Seals-R-Us

Sunday 31st October 2010
A lovely morning so Molly and I had a good long walk across the beach and down to the barrier.

I got Maddy's baby tractor out and shifted several loads of reasonably sized stones from the pile of rubble that the builders had left after knocking the door and window out.
The builder is supposed to be removing the rubble next week and I thought that it was a waste to just let him dump all the good stones in with the rubble so I will save them for something.

After dinner we went down to South Ronaldsay again on a seal hunt. This time though I had looked on the aerial view on multimap. Ithought "If I were a seal, where would I go to have pups". That is assuming that I was a female seal as male seals do not have pups and I am a male but you get the idea. Anyway I was right so I finally found some seal pups.

There were about 10 pups on this beach with another 70 or so on another beach across the bay but they were at the bottom of sheer cliffs so I could not get down to them.


There was a way down from the top at this little beach so I could get near enough to get a decent photo.



I could have got right down to the beach but did not want to disturb them to much in case I upset the mothers. In addition I always think that although they look sweet and harmless, seals are very large carnivores with very big sharp teeth and they may resent me being to near their pups.

The return of Jock

Friday 29th October 2010
Friday morning and Molly was happy. Jock came up to play today for the first time in several days so she was bouncing all over him.


Duncan tells me that Jock is just as bad and if Duncan goes round to his parents in the morning then Jock will not eat his breakfast because he knows he is coming up here and he gets to excited.

The plumbers finally got round to fitting a stop cock to our water supply after I have been asking for 2 months. They had to turn off the supply to Mr Scotts farm up the road because our supply is taken straight off his water pipe. I duly went up and told Mr Scott what we were doing and explained that the water would be off for 10 to 15 minutes. The plumber then cut the pipe to fit the stopcock and found that the one he had was the wrong size. He therefore had to shoot of to Kirkwall to get the correct one and I had to go to Mr Scott and tell him that his water would be off for about one and a half hours just as he was having his dinner. Hopefully he had a full kettle of water.
However all's well that ends well and I now at least have a stopcock.

On Saturday we went down to the garden centre in Kirkwall where the RSPB were having a "feed the birds day" with info on what to feed and so forth.
We were looking for some plants and shrubs for the garden but there was not much there. I suppose they may have some more stock in next spring.

I got a big ball of string and made a lead for Molly. It is about 20 yards long with a lump of wood on the end so I can let her go and if she won't come back then I can just stamp on the string and reel her in.

No waxwings either

Monday 25th October 2010
I had to take Pam down to the surgery in The Hope so I took the opportunity to wander out towards the pier where the Pentalina docks as there had been reports of waxwings there.
You may not be surprised to hear that all the waxwings had left as soon as they heard I was coming.
From Pier Road it is a nice view across Water Sound to Burray and you can't see all the scaffolding on the house so it doesn't look bad.

Tuesday was a really nice day so Molly and I had an extra long walk right round the beach. The world and his dog (literally) seemed to have the same idea so Molly was chuffed as she got to see 3 dogs that she likes and have a good sniff while the humans chatted.

We went for a meal with David and Claire to the Skerries on South Ronaldsayin the evening. From the car park you can see the lights from houses on the scottish mainland across the Pentland Firth. The Skerries is just a few hundred yards from The Tomb of Eagles, one of the more famous neolithic sites on Orkney. Earlier today the archeologists had started a dig just outside the door of the restraunt. A few weeks ago somebody had moved some stones from the top of a mound and had found themselves looking into a hole with a skull looking back at them from a pool of water. The county archeologist was informed and they decided to dig it straight away, probably because of the risk of water damage to the bones.
If they get it excavated and roofed over then it could make a good attraction for the restraunt next season.

Wednesday morning was overcast, wet and windy and when I looked out of the window at about mid day I though that something had happened to the pier down at the village. I could not see the landward end at all.
It then dawned on me that it was still there but was almost covered by the sea. It must have been a particularly high tide and with the stiff south westerly breeze, the swell was covering the pier.
I nipped down to the village later but the tide had begun to recede so the water was not quite making it over the pier.



Thursday dawned beautiful and sunny with no wind and surprisingly it stayed that way all day.
We had 4 or 5 people (plumbers and electricians) working on the extension all day and it is now covered in pipework and has bits of wire poking down from the ceiling and out of holes all over the place.

Duncan was only up breifly with Jock which did not go down well with Molly. She saw Jock out of the window but by the time I got her out he had gone.
She had her dog training in the evening so at least she managed to see some dogs including a new one that she had a good sniff at. Having a new dog in the group threw her a bit and she ignored me for the first 10 minutes but after that she did OK. I however did not do so well and was told that she was doing everything right and quickly but that I should have been more strict with her. I thought "Why be more strict if she is doing it all properly and fast" but I suppose I will have to raise my voice a bit in future.

First snow on the tops of Hoy

Thursday 21st October 2010
A cool morning but quite pleasant. I went down to the tip at The Hope and looking back, all the slopes of the Hoy hills were covered in snow for quite a way down from the tops. Very picture skew it was to. A much better view than that from most rubbish dumps. Unfortunately I did not have a camera with me and I am to old to use a mobile phone for taking photos. If I start down that road then the next thing will be talking into the camera. I already talk to the television, so it wouldn't be long before I got locked away.

On Friday we went to the dreaded shop again. Hurray!! We also went to several other places to get very interesting things for the extension.
I can not remember what all the interesting things were but Pam assures me that they were interesting.

On Saturday there was a model show at Firth community centre in Finstown. I asked Pam if she wanted to go down there but she declined. I don't think that I will ever understand women. She was all excited about sinks, showers and wooden floors and yet today, she is not even a bit excited about going to a model show at which there were several model railways amongst other things. Perhaps as she is still convalescing after her op then that may account for her otherwise unexplicable behaviour.

We went out on another fruitless seal hunt on Sunday. It's a good job that we are not eskimo's, we would have starved to death by now. It was a nice day however and we got round several places that we have not been before.


For those of you who are convinced that Orkney is a cold and desolate place, I took a photo looking down towards Herston. Note the palm trees. Considering the fact that trees of any sort are not exactly common here, palm trees can be seen in gardens all over the place. I assume that they are sucessful because we do not get many frosts and palms are built to cope with high winds.

Who needs birds?

Wednesday 20th October 2010
It was supposed to be a wet and windy day today and there was a U3A old farts bird watching walk on. As the day actually looked as though it may not be as bad as they forecast I thought that I would give it a go.

The weather forecasts up here are notoriously innaccurate. It is probably not the forcasters fault. I think that Orkney is often on the edge of a lot of the weather systems and a few miles either way and they either hit or miss us. The weather also changes so fast. The local saying is that if you don't like the weather then wait 5 minutes and it will change.

I do not normally like paying for clothes but I have lashed out and bought a decent weather proof insulated jacket, a good pair of waterproof over trousers and a decent set of boots. I think that the winter weather here makes it worth having a good set of outdoor clothing or I would have to either stay indoors or just get cold and wet.

Anyway, back to the plot. I got all dressed up and insulated better than the space shuttle and so of course the weather was really pleasant with just 2 or 3 light showers. Although it is supposed to be a bird walk we did not see many birds,a hen harrier and a brambling being the highlights.

As we are all, including myself, old and slow, I was not quick enough with the camera to get a decent photo of the harrier so just to add a bit of interest and colour,this is somebody else's photo of a male hen harrier so that you know what they look like.
Impressive birds eh!



These U3A walks are really just an excuse for a load of oldies to get together and go for a reasonable stroll in good company. They do this very well. Although we are new up here i am welcomed and get on well with all the others and it is nice to have a reason to go for a bit of a walk in various places that I may not otherwise get to. The walks are normally only about 5 miles so it is not to demanding so suits me well. It's nice to see a few birds and adds interest to the walks but they are really just incidental.
One of the ladies on the walk is very knowledgeable about birds but another two people seem to know half the people in Orkney and who lives where, who's cows are in this or that field and all the local scandal so we just wander round chatting like a bunch of old farts which is where we came in.

These seals are rubbish

Sunday 17th October 2010
Not to be defeated in the search for seal pups we took another trip out round Windwick and Burwick as I had heard that there were pups at Burwick.
It will come as no surprise to you dear reader, that we did not find any of the damn things. But this time I did not even see or hear any adult seals.

On Monday things went from bad to worse as the new Tesco store opened in Kirkwall.
Now you will know that Tesco's is to say the least, not my favourite shop and the idea of going round the new one on the first day of opening was to my mind only marginally better than castrating myself with my teeth and no anaesthetic.

So of course we went to Tesco's. It was the first time since moving up to Orkney that I have felt my heartrate rising and I do not think that it was because I was excited by the prospect of shopping there.

It is not that I don't like shopping. Shearer's is a nice shop. They sell everything from bread to beachcaster fishing rods and from baked beans to wood burning stoves. It is almost a pleasure to go there. Fighting my way round a supermarket full of crazed women who look one way and push their trolleys the other way while we buy stuff that we either don't need or could have got from Shearer's strikes me as little short of masochism.

If we needed to have a selection of 43 different types of pasta then maybe we need to go to Tesco's but we don't.

Tuesday came as it often does after Monday and the builders started knocking the window out of the old bedroom wall. When the new window is fitted then that will be almost all the external work done.

In the afternoon Pam thought that she was getting a bit of an infection in the wound from her op so I managed to persuade her to phone up and make an appointment to see the practice nurse on Wednesday. It was 5:15 PM when she phoned but this being Orkney instead of England, the doctor told her to come straight round and he would see her as soon as she got there instead of making an appointment for sometime in the next few days.
We shot round to the surgery and he checked Pam, took some samples and started her on antibiotics straight away.

Even Pam thinks that the standard of care up here is much better than down south even if we do have to travle to Aberdeen for some things.

Where are all the seal pups

Thursday 14th October 2010
Pam was feeling a bit better today and was getting bored at home so we went out to Windwick on South Ronaldsay to see if there were any seal pups as it is pupping season for the grey seals.
There were no pups yet at Windwick although I could hear a seal calling but we couldn't go far as Pam is not up to walking far yet.

Maybe we just looked in the wrong place as the Autumn Watch team from BBC television are up here at the moment to film the seal pups but they have gone to Stronsay.

At least Pam had a nice trip out so it will stop her going "stir crazy".

On Friday Pam went down to see the surgery practice nurse to get her stitches out. I didn't realise that many of them were staples. I thought that they looked like a zip and wondered if it was some NHS scheme to make any future operations easier.

She has just told me that it was 35 staples and 12 stitches over 5 incisions so she looks like a noughts and crosses board.

This photo from this morning just proves that it does sunshine in Orkney in October. There are at least 3 places where the sun is shining.

When we got back from the surgery the builders had begun to knock through the end of the house to create a doorway into the extension. Looking at the wall when they knocked through it is fairly obvious that the house was built by a fisherman and not by a builder or mason. It is plainly OK because it has stood for 100 years but he probably got it right by luck more than judgement. Almost all the houses here are single storey, maybe they tried 2 storey houses and decided that as they all fell down it was better to stick to single storey houses.

As Pam says that I have not put any photos of the progress of the extension up for a while, here are two.
One looking from the house through into the extension and









one looking from the new bedroom to the new lounge.

Pam's return

Monday 11th October 2010
Molly and I were uip early so that we could tidy round before I had to collect Pam. Unfortunately Molly's efforts did not seem to be aimed at making the place look any more tidy but we eventually managed then I shot off to the airport.

Pam was the last one off the aircraft as she had to wait until all the other passengers had disembarked and then one of the staff pushed her to the terminal in a wheelchair. I am sure that she will not have liked the indignity of being pushed in a wheelchair as she is to independent for her own good so I took a photo.


It was lovely to have her back and she was equally pleased to be back.
At home she slightly overdid it and made herself knackered (no surprise there then)

On Tuesday afternoon the phone went off, probably as a protest at being over used since Pam returned. I checked with the builders who swore blind that they had not pulled at the wires. I phoned Sky and they said that they would get back to us within 72 hours but on Wednesday morning BT came to check it out so 10 out of 10 for BT.
The problem was of course that a wire had been pulled out just where the builders had been working but they said that it was not them so it was obviously just a coincidence and the wire had fallen out all by itself.

Domesticity

Saturday 9th October 2010
After taking Molly for a walk down to the village to tire her out (It did not work), I thought that I had better get some of the domestic chores done before Pam returns.
After looking at my instuctions I decided that doing some washing was possible so I sucessfully got a load done (Is there no end to my talents). There was one minor problem. When I hung the washing out on the line, the line was covered in cement dust from the rendering on the extension and so all the washing had a nice grey stripe across it. I blame Pam for this as her instructions said nothing about wiping the washing line down. Anyway perhaps she will not notice or maybe all the dust will fall off.

On Sunday I was surprised on my return from dog walking to see Duncan and Hamish on the roof doing some tiling. Duncan said that it was because he could charge double time for sundays but I think that it is because he knows Pam is back tomorrow and he is scared.

I did lots of domestic things like vacuuming, washing, making bread etc so that it is not to bad when Pam gets back. (See I am scared of Pam also).

Pam is chomping at the bit to get out of hospital and I have told Molly that she is not to jump up at her but we will see.

Back home again

Friday 8th October 2010
Well maybe the prayers or whatever worked.
I returned from Aberdeen today. Pam had her Op on Monday and though there were complications, all went well and she is due home next Monday.

I picked Molly up from the kennels where she has had the lady who owns the kennels eating out of her hand so to speak although it did seem to be the other way round as she was getting loads of tit bits.




When I got home the builders were here and Duncan and his dad were on the roof doing the tiling.
The extension is beginning to look like part of the house instead of a shed (Shame).

The blockwork is up for the walls and is cemented over, the velux windows are in the roof and most of the roof is tiled.

It took me about 30 minutes to actually get into the house as Jock was here and Molly was going demented so I had to take them both for a play in the field first but I suppose that she is entitled to a bit of a play after being in the kennels for a few days even if she does seem to have been spoiled in the kennels.

Say a prayer or whatever you believe in

Pams Op today as I write this. I am off to Aberdeen in a few minutes.
Say a prayer for us please.

Pam leaves me.

Saturday 2nd October 2010
Up early this morningg to go to the airport as Pam is going to the hospital in Aberdeen today prior to having her Op on Monday.
I am going down on Monday as we can't get Molly into kennels before then.

Even so I have been left enough food to feed an army, all with full cooking instructions. I have 4 A4 pages of instructions ranging from where everything is, to how to work the cooker, dishwasher, washing machine and drier. I even got a note telling me that the washing machine was in the kitchen and the drier was in the bathroom. Just because I made a simple mistake a couple of times.

I have also got a list of instructions for Duncan the builder. The main instruction seems to be that he is not to do anything that I tell him to do.

Sunday just seems to be a dog day. Took the dog for a walk and did a bit of training with her. She is not doing bad.

After two goes I finally found the kennels that she is going into tomorrow. I thought that I had better not leave it till the morning as I have not got much time spare after dropping her off before I have to be at the airport so I do not need to get lost.


I do feed and water Molly properly but why is it that she seems to think that this is the best place to drink from. She always has a bowl of fresh water but it is not good enough. If she ever finds the bathroom door open she is in there.

Last blog entry for a few days as I am off to Aberdeen to see Pam tomorrow.

Orkney's weather wins and I learn to embed videos

Friday 1st October 2010
The day started a bit breezy but the forcast is for gales later.
We have tickets to go to a "Help for Heroes" concert in Kirkwall tonight. It should be a good one.
The weather stayed reasonable until about 3:30PM then it started raining which with the high winds was a bit uncomfy outside.


"The Chair" and Saltfishfourty both playing along with some other good singers and groups.



I thought that it would be a nice night out for Pam before she went into hospital tomorrow morning.
Unfortunately Orkney weather won again.

During the afternoon the wind got up to force 9 (severe gale) and although we got over number 3 barrier with no problems, when we got to number two barrier it was closed. I think that even if it wasn't closed I probably would not have attempted to cross it. Our end was OK but we could see the waves at the far end crashing right over the top of the barrier. It may or may not have washed the car off into the sea but it would certainly have done severe damage as a few tons of water descended on the car.

Deciding that discretion was etc etc, we returned to Burray and went for a meal and a jar at the Sands. At least it did not feel to bad wasting the tickets as the money we paid went to a good cause.

Wind, Rain and Sleek Ships

Wednesday 29th September 2010
Pam went down to Aberdeen today to see the consultant. All full of doom and gloom but I got a phone call just after dinner (That is dinner at dinner time, not tea at teatime. I mean about 1PM)and she was really chirrupy. Very nice to hear. The consultant had obviously cheered her up more than I could.

Up here it was a nice Orkney autumn day. Very windy and rain all day.
I decided that it was not fit for anything so I caught up with all my e-mails and other things on the computer.

Thursday 30th September 2010

When I was walking back from the village this morning I was just going to turn up the hill towards home when I looked down Water Sound and there was a big grey really scary looking ship going very slowly past in front of Flotta. I have always liked the look of warships, they are either massive and darkly threatening or wonderfully sleek reminiscent of an ocean going greyhound. This one however looked peculiar. The hull had the beautiful fast lines of a hunter but the superstructure was weird and vaguely menacing. As it was also painted grey I assumed that it must be a destroyer but not like one I had ever seen.


Just to check, when I got home I had a look on "ship plotter" to see if it was on there. Surprise, surprise it was not on ship plotter. I wonder why the navy do not have there ships on plotter. It would make it much easier for them to keep track of their ships and to know if they were "skiving off" in the Carribean when they should have been patrolling off Iceland.



On the way into Kirkwall we took a detour to overlook Scapa Flow near Holm and got a couple of photos of the ship. Not the best photos in the world but she was right out in the middle of the flow probably about 2-3 miles away. ( Is it against the official secrets act to photograph Royal Navy ships? )

Anyway it turns out that it is HMS Dauntless and she was having a days respite in the flow after taking part in some exercises and before going about her duties again.

For those of you who have a copy of "Jayne's Fighting Ships" for their bedtime reading, Dauntless is a Type 45 Air Defence Destroyer and was only launched in June 2010 so that is why she is all pretty and clean. She is apparently one of the most powerful air defence ships in the world but I could only see one piddling little gun on the foredeck so I think they are telling lies.