Quietly and with purpose they’ll stride out, some clutching long, shiny knives, others hugging bottles of fortifying spirit for the task ahead. Older ones will sometimes be accompanied by a child, ready to be instructed.

As they reach a certain spot on the tideline, they’ll turn and begin walking backwards.

Didn’t see that bit in The Wicker Man? You won’t see it in the remake either. This particular ancient rite of spring caters for the body rather than the soul.

In times past, for islanders like Orcadians, the big equinoxial tides brought with them a welcome change of diet from the salted and dried winter fodder. It was the time of the ‘spoot’ ebbs – when the northern equivalent of truffles awaited those smart enough to outmanoeuvre the submerged razorfish that ‘spooted’ jets of water as they dived for cover below the sand.

In Orkney, present day spoot connoisseurs include ‘Which’ Good Food Guide’s top Scottish restaurateur Alan Craigie, who considers himself fortunate enough to live where he can harvest his own spoots.

‘We had them for lunch yesterday, done in butter with some leek, onion and garlic and a nice drop of wine. Pure magic.’

So what is a spoot? Can anybody find it, and how edible is it?

It’s a shellfish – long, thin, like an old cut-throat razor. Yes, anybody can find it if they know where to look, and the difference between delicious and disgusting is around 30 seconds cooking time.

For most of the year razorfish lie in sandy shellfish beds below the tideline, but with the spring tides the sea goes out so far that for an hour or two the ‘spoot beds’ are uncovered. The northern climate being what it is, weather and tides working together to make ‘spooting’ possible add up to no more than 20 or 30 hours in a year, so at one time the island population geared working lives to being free to take advantage of ‘spoot ebbs.’

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