Book review: From Honky-tonks to Helicopters

Lerwick-born Douglas Sinclair is well-known as a local author who has particularly enriched our knowledge of Lerwick with his fantastic books Old Lerwick: People and Places (2017) and Old Lerwick: Lanes and Lodberries (2021). From Honky-tonks to Helicopters is a real break away from what we have come to expect from Douglas, who has been publishing historical features since he retired in 2001. It captures a moment of significant change in Shetland with the coming of oil to the islands and all the societal shifts brought with it.

Read my review of Old Lerwick

In this book, Douglas has moved away from the historical narratives he is best known for, and this memoir-style book recalls Douglas’ memories of working on the oil rigs as a medic in the 1970s as Shetland sat on the cusp of the great oil boom that was to shape so much of our island’s future.

His journey to the North Sea took him on a passage across the Atlantic Ocean, where he was initially based in Texas before being towed back across the Atlantic and planted in the North Sea, 100 miles east of his hometown of Lerwick.

We’re introduced to life on the rig, which, as someone who has grown up in a Shetland dominated by the oil industry, was very interesting to read. We learned about the processes and, more importantly, the people who Douglas worked with, punctuated with the often funny, sometimes sad situations that occurred during his time as a rig medic.

buy the book

But this publication is so much more than a collection of memories of the oil era. We learn about what it was like to live in Lerwick at this time – and what entertainment was available to youngsters in search of fun, namely the ‘Three Ps’; da picters (North Star Cinema), Planets (Shetland’s only nightclub at that time) and pubs. We also learn about his work within the NHS (National Health Service), where he began in the psychiatric hospital outside Aberdeen and later, after the rigs, moved to the Brevik Hospital in Lerwick (which closed in 1983) before becoming a teacher for the nurse education department where, amongst others, he oversaw my mam’s nurse training. We learn about his involvement in Up Helly Aa and the other pastimes he enjoyed at this time at home and away.

The book is light-hearted and full of witty anecdotes, and Douglas is a proper raconteur with a wicked sense of humour that made me wish I could have joined him for a pint and a cigarette in a Texan honky-tonk bar or the Lounge in Lerwick. The book shows a witty side to his writing unseen in his informative academic writing about old Lerwick.

I hope we can look forward to another instalment from Douglas covering the last few decades where he has greeted thousands of visitors to Lerwick as part of the ‘Meet and Greet’ team for Lerwick Port Authority, welcoming cruise visitors to the islands – I bet he has a few anecdotes about this time, too.

The book was published by the Shetland Times, and can be bought here.