This week’s Islander of the Week is Graham Walker.
Graham is 31 and has lived on Scilly for three years. He works as a delivery driver for the Wholesalers on St Mary’s.
Graham was a tutor for children with behavioural problems on the Wirral in Merseyside before making the move to Scilly. “I was fed up of the ratrace and wanted to start anew,” he explains. “There was a job at the HellBay hotel on Bryher advertised in the local jobcentre and I just thought why not?”
In fact he didn’t even know where he was applying. “I thought it was in Scotland at first, but when I was interviewed on the phone, the lady I spoke to asked me when I could ‘come down’ and I thought surely she means ‘come up’? So I got my atlas out and realised where I was going!”
He stayed on Bryher for three months but found it a little too isolated. “It was also the end of the season and there wasn’t much work.” He had never been off the island since he started and had never been to St Mary’s, but got a winter job at the Bishop and Wolf pub. He followed this in the job-hopping pattern familiar to many islanders, working seasons at the Porthcressa Inn, as a baker at the Co-op, making pasties in Old Town and finally in his current year-round job at the Wholesalers.
In his spare time, Graham is an active member of St Mary’s Theatre Club. It was a hobby he came to purely by accident. “I was out one evening with a friend and he asked me if I wanted to go to the pantomime auditions for a laugh. I said no at first but we eventually went along, expecting nothing to come of it. We were the last ones to turn up and I think people were quite surprised when we walked in!” After reading for a couple of parts, both were surprised to find they’d been cast in major roles.
Since then he has starred in two pantomimes and last year’s summer play, as well as in a play written specifically for the Islands’ schoolchildren by Hall for Cornwall in Truro. “I think it was largely geared towards getting the kids more involved in Theatre Club. We went to visit them and they wrote a play for us to get the kids and adults working together.” The Alice Analysis - performed on two nights last summer – was a success and the move has certainly paid off. Pupils from the school are putting together part of this year’s summer production - and Graham will once more be a part of it.
He says he likes the sense of the community on Scilly, as well as the beauty of the islands and “the tranquility and sense of isolation. There’s very little stress in my life now. I don’t miss the mainland at all – apart from McDonald’s!”