The Orkney Tourist Board doesn’t recommend travelling to Orkney to see the Northern Lights. It admits that yes, one can see the Northern Lights, but if you’re visiting to do so, you’ll likely end up disappointed.

So here I am, in Orkney, to see the Northern Lights. And yes, I’m disappointed. The climate has been described as the most vile under Heaven and between the wind and hail, I can understand why.

I’m here because I can’t afford Iceland. I can’t afford Scotland either, but I thought it was worth a shot. I mean, it’s the Northern Lights – what wouldn’t you give? I try to explain this to Martin, the only other hostel guest, but he’s more focused on my plan to travel to Inverness.

“Now let me see,” Martin says. “You’ll arrive Thursday. That’d be curry night. You’ll be there Friday too, that’s fish ‘n’ chip night. Even better. Tuesday is steak night, Wednesday is chicken night, and you already know Thursday is curry night. You’ll get a pint with your meal, all for six quid.”

Martin is taking me through the menu at Wetherspoons, a chain of UK pubs. I want to tell him about my last visit to a Wetherspoons, about the man whose hair was set on fire, but I can’t get a word in. Martin can somehow sip his beer without pausing for breath.

“They call it club night, they do. Tuesday, that’s steak club. Wednesday is chicken club. Thursday is curry club and Friday—”

I cut him off. “Fish ‘n’ chips club?”

“Aye, it is too. But we call it Fish Friday. My favourite.”

Martin has visited 700 Wetherspoons in his 72 years and plans on having a drink at them all. I Google how many there are and learn that a British woman has already done it. By the time she finished, she’d visited 980 Wetherspoons. There are now 1100, so Martin has a way to go.

“Does that bother you?” I ask. “That you won’t be the first?”

He stares at me. “O’course not. Why should I care what anyone else has done? Plenty have done it, but I haven’t. It’s for me. No-one else.”

I’m pleased to hear he’s not doing it for fame; it’s inspiring, in a depressing way. And what makes Martin’s quest more impressive is there are no Wetherspoons in Sanday, the island where he lives. There isn’t even a pub. He made the trip to Orkney’s mainland for New Year but nothing, I tell him, is open. Not even the pub.

“It wouldn’t matter if the pub was open,” Martin says. “3.85 for a pint. Can you believe it?” He points to an empty can on the counter. “These were 66-and-a-half pence each. 3.85? It’s robbery.”

I tell him he’d be paying double that in Australia.

“Then I won’t be going to Australia for a drink.”

Why would he? There isn’t a Wetherspoons in sight. Anyway, he has no interest in going to Australia. Too hot, he reckons, especially when a cold one costs seven quid. He isn’t sold on the locals either; in Liverpool, he met an Australian who’d come to kiss the gates at Anfield.

“How stupid. Football’s daft. They forced me to play at school. You were given two choices: play football, or get the cane then play football anyway.”

I try to avoid stereotyping Martin as a miserable old bloke who hates everything. I try, but it’s difficult. I mean, he even has it in for snow.

“Hate the stuff. Slipped last year and broke my ankle. They couldn’t give me crutches, so I kept walking and cracked the cast. Couldn’t be getting the ferry to the doctor all winter, so I did it up in electric tape.”

“How does it feel now?”

“It’s okay, y’know. Twinges in the winter but that’s normal for folk with injuries.”

I tell Martin that I broke both my wrists a few years back. A push bike. Tram tracks. When it’s cold, I can’t even type on my phone.

“Those tram tracks are dangerous,” says Martin, shaking his head. “My friend came off a bike and turned into one of those epileptics. Just started frothing at the mouth, he did.”

“Is he alright now?”

“O’course not. He’s dead. Age of 21, I was only 18. Went to his house and his ma said come inside, so I knew something was wrong. John’s dead, she said, and I did nae believe it. I remember thinking, Christ, if this is life, it’s a bit feeble.”

We sit in silence. Martin sips his beer. He asks, again, what brought me to Orkney.

“The lights,” I say. “Remember?”

“That’s right. Y’know, I see them five, six times a year and I’m not even looking. Now I just go inside.”

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