimensional toadstools in a school playground. Quite fun, I imagine; a bit out of the ordinary, but challenging, too. The only problem was communication. Peter speaks very little English, so there was a lot of sign language and waving of arms. We worked well together despite this hindrance.

The first day we covered nearly all the “tops”. Due to the problem I had in extracting the polystyrene forms from the fibre glass moulds, I did not have proper 3D shapes to work from, which meant that working out the exact size and shape of the mosaic panels to snuggly cover the curved “tops” was difficult and involved a certain amount of guesswork. This was the only option, because the concrete was being cast while I was away, and I was coming back to jump straight in and do the tiling. How successful these estimations would turn out could only be discovered once we set to and paid the tiled sections out.

The first “toadstool” revealed that the pieces did not fit very well! This was considered to be a “big problem” by the tilers, so to reassure them that I was in control, I quickly grabbed some tiles and my nippers and filled up the gaps with new inserts. No problem! And so we continued, working as a threesome. In fact, we worked very well together, them applying the adhesive (after coating the concrete with a PVA sealant) and the tiled sections, and me filling in after them.

We worked quickly and efficiently and by the end of the day we had completed four tops and the last was almost done. Then we covered them with plastic and left them overnight.

Last trip back

I have arrived back in Shetland for final onslaught. The mosaics are finished, the concrete has been finished completely during my three-week absence and the tillers are ready to go, so we are all set!

I am staying in Voe again, in Martin’s house, overlooking the Olna Firth. This time I have arrived to a blaze of bluebells everywhere. Martin has the most beautiful garden full of trees (very rare in Shetland) and so it is almost like being in a mini bluebell wood. The first night, straight from the plane, we walked past the white church, skirting the water’s edge around to the Pierhead pub and ate mussels harvested fresh from the voe in front of us.

The evenings are lovely are long; darkness descends around 11, but even then not entirely and it is light already by 3.

Leaving

It’s time to catch the ferry home; so much more peasant than flying, especially on an evening as lovely as this.

While I am gone, Martin will finish off the concrete casting, fixing the tops to the bases, ready for the tiling when I get back in June.

In my last few days before leaving, I found a tiler who is prepared to install the mosaics , which was a huge relief as finding a tiler in Shetland has proved to be quite difficult. It may sound strange, but finding tilers is something I have to do quite often and it is never very easy, especially when I don’t know the area. As usual, I relied on spreading the word and waiting for good news. In this case, Martin came up with the goods. So I can return to Brighton knowing that all is in place for my final visit.

Sumburgh

Sumburgh Head is the most southerly point of the Shetland islands. It is famous for its colonies of seabirds: puffins, guillemots, gannets etc.

We only saw a couple of puffins but we had a lot of fun on the beach pretending it was the Carribean!

The main airport is in Sumburgh, and the runway crosses the peninsula from the beach on the east straight across to the west beach. To get to the terminal there is a level crossing just like a railway, except this one is for planes! So you may have to wait, as did I, for the plane to take off before you can drive across the runway.