Childish excitement day

Friday 10th December 2010
Today was a really exciting day for those of us with small childish minds. I think that Pam thought I was being silly but you, dear reader can be the judge of that.

We've got a leak in the porch roof which I will have to fix but that is not very exciting.
Pam had a check-up at the surgery and they took some blood from me so Pam gave them a lovely home made christmas cake to share but that's not very exciting.

It blew a bit of a gale later this evening but that's not all that exciting either.



What is really exciting is that I've got some tickets for a cruise on a tall ship next summer.
One leg of the Tall Ships Race next year goes from Shetland past Orkney and, as it is not a competative leg, some of the ships are stoping off here. (17 I think). Orkney Ferries have organised some places on 3 or 4 of the ships for a 6 hour or so trip from Kirkwall, round South Ronaldsay, through the Pentland Firth and up to Stromness. They had originally only chartered places on one ship and I was sure thatthey would have sold out but then they chartered another three ships so I managed to get tickets.

This is The Sorlandet, a Norwegian ship which is one of the ships that has been chartered.


I always thought that the tall ships look beautiful but I never thought that I would get a chance to sail on one. I have therefore spent all day like an excited child, telling everybody how lucky I am.

Now dear reader, isn't that more exciting than a leaking roof.

On Saturday we nipped into Kirkwall to pick up the tickets for the tall ships trip and get a few Christmas presents. We will have to post the presents down south, probably to Gareth's and then sort them out when we get there. We can't take them down on the plane or we would be right over our baggage limit.
It was a bit windy in Kirkwall but I was surprised when I came round the side of the Kirkwall Hotel and got spun round and nearly taken off my feet by the wind. The wind gets channeled down the side of the hotel but I was not expecting it when I got round the front.

David and Claire came round in the sfternoon to admire Pam's new floor in the extension and to fetch Christmas presents and my birthday present.
(For those of you who have not yet bought me a fantastically expensive and highly derireable birthday present, my birthday is on the 20th so you have time yet. Further reminders will be posted on the blog at regular intervals.)

Food, Great Music and No Snow

Thursday 9th December 2010
It rained overnight and almost all the snow has gone so I walked with Molly down to the village and came back with the car. Molly was not impressed as she hates the car but as it is only about a mile back home, she managed it with only a medium calibre drool instead of the full blown drooling and throwing up that she normally performs in the car.

We went to the Kirkwall Hotel for the U3A Christmas meal at dinner time (When I use the term "dinner time" I mean mid day and not evening meal time which to me is teatime 'cos I am a peasant) and it was very good. Fortunately, Pam and I were sat next to some people that I know who are very chatty and interesting. The U3A up here is quite active, having lots of different groups and it is a good way of getting to know people.

After the meal, I went to The Reel to see if they had any tickets left for the do tonight and fortunately they had a few so we are in luck.

Home, then back to Kirkwall for 7:30PM at the Reel. It was a superb do. Saltfishforty were on first and were great, everybody was saying "That will take a bit of beating" but "Begley, Edey and Henderson" were as good or better. At the end, SaltFishForty came back on and the whole lot jammed it up for the last bit.

I couldn't find a video of all of them together but this is Kevin Henderson playing at a tutors concert in a fiddle school.

They are all brilliant musicians and really fed off each other in the jam session. Then thay all had to rush off as they were supposed to be catching a ferry to Shetland for their gigs tomorrow and they had left it a bit late.

"The Birds"

Wednesday 8th December 2010
More parcels to take down to the Hope for posting so I walked down the hill to the car and there were no problems getting to the Hope. On the way back, the road along the South Ronaldsay side of Water Sound was covered in gulls. There were hundreds of them. All that I can think is that because the road was clear of snow and was black, it had warmed up and the gulls were taking advantage of the heat.

Whatever the reason, it was something like Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds". They stayed on the road until the car was only 4 or 5 yards from them and then took off and swirled round the car on all sides. For about 400 yards the car was surrounded by birds and I could not see properly. Weird but they did not actually attack me.

Discretion being the better part of valour,I decided not to attempt to get the car home and left it down Burray village and walked home. The electrician tried to get up but fauled and had to get Duncan to tow him up.

There is a great gig on at The Reel in Kirkwall tomorrow night with local duo SaltFish Forty and "Begley, Edey and Henderson" (an Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman) who are supposed to be very good.
If there is no more snow overnight, I will book some tickets, assuming they have some left.

Snowploughs polish ice beautifully

Tuesday 7th December 2010
I had a look at the roads this morning when I took Molly for her walk, and though there was a lot of snow, I thought that I would be able to make it out from home and back again. On the way back from our walk however we met a snowplough coming back from up by our house. It had done a wonderful job of going down the hill and leaving a 2 inch layer of really well polished compacted snow on the road.

At least the views were still nice, there was no wind and the snow was still clean and white.

I went to the Hope anyway to post some parcels but there was no chance of getting back up the hill. I tried 3 or 4 times but gave up and left the car at the bottom of the hill.

As we are going back down south for Christmas, I have bought a big outdoor feeder for the ducksso that I can ask Duncan to just fillit up a couple of times while we are away.

I thought however that I had better have a shelter to keep it out of the worst of the weather. As I was wanted a shelter for the food then it may as well be big enough for the ducks to use for shelter aswell. I briefly looked at duck houses and then decided I was to mean so I gathered together some old pallets and bits of chipboard that the builders had left lying about and behold, we have a very ugly but very cheap duck house. I even managed to find a piece of chipboard with a duck sized hole in it so we now have a door firmly tied on with string. (I had no baling twine handy).

We have had no hot water today because of a snag on the heating system but at 6:30PM after walking up the hill because he could not get his van up, the plumber arrived unexpectedly. Apparently it was just a thermostat fault that he fixed no problem but I thought it was good of him to turn out at that time in that weather. We could have managed until tomorrow.

Christmas lights and Cheap heat

Saturday 4th December 2010
Its thawing a bit this morning so fingers crossed.
Molly and Swona (The collie pup from across the road) met up today and got on well. Previously Swona has been put off by Molly being to bouncy. Maybe they will be friends when they are both bigger and more obedient.

We nipped into Kirkwall just to get a tub of paint for Gavin the decorator and came back with not only a tub of paint but also 4 expensive curtain poles. Still Pam does so enjoy buying bits for her house. It's justa pity that I can't get her interested in a shed.

We were back in Kirkwall later for the christmas tree lighting. (We go to all the exciting things here) The Kirkwall pipe band were playing there and the Guiser Jarl and his crew from the Shetland Up-Helly-AA were outside the cathedral brandishing their axes at everyone who went in.


Sorry about the fuzzy photo. I think that it is a mixture of long exposure time in the dark and an old shaky body.


We were going to drop into the Commadore in Holm for a meal on the way back home but we had forgotten to check and found that they were closed so we ended up at The Sands in Burray again. Having said that, I like The Sands, nice bar, friendly folk and a good atmosphere.
I was very good and tried to be very diplomatic when Evelyn, the owner of The Sands, asked how Molly had got on in her obedience test. (Evelyn owns a beautiful but huge and disobedient japanese Akita called Amy and had to employ somebody to handle Amy in the dog obedience classes as Evelyn could not hold her. Apparently Amy was naughtier than normal in the test. I didn't really gloat very much at all, so maybe the price of my beer will not go up.

When we got home I checked the meter on the heat pump and rather surprisingly it seems to be using about the same amount of electricity as the manufacturers said that it would. If this works out to be true then all the heating and hot water will cost about £1300 per year and we will get about £950 back from the Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme, so it will end up only costing us about £350 per year. Not bad.


On Sunday
the roads were at last clear so we decided to go nowhere. As we live in a nice place, then why should we bother to go anywhere anyway.
I did do my normal dog walk which was very pleasant. There were 2 seals and 3 Red Breasted Mergansers in the bay by Burray pier (See I am learning very slowly to recognise some of the multitude of bird species up here.) and another 6 seals just of the shore at the bottom of the hill on the way home.

On Monday just because I was gloating about the snow having gone yesterday, we got about 5 inches of fresh snow. I had to walk down to the village shop for some onions but it was a really pleasant stroll with no wind and not to cold. Everybody seemed to be in a good mood, possibly because they were snowed into the village and could not get to work so there was a very christmassy atmosphere.
The new extension is looking decent and there is not much left to do to the outside except fit the chimney cap after the flue is in properly.





Duncan, showing off with his big 4*4, came up and fetched Jock with him so I took him and Molly into the field (Jock and Molly, not Duncan and Molly). Unfortunately (or possibly fortunately from the dogs viewpoint) I could not throw a ball for the dogs as it would have got lost in the snow so they just had to amuse themselves. This is where Jocks natural talent as a rapist came into its own. Molly however was, true to type just being a tease and every time Jock got randy she just sat firmly on her backside. One-Nil to Molly.

We have heat and the world is beautiful.

Friday 3rd December 2010
We had to go to Kirkwall to pick up the flue pipe and fittings for the new stove and some light fittings. I managed to persuade Pam to go to Lidl instead of Tesco's. Shearer's would have been better but at least Lidl is a small victory.
On the way back, we stopped at Dave and Claire's in Holm. Dave and I decided to take a stroll to the loch at the end of the village. There has been a "Lesser Scaup" on the loch for about a week now and I thought that we may as well take a look. Now, you may be wondering "what is a Lesser Scaup" (Or maybe you are wondering "what is he rambling about now".) Anyway I am afraid that I can't help. I don,t even know what a normal or standard Scaup is. Apparently the Lesser version is a rare american vagrant. (I assume that this does not mean that it is a transatlantic seller of the Big Issue)

We had gone about 20 yards when Dave got a text message saying that the bird was now on Graemshall Loch, about a mile or so away at the other end of the village. Dave, being a proper birder who can recognise a Scaup, subscribes to a local rare bird text alert and then I think he ignores most of the messages.
After getting the text we thought "sod it I am not walking all that way for a bloody bird" and continued to Ayre Loch. There are plenty of birds on Ayre Loch that I do not recognise anyway. There were seals in the bay next to the loch and otter footprints in the snow. Another of those "Aren't I lucky to live in such a beautiful place" moments.

After having a cuppa at Dave and Claire's we got back home to find that our nice shiny new air source heat pump was up and running. The underfloor heating in the extension was warming nicely and the fancy fan radiators in the kitchen and living room were working. Oh I do feel very environmentally thingy, smugly self satisfied and warm.

Every dog has his (or her) day.

Thursday 2nd December 2010
The plumbers and electricians were back today and the plumbers were doing their wheelbarrow racing down the hill to their van and back up.

It was a beautiful day, no wind and it was pleasantly warm in the sun.
Molly and I disturbed some jack snipe and snow buntings on the way down to the village. I have never seen either of these birds before and the snow buntings were very pretty little birds.

I should have taken a camera down with me, not so much to photograph the birds on the way down but to take a photo on the way back.
We were just leaving the village when I heard the sound of an engine coming fast down a hill on a side road. I pulled Molly in to the side of the road in case we got run down by somebody skidding round the icy corner at the bottom of the hill. All of a sudden a very large Kawasaki quad bike hurtled round the corner with a 70+ year old very sweet looking, white haired granny riding it. I don't think that I could handle a quad that size with such confidence on ice.
I bet that she is one of those sweet little old ladies who beat up hooligans with their walking sticks.
There is hope for all of us as we get older. When I am 70 I am going to buy a big quad.

We managed to get into get into Kirkwall to do a bit of shopping and as they were selling off peanuts in their shells for dirt cheap, I thought that I would get some for the birds. After spending hours shelling peanuts, i decided that in future I will lash out the cash and buy ready shelled peanuts. Unfortunately the birds here are not used to them and can't shell their own.

In the evening it was the beginners obedience test for the disobedient dog. She had her car sickness tablet (maybe there will be a dog doping scandal) and we went down to Kirkwall early so that we could have a good walk round before her test. It took Molly a minute or two to settle down in her test but then she did very well. (I had a chance to let her walk round for a bit before her test but I didn't wait long so it is my fault that she wasn't settled at the start of her test.)

We had to go out and kick our heels for just over an hour while the others did their tests. When we got the results, not only had Molly passed her test but she got 62.25 points out of 70 and was third out of 12. There was only 1.5 points between the top 3, so if I had settled her first then she would have won. So now it is "clever dog" and "stupid human". Molly even got a little shield. All we need now is for Molly to decide to come back when I call her at home instead of just in the hall in Kirkwall.

Nothing ever happens on wednesday.

Wednesday 1st December 2010
Well nothing happened this wednesday anyway.
There was more snow this morning but once again Mr Scott from the farm at the end of the road made it down the hill and more impressively he made it back up again. (This is not to imply that Mr Scott is a doddering old man. What I meant was Mr Scott drove his car down and up the hill) I think that he has a secret 4 wheel drive in his car.

Unexpextedly the plumbers came up. I didn't think that they would chance it and I think that perhaps they wish that they hadn't bothered. They got one of their vans up here but had to leave the other one at the bottom of the hill. They then had to take a wheelbarrow down to the van and fetch some stuff up the hill. I would think that it must be an interesting experience trying to push a heavy wheelbarrow up a steep, ice covered hill.

The tug was in Water Sound again so I suppose they are going to shift the rest of the salmon cages from the village to Hoy. They have made them very quickly, working 7 days a week but then the general consensus is that they are Polish. At least they speak in a funny language and work hard 7 days a week so they must be Poles.

I noticed the scallop boat going out this afternoon but thought that it was probably not worth breaking bones or worse just for a few cheap scallops so they will have to wait for a bit.