A little way into my trip to Shetland I realised that my body had been through a battering over the last weeks: the extreme work in Senegal, chasing around after the coup in Bissau, fighting off the dogs on St Louis beach, and then the stress of the volcano and not being able to get home. I suddenly found myself in a remote place with not much chance of getting any rest, feeling low and out of touch with myself and with noone around me who knew me enough to recognise that I was in one of my post-Africa dips. On top of this, extreme tooth ache rattled my head all weekend long and the fiddles that played like a swarm of hornets throughout the nights rang through my ears painfully.

But as happens, some people I hardly knew took care of me. It doesn't take much to let someone know they see what's going on and that they feel sorry for your situation. The offer of a short walk along the shore from someone I had always been a bit shy of was a reaching out that broke through my loneliness and made me realise that probably everyone feels a bit out of place, just that some people are better at hiding it than others.