Whoops! Missed a few days.

Apologies to Pauline for not putting anything on the blog for a few days but Pam has been slave driving to get things done before Babs, Jon and Harry arrive tomorrow.

On Saturday night I went out into the garden with the dog just before bedtime and was most impressed to hear what sounded like an extremely good guitar practice at a house down the hill about 400 yards away. My appreciation was soon shattered though when a plinky plonky, one fingered version of "Scotland the Brave" began, accompanied by the said guitars and I sadly realised that it was an electric organ with a recorded guitar backing track. Still everybody has to start somewhere so maybe one day they will sound as good as their backing track.

On Sunday morning I finally got round to trying to identify some of the wild flowers in the garden. I had found one particularly lovely flower and had just managed to find from my books that it was Heartsease when the dog calmly walked up and ate the flower.
I would put a photo of the flower on the blog but this is not possible without disemboweling the dog, maybe not a bad idea.

On Monday morning I was going to phone the council to check why our planning application has not been sorted out. Fortunately I checked the councils planning website before I phoned. The website said that our planning permission had been granted, so I was saved the embarrassment of accusing the planners of tardiness only to have them tell me that it had gone through. Today (Thursday) we still have not recieved any official notification but I suppose it will appear in the fullness of time unless it is a cost saving measure for saving stamps.

More interestingly we had a short eared owl quartering over our fields for quite a long time before drifting off down the hill. They are a surprisingly big bird and very good looking.

I took the aforementioned flower eating dog for a walk over the top of the hill and down to Echna Loch. Just before reaching the loch there is a smallholding which must be the dream of many people. Ducks, geese, chickens, several shetland ponies and a small flock of sheep which includes 2 North Ronaldsay ewes. I did not know that anybody except Simon Brogan on Auskerry and the lady at the Woolshed kept North Ronaldsays.

Tuesday was a bit of a non-day, threatening to rain all day but not actually managing it.
We went into Kirkwall to get the timber for the picnic table (bad idea) and I got the wood cut to size. Guess what I will be doing tomorrow.

Now we arrive unerringly at Wednesday, every week the same, Tuesday Wednesday, Tuesday Wednesday, I think it is time we had a change, maybe have Sunday midweek.

I got the table almost finished and Pam painted most of it in between making jam and scones so I may well be eating green jam for some time.

I managed to find, identify and photograph a Magpie Moth which the dog did not eat, she must be improving.



To be fair to Molly dog, she did actually impress me. I took her for a run in the fields and she got into the bit that is fenced off for the ducks. She immediately stopped being a foolish puppy and rounded up all the ducks and put them in a corner. Remarkably she never bit one of them even when her nose was 6 inches from their beaks, just giving them a good sheepdog stare. When I went into the pen she fetched the ducks towards me and put them in the corner nearest to me. All this without any training. The instinct that collies have for herding is remarkable.





Maybe she will turn out to be a really good dog after all. I think that I may give her a few more chances yet.

That's it for tonight as it is past my bedtime. I will finish catching up tomorrow so look out for more exciting episodes.

Overkill in the lawnmowing stakes.

The Ivan Drever do last night was really good, I even lashed out on a CD from the meagre allowance that I manage to sneak past Pam.

It was a cold damp start to today but by about 11AM it had warmed up and got so hot that I even had to take my pullover off, WOW. I am sure that the weather forecast said that it would be good this morning but get worse later and not the other way round but forecasts have a way of being wrong up here.

Pam and I went out to The sands of Wright with the Molly dog. Pam said that it would be a nice place for the dog to have a run but as she kept insisting that I took a tape measure, I suspected that it was because she wants me to make a picnic bench just like the one by the sands.

I was correct, I think I may be psychic.

I measured the bench then let Molly have a run on the beach. She really enjoyed it and found 3 dead crabs, treasure. I threw one of the crabs into the sea to get rid of it and Molly dived straight in after it. She has only been to the beach twice and was not at all keen on the waves last time but it is surprising what she will do for a manky dead crab.

She never found the crab but had a good paddle and bounce in the sea.

We found some nice rock pools for Harry to have a poke round in when he comes up next friday for a week.

After Molly had a good run we put her on a lead and wandered over to the dam of Hoxa where we disturbed a female hen harrier that flew very close to us but it is not possible to take a good photo with an unruly dog on a lead in one hand and a camera in the other hand.

I made a mental note to have the dog shot.

I did manage to get a photo of the lichen on the walls as it stays still for longer than birds. This is what having really clean air does.

The photo of the wall was supposed to be here. One day I will figure out how to put photos where I want them.


I was thinking that I would spend some time this afternoon trying to identify some of the wildflowers growing in the garden and fields but when Pam said that we should get some petrol for the mower on the way back I could see that I was more likely to be mowing the poor little flowers than identifying them. They will be beheaded without ever being identified, a bit like the unknown soldier.

Perhaps I should build a cenotaph in the middle of the lawn for them but then it would just be one more thing to avoid when mowing next time.

When we got home the dog promptly leapt onto the couch and did a really good dead dog impression for about an hour.
I on the other hand, had to go and mow the lawn. As some of the lawn was a foot tall the ride on mower did not like it so I got the tractor and pasture topper out again and gave it a good short back and sides. It may be a drastic way to mow a lawn but it works and it even smashes up any stray bits of 2*2 wood that may be hiding in the grass.



Nothing much happened today

A lovely sunny day today with just a slight breeze. I took the disobedient dog down the track towards Hunda but the last couple of fields were full of sheep which she found very interesting so I decided that we would wander back and I will go down onto Hunda at a later date "sans dog". As she was behaving I let her off the lead for the last bit of the return journey and she didn't abscond so one gold star VG for the dog.

I got the baby tractor and pasture topper out and took the worst of the grass off the back garden. Now the little shrubs and saplings have a fighting chance of growing.
Fortunately the little ride on mower ran out of fuel when Pam was using it so I can't do any more mowing until we get some more petrol (Oh how sad, I am distraught).

Whenwe were down Kirkwall yesterday I noticed a poster advertising that Ivan Drever was playing at the Waterside in Finstown so I phoned up expecting it to be fully booked but was surprised to find that they still had places so I booked a couple for us and we are off there tonight.

Eynhallow trip 2010




We still have not finished clearing out the spare bedroom for Barbara, Jon and Harry when they come up in 10 days or so for a visit but I thought that I had earned some time off for good behaviour as I am normally better known for untidying than for tidying.

Tuesdays trip to Eynhallow is only a once a year event and I had promised myself that once we were settled in up here I would visit some of the other islands, so it seemed to good a chance to miss.

Unlike Pam, who is always 5 minutes late for everything (A bad idea where ferries are involved), I am probably a bit obsessive about being early so I arrived at Tingwall half an hour before the boat was due to leave for Eynhallow. Rather than hang around the jetty, I drove to the broch of Gurness. Looking across from the broch to Eynhallow I could see why it was host to all the stories of the Finfolk as it kept disappearing and re-appearing in and out of the mist.

As a bonus, on the road back from Gurness an Orkney vole scuttled across the road in front of me, the first that I have seen since moving up here.

At Tingwall I was surprised by the number of people, about 75. We all boarded and as seems normal up her with a healthy disregard for possible dishonesty, nobody checked our tickets so I could have saved myself £20, neither did anybody appear to count us onboard or off but they probably did that while I was not watching.

Underway to Eynhallow and the skipper changed course and slowed down so that we could appoach close to a basking shark in the sound. (I made a mental note to gloat when I got home as Pam has not seen one yet). I have a sneaking suspicion that it was in inflatable of some sort that they tow out from Rousay just to keep the tourist happy but it worked anyway.



I have been told to stop now and go to pick th car up from its MoT so fingers crossed.
I will finish later and see if I can figure out how to get photos up on here.
Well it passed the MoT so we can ignore it for another year.
I managed to get some photos loaded, all I need to do now is to figure out how to position them where I want them.
Back to the plot.
Just before we landed on Eynhallow we had to decide if we wanted to see more of the wildlife or of the archeology. This was not what I was expecting, life seems to plague me with difficult decisions. I finally decided that as I could probably learn a bit about birds elsewhere at a later date, I would opt for the archeology group but when we split up about 2/3 of the people opted for the archeology so I changed my mind and went with the smaller wildlife group.
It was a great walk round the island with loads of seals very curious about what all these people were doing on their island, bonxies ganging up on anything that had caught a fish and mobbing it, more graceful and less thuggish artic skuas, puffins, cormorants, shags (which I was informed does not actually lay its eggs in a paper bag), and loads more. The gannets diving for fish were impressive, just like on telly and we still got to see the archeology.

Thanks to the rangers whose knowledge of the flower, birds and archeology made the trip very enjoyable.