Look out! He's got a gun!

                And then it was spring. Allegedly. The temperature plummeted, the hail tipped down and our constant companion, the wind, howled like a banshee day and night. We’ve pretty much given up on weather forecasts and begun instead to rely on the ferry company websites. You know that if they cancel sailings then it’s going to get nasty. More accurately I should say ‘really’ nasty as those boats go out in some atrocious sea conditions ordinarily. Time to batten down the hatches and bury your head under a pillow ‘til it all blows over.

The locals make the most of the prevailing Southwesterlies

                Andrew and Denise had let us take away their spare aerial and cable so that we could check to see if it was possible to pick up any TV reception. We were not optimistic, so much so that we’ve already told the licensing people that we don’t watch any. A bit of wiring-in by yours truly later, even more reason to be sceptical, we plugged the cable in and turned on the box. White noise. What else did we expect? Gail gave the ‘auto-tune’ button a stab and, lo! and behold, a crisp picture appeared and persisted. Shocked, I lowered the aerial to waist height and the signal broke up a bit, but as soon as I lifted it above my shoulders, it came back and stayed. Blimey! Just in case there was a detector van hiding over the dunes, we unplugged the cable and wound it up ready to give it back. (Our sponsors have since told us to keep it so now we have to consider the prospect of getting a licence. So far we’ve managed without it, but it’s a dilemma we hadn’t anticipated having to face.)

                Gail fitted those door handles that I’d picked up in Kirkwall for her. However, if I’d thought it would keep her happy for a while then I was mistaken. As soon as she’d sat down she was on the Screwfix website for more stuff. It was as if all that I had achieved was to give a little nudge to a runaway train. The order bloomed and my modest part of it was a single box of 200 wood screws. In an attempt to make it at least look as if I intended to do something in near future, I told her I needed a garden fork and the car and bikes could do with a foot-pump. This ensured that I would get a little bit of the joy when box of goodies arrived.

                As soon as the weather permitted, we made a start on chopping up the carpet mountain by the gate. The Stanley knife made short work of turning a large, unmanageable roll into a number of swatches that could be effortlessly crammed into a rubbish sack. Suddenly, Gail jumped at what had sounded like a crack and asked what it was. It was clearly a gunshot and not far off. Our neighbour, Richard, made his way across his field toward the fence with his .22 rifle over his arm. With him was his dog, a black retriever, with a dead rabbit in its mouth. We chatted for a while, not to the dog obviously, but soon he insisted that I take a shot at one of the plethora of bunnies that were scampering about merrily on our side of the boundary. I was only happy to have a go following his reassurance that I would miss. He explained that the telescopic sight was adjusted for him and he hadn’t meant to imply that I’d be a crap shot. In the end it was a case of both being true. At the last second I raised the end of the barrel and fired way too high. Relieved more than anything else, I handed back the gun.

                Richard has recently had a wind-turbine erected on his property. Even on such a calm day it was spinning like a top. We were invited over to have a closer look when we fancied it. The next morning he came around to give us the phone number of the local agent with a view to having one put up on our land too. It would certainly help to placate me and even make me reconsider my low opinion of the maelstra* so prevalent in these parts. I may have mentioned it once or twice in the past. (* Ask Oxford insists that the plural of ‘maelstrom’ is ‘maelstroms’, but I think bunging an ‘s’ on the end of things is a bit boring so I’m having no truck with it. I hope that this is acceptable.)

                Gail made an appointment for Kate from Orkney micro-renewables to drop by the next afternoon. As the house is in Gail’s name, it was down to her to show her around with a view to where a turbine could be placed. We are not in a position to be able to afford a wind-turbine of our own but we hope to hear soon that someone will be interested in siting one here and we can make use of some of the power it would generate. We had our first Scottish Hydro electricity bill arrive in the post and were not too horrified by it but spending less is always a good thing. Well it’s a good thing when we are talking about utilities, let’s put it that way.

With that in mind, we had a salesman from Everest pay us a visit to quote us for new windows. We’d applied for a quote but not heard anything and then got a letter from the guy to say that he could improve on it. He apologised for the breakdown in communication and then admitted on the phone that he doesn’t travel well so an excursion to the island was a big adventure for him. He also hadn’t done his homework on the sailings and planned to visit on a day when there was only one ferry. I suppose it is always possible that he’d planned it that way so he would get an overnight stay at the Kettletoft Hotel. If I was married to a harridan, I’d do the same. It’s lucky for me that I am not so you can put that sharp knife back in the block now, dearest. At least he didn’t have a wasted journey as the quote was less than we’d expected and accounted for so we bit his arm off, metaphorically speaking of course. We’re not THAT hungry.

Strange, then, that the very next morning we received a quote from Orkney Builders, the guys that Gail got in to replace the door which we are still waiting for, to do the windows for 25% less. Now, contrary to what I asserted barely two paragraphs ago, scrimping on good glazing is not, in my own humble opinion, a smart thing to do so we’re more than happy to stump up the difference. Especially as they guarantee the units for longer than I’ll be alive for and given that while I was writing in my diary, sleet was landing on top of the bookcase I was leaning on, I am more reassured than ever that we made the right choice. I doubt, however, that it will render us immune from their junk mail, but I’m not expecting miracles here, people.

The Screwfix order arrived. As if I wasn’t feeling bad enough that our postman, Tony, has to tromp so far from the comfort and security of his van to drop off our mail, today he was laden down with a large, heavy box and a wrapped garden fork. It was a relief, therefore, to find that I’d actually left the gate open from the night before, (rap on knuckles), so he had driven up to the house to spare my blushes. Once again Gail went into overdrive repairing the internal doors. It’s quite uncanny now how it is possible to gain ingress and egress to and from every room in the house these days. It’s almost civilized. I, on the other hand, had to go and shut the gate. I leave it to you to judge who was the more industrious. I’ll give you a clue, though. It wasn’t me.

On Friday (9^th) it brightened up in the morning. It was just one of those days where eleven degrees centigrade in your living room is warm enough, thank you. The news, or the bits we read at least, was full of talk of coronal mass ejections. It looked as if it was going to be a good weekend for aurora. We left for the pool early as the car was running on fumes. It had to happen one day and today was the day that I paid one pound sixty five pence for a litre of go-go juice. That’s even with a five pence subsidy. I’ve no idea who gets the benefit of that because it doesn’t appear to be the consumer. Needless to say I didn’t fill the tank. One mortgage is quite enough in my opinion.

The Northern lights? Well, they were a no-show. We went to bed with the curtains open and I’d even gone to the trouble of washing the crud off the outside of the windows. What I really needed was a mile-long pencil with a rubber on the end to erase the cloud cover with. The Chinese did wonderful things with silver nitrate that we could learn much from.

                We have been assured by many islanders that this has been the wettest and windiest winter that they can remember for many a year. It is, however, of little comfort when you’re lying awake half the night waiting for your home to be whipped off the ground and blown half way to Bergen. To its credit, this pile is made of hardier stuff than me. Mind you, so is the cushioning in the sofa!

                Having had enough of doing very little, I resolved to cycle into Lady village to pick up some shopping that the store didn’t have on the shelves the day before. It was a rare still day in January and a pleasant journey considering it was more exercise than I’d had in a good while. For a flat island, it was a deceptively uphill ride all the way. Even the downhill bits! I filled up a rucksack with goodies and steeled myself for the slog back. Bizarrely, after freewheeling it away from the store, I barely had to do any pedalling at all. It had taken me nearly half an hour to get to the shops and yet only about fifteen minutes to get home again. Solving such a geographical conundrum will take considerably longer.  

                I am determined that I am never going to miss the dustmen again. To elucidate, we cannot put our rubbish bags out the night before due to the extreme likelihood that the feral cats that roam the island will rip them open. This necessitates getting out of bed first thing on a Monday morning and donning all available layers of arctic expedition clothing, including chunking great boots, just to ensure that our domestic waste doesn’t become a health and safety concern and to allow those nice men from Orkney Island Council to dispose of it in a proper fashion. At least I trust they do. One week, after spending so much time getting kitted up, I couldn’t be arsed to get undressed again and back into bed only to have to repeat the process in a few hours, so I chose instead to play Skyrim on the X-box. If it wasn’t for dinner being cooked ten hours later I’d probably still be on it and, indeed, quite possibly dead.

                One benefit of nearly freezing my elbows off up here is that it has proved my longstanding belief that the cold is an aid to slimming. Within a month, both Gail and I had each lost a stone in weight and the trend is continuing. In saying that, it must be said that progress has slowed a little. Partly this is down to there being considerably less of us to begin with, but the discovery of the menu for one of the islands fast food outlets must also be considered a mitigating factor. Fortunately Ayres Rock only cook up fish and chips on Saturday otherwise I’d have to stay off the beach for fear of being mistaken for a stricken marine mammal and pushed into the sea. To further save us from ourselves, the new cooker arrived.

                The funny thing about having a brand new cooker is the singular joy of not being able to cook anything with it. They don’t tell you in the showroom that none of the important and quite essential wiring is excluded from the deal, leaving you with an expensive and cumbersome ornament in your kitchen and yet more microwave dinners to be had. This is where it is invaluable to have the contact details for someone who is not a sea voyage away who can do the wiring for you.

                At the turn of the new month, we arrived at the swimming pool for our regular appointment with the water, only to find that we'd missed our session as the powers that be had changed the timetable. We were planning to pick up the February edition of the local publication: The Sanday Sound, on the way past the Lady shop on the way home. It’s a vital periodical for determining what’s happening on the island like the swimming pool timetable being revised. We won’t be making that particular mistake in future. It’s certainly an interesting read. From the most basic aide memoire, a handy calendar of the month’s happenings, to news updates from the school and the Ranger. Of course it has advertisements in it too, from a private sale of a washing machine (with some programmes in working order) to local businesses. The highlight was a flier from a B&B holding a Valentine’s night restaurant event. The menu looked very appetising and we were sold.

We’d driven past Backaskaill every time we’d been to the ferry stop at Loth Pier. However, as it is hidden from the main road, we still had no idea where it was. It is not well signposted, so it was as well that one of the last things I’d bought before we set off was a site-centred OS map of the island to help out with these little ‘butt end of the universe’ problems. The gap in the fence was exactly where it was supposed to be and we plunged down the hill, fortunately not in a ‘The Italian Job’ kinda way but definitely in a steep, dark, rocky track way. After wishing for a good few minutes that I was driving a Chieftain Tank, the track led to a picture postcard farmhouse and the lights were on. We were met at the door by our hosts, Jane and Geoff. It may well be that I am getting tediously repetitive by now, but they too are fantastic people. Sorry to disappoint, but they are. So much so that we arrived just after six o’clock, almost an hour before any of the other guests arrived and we were still the last to make ourselves scarce over three hours later and they made no motion toward the telephone to call in the bailiffs. What is more, the food was gorgeous.

Gail is a member of an internet site called ‘Downsizer’. It was instrumental in her finding the house so as far as I’m concerned it has a lot to answer for. She corresponds on there with a couple who moved to the island shortly after we did and we took the opportunity to meet up with them at The Belsair. After a drink, we went back to their house a mile or so out of Kettletoft. We’d actually driven by their door many times already. Denise and Andrew already have chickens and have all the bits for a large polytunnel piled in their garden. I’ve offered to help when it comes to erecting it and, foolishly and rather cheaply, Andrew has offered to give as much time to us in return.

The wind picked up again and the guttering started to bang on the side of the house. Most of the brackets had broken so that a long section of it was sagging loosely. There was no option but to take it down for the time being. I must confess that there was a profusion of adult content throughout the course of the endeavour. The next problem is finding the replacement parts. Then the fun will start in earnest. Me, a ladder, a screwdriver, a bracket and some screws. There cannot be a more potent cocktail for disaster anywhere in the whole of Christendom.

A solo trip to Kirkwall ensued. My feet were still blistered from my walk to the lighthouse an aeon before. I was never going to make a whole day on my feet without some serious bandaging. A humiliating visit to Jewsons was necessary but proved rather fruitless. I managed to get a sack full of brackets and Gail wanted me to pick up some door handles, but I hadn’t given much thought to what was going to be holding the brackets in place when I finally get around to fitting them. My DIY handbook doesn’t mention magic as a viable solution so a little more thought will be required. I retired to Café Lolz and had Earl Grey tea, some pea and ham soup followed by a warm chicken and cashew nut salad. Now I felt guilty as well as stupid, but well fed. My last appointment was Tesco where I sought to appease Gail with coffee, Marmite and Nutella. It worked. She was also delighted with the pancakes and fresh lemons. That girl is putty in my hands. Oh! Look. a flying pig.

A Sanday sunset (sans flying pig)

"Cheers! Miss Sophie"

What can be more homely than cuddling up during those long winter nights in front of the fire? Alas! What constitutes an open fire at the Tractor Shed is the sputtering flame of a lone tea-light. Fortunately, the TV emits more heat and that alone should be reason enough to leave it on most of the time. We have quite a lot of DVDs to get through too, purely in the interests of survival you understand. There's still no cooker to warm us either, but Gail has begun to excel with the microwave and has knocked up some proper dinners, with veg and everything. The complicated bit is keeping the cooked parts warm while the next is being irradiated.

                And, bless her thermal socks, she found the pages to my Filofax diary on Boxing Day, on the very day they started. We still hadn’t hooked up the washing machine or sussed the vagaries of the shower, but we had music at last when my i-pod turned out to have been in the car all along.

                Within days we even had a phone. We got up early on the understanding that the man from BT would be dropping by but, instead, the Home-hub and connections turned up in the post and the engineer only came out as far as the exchange to connect us. Gail opportunistically took a stroll outside and managed to get reception on (one of) her mobile(s) and picked up missed call messages. She went inside and lifted the receiver on the landline to find that we had a dialling tone. The engineer then kindly phoned us to say that we were connected and to confirm our number to us. He had actually come over to the island and done it the day before. Gail unpacked and set up the internet connection. I am far too much of a Luddite to be trusted with such things. Relieved that we were no longer entirely cut off from civilisation, we went for a swim.

                Adjacent to the school at Lady, is a community complex that that includes a 15m, indoor swimming pool. It’s great and it’s only a quid. I’d have paid that just for the shower as I must confess that I was beginning to get a little ripe. After a week of shivering, cocooned under layers of clothing it was a blissful experience. The pool was quite crowded as it was a public session avec toys. We’ve since found a timetable and discovered that the adult sessions are less well attended. In fact, during some of our more recent visits we’ve, to all intense porpoises, had the place to ourselves.

Sunrise at Lopness Bay

                We were invited to a neighbour’s house for a little soiree on the penultimate day of the year. We’d been told not to bring anything as there would be plenty to eat and drink. Irene wasn’t joking. Even with half the islands inhabitants crammed into her wonderfully converted school-house not a single one went hungry. Nor thirsty. In Gail’s defence, Irene’s daughter was practically pouring gin down her neck. We tried our best not to humiliate ourselves in front of the other attendees and gathered as much information on island survival as we could. The walk home in the early hours was in terrible weather and pitch black. The focus required to get back disguised just how inebriated my good lady had got. Once indoors it became quite obvious.

                I'd been babysitting a rather expensive firework for the past couple of years and I always told myself that it would be set off when I had the space. On the last night of 2011, I dutifully cleared a spot away from anything combustible and planned an escape route from the pyrotechnics. After watching ‘Dinner for one’, the same procedure as every year, I put my Sylvester hat on and lit the wick. What I wasn’t prepared for was the strength of the wind that continually blew the end of the wick clean off so, with 2012 already many minutes old, I was forced back inside in order to grab the matches. Half a Norwegian pine forest later and now much closer to one than twelve, the fuse finally leapt into life. Stumbling away through the mud, overwhelmed with shock and fear in equal proportion, I made minimum safe distance just in time to witness the conflagration. The rescue services weren’t scrambled and we both thought it was quite pretty so, all in all, a successful gig. After a much later than usual champagne toast, our New Year rituals were complete.

                The day after Gail’s birthday, (there were no direct sailings on the Fourth so all I could offer her was lunch at The Belsair), we made our first trip back to Orkney mainland. We had to take the car as she specifically wanted to visit a shop in Stromness. Sixty pounds, two hours and many miles over sea and land later, we found that the shop closed on Thursday. In fact, most of the town was shut without any explanation. We drove back to Kirkwall and enjoyed a splendid lunch at ‘The Shore’ before exploring the virtues of the Tesco and Co-operative (not very super)markets. We also tried to open a bank account as neither of our current banks have branches this side of the Great Glen, it would seem. Oddly, in a progressively paperless society, they were demanding paper bills as proof of domicile. We took the forms away to think about it.

                The next day I had to risk the mayhem that is the outbuildings in order to rescue our bikes. Inside, the ground is wet and muddy and, more than likely, quite shitty so they needed saving from what is effectively the outdoors as they would have quickly turned to rust and disintegrated. The boats lying beside them are built to be afloat, which they very nearly are despite being supposedly under cover. I’m sure that they will be quite comfortable there for the time being.

I remember how really annoyed I used to get when traffic, usually buses, would stop in the middle of the road so that the driver could have a chat, usually to his mate driving a bus in the opposite direction. How times have changed. Now, when we're out in the car and see our postman’s van on the road heading toward us, I wave him down and we both stop in the road while he hands us our mail through the window. This saves him from the long trudge from our gate to our front door. I've apologized for not installing a letterbox by the gate and suggested, as a compromise, that he just leave any deliveries in the car, especially when our path gets too waterlogged. We’ve also been a hazard to other road-users by stopping beside the ‘airport’ to witness the arrival of the afternoon flight from Kirkwall. We pulled the car over beside the end of the runway and watched the Loganair Britten Norman Islander on approach. It flew around and came in to land right over our heads. Had it been any lower and I would have been scrubbing tyre marks off the roof of the Skoda. It may be an extravagance, but a trip in one of those tiny, 8 seater planes is a must. In summer they do special flights around some of the islands, including the shortest, scheduled flight in the world, the thirty odd second hop from Westray to Papa Westray. (See http://www.loganair.co.uk/xtra_files/OrkneySightSeerInfo.pdf)

To date, the healthiest meal we’ve had was when we broke out the 'Raclette'. If you’ve never tried it, I would recommend it wholeheartedly. After weeks of ready-meals it was bliss to have so much fresh vegetable and seafood. The thing also warms the house up a bit and as the granite hot-plate is too heavy for Gail to lift I can truly say that I helped with the cooking and the washing up. 

                After a couple of days of quite horrendous weather, we’d got (even more) into the habit of stirring late. One such morning(ish), I woke to what sounded like someone at the door, quite a skill when the whole house is creaking and banging all the time. I got up anyway and explored. Looking up toward the road I saw that our gate was open. My neighbour, Richard, had told me off for not closing it once before, as it isn’t good for it, so I knew I hadn’t left it like that overnight. Just as I was about to shut it a tractor trundled up and turned in. Richard had said that he would let the local ‘rag ‘n’ bone man’ know we had some white goods for collection but neglected to tell me that he planned to take them away for us in the first instance. We manhandled the old fridges onto the digger scoop attachment on the front of his tractor, I thanked him very much for his kindness, closed the gate behind him and waved as he sped off, the dodgy cargo threatening to spill out all over the place. That just leaves us now with a scrap carpet mountain eyesore to deal with. We’ve been advised that the hessian backed stuff can be laid down in the garden for car parking however the foam backed is just rubbish and has to go! Somewhere. Perhaps into another hole in the garden. So do I dig a fresh grave for it or not?

Putting down roots

          The Monday morning, after an uncomfortable weekend without our furniture, finally arrived. We stirred as early as we could. Not because we wanted to, but because we couldn’t stand to spend another moment in those poxy little sleeping bags, two inches off the bare concrete floor. We knew that the first ferry from Kirkwall arrived just after nine, so I was standing at the gate by half past. I soon got bored. I climbed up the dunes to get a better view of the road. Oh! Look, you can see the sea on the other side of the island as well. Oh! You can see Start Point lighthouse AND the North Ronaldsay lighthouse, too. Now that’s plain greedy. I went back inside for fear of catching my death.

          An hour or more later, they completed the thirty minute drive from the pier. A huge blue pantechnicon arrived at our gate. This is when our problems started. They drove their huge leviathan up onto the dunes in order to get a good angle to reverse through our narrow gate. It didn’t work. They navigated close to the sight-splay fence in order to get through. It tore off a mud-flap and the wheel-arch trim from their monster truck before they decided that it didn’t work. Fortunately, they had brought a man with a van along with them, having bumped into him at the ferry and realising that there was every chance that he might be required. So the last one hundred metres of the gig was completed by relay, a twenty by one hundred metre relay. Needless to say that it wasn’t long before our driveway somewhat resembled Passchendaele and, furthermore, it was only a matter of time before said van, a two-wheel drive Transit, got stuck in it. Reinforcements were called for and after an hiatus of at least thirty minutes, another guy with a four-wheel drive SUV turned up to tow the stricken mule out. Hurrah! After that, they would stop the van in a slightly different place each time, so while it ‘nearly’ got stuck again, it was nothing that a couple of scrap bits of carpet couldn’t fix. There was, however, no alternative to the pathway to our only door.  In the circumstances, I suppose that it was inevitable that something would get dropped. Fortunately it was only one corner of the sofa and the mud came off pretty easily when it dried out, about two weeks later!

          Then we were alone. Whereas before we had only two salvaged dressers from the previous owner, now every room had loads of boxes in it. It looked like we were going to have a Christmas after all.

          Do people properly label boxes when they move, or is it just us who don’t bother? We had no idea where anything was. The bed was pretty obvious, but if it didn’t get transported in one, big, self-contained unit, it was on the exhaustive list of the missing. We’d find the Bose, but not the remote control for the Bose, making the Bose wholly redundant and the finding of the Bose in the first place utterly pointless. The x-box was put in its own ‘precious’ box, but not with the controllers. No, they were with the Playstation in a separate crate but wait, where were the battery packs? I could go on and on, but having lived it I can say that, even upon reflection, the story is not an amusing tale.

          The most important news was that our nights of sleeping on the floor were over. Even if we’d found Skyrim, i-pod and the allen-keys all in the first five minutes, it could not have made me any happier.

          Our neighbours to the South, Richard and his wife Alison, turned up the following day. Gail and Alison stayed indoors to chat while Richard and I walked ‘the estate’. I had been confused by the two septic tanks and soak-aways on the property. The one to the front, he assured me, was no longer in use, so anything I wanted rid of should be chucked in there and then it should be filled in. Images of fly-tippers and ticking time-bombs swirled around my head for a while, but it would seem to make sense to eradicate this ugly scar so fair enough, I will consider the least unsavoury elements of his advice. The second septic tank is a canyon of a hole, crudely and wholly unsuccessfully covered by half a dozen old doors which were now sagging and unfit for purpose. (Both are reasons why Smokey is not allowed out yet). Richard explained that he would be happy to help me make up some reinforced concrete slabs to cover the latter one over with. He stamped on the ground and confirmed that the soak-away seemed to be doing a good job as the land was firm around it. Where is the soakaway then? I asked him. Right beside the huge, rainwater filled crevasse is a slightly raised area of grass which I hadn’t really noticed until now. Richard smiled at me and started to bounce up and down on it. It turns out that when a previous owner had built the tank, he’d buried his old caravan right next to it and filled with loads of rubbish he didn’t want to act as a soak-away and it was the roof of said caravan that Richard was bouncing on. Future generations are not going to find Skara brea type archaeology on this particular spot. The thought of what may lie beneath my feet does not intrigue me so much as it horrifies me. Richard showed me also the hole that had been dug in the corner of the plot for the sand needed for the mortar to build the outbuildings, mainly constructed from large cobbles ‘harvested’ from the beach, where I assume they had been placed as part of the sea defences! The hole is now a lake as a result of all the rain we’ve had. I will have to ask the neighbours if they feel that it might threaten to undermine their house and fill it in if it would make them feel more confident that it wasn’t about to disappear to where only Doug McClure would have been able to find it.

          We also have a problem with a large population of rabbits. I must admit that the heavy rain might have helped us out there by flooding the warrens. Otherwise, I was offered a .22 rifle, but I’d have to make a massive (un)ethical step if I plan to limit the numbers personally. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of being driven anywhere by me, particularly after dark, knows that I brake for any furry beastie on the road. (It’s what seatbelts are for, people!) No, I really don’t think I can shoot a bunny and I’m fairly certain that it’s not a path I want to go down. I’ll start and not know where to stop. A life is a life in my opinion, so one minute it’ll be Thumper and then, before you know it, it’ll be a president. Let’s not go there, eh?

          I plumbed in the washing machine next. Just as well really. When you layer up as much as we have to you tend to get through your wardrobe pretty darn quickly. I hung the first wash out on the line. I checked on it an hour or so later and found half of it on the ground. Some of it I couldn’t find at all. I’ve been checking ebay auctions in Norway for my Roger Ramjet boxer shorts ever since!

          We made a return trip to Kirkwall to order an induction cooker. Gail got into the ‘downsizer’ frame of mind and ordered the more expensive of the two options just because it played ‘Girl from Ipanema’ as it rotisseried or some such tosh, I don’t know. We trawled around for an emergency Calor Gas camping stove just in case of a power cut but without success. There were lots of Yankee candles and even more single malts in a shop that also doubled as the local equivalent of Mothercare. Then we took a stroll around the graveyard of St. Magnus Cathedral and were accosted by what I thought was a drunk, but who kindly, and lucidly, gave us a very interesting lecture on Dr. John Rae the (not) famous (enough) explorer, an Orcadian, who happened to be buried there. I must stop stereotyping people on account of their accent, especially the indigenous population.

          After several days of microwave meals, we returned to Elizabeth and John at The Belsair in Kettletoft and were, for a pleasant change, not their only patrons. Our neighbour, Irene, her daughter, Claire, who is married to the postman, Tony, their daughter Rosa and Tony’s mum were there too. In fact, the front room of the place was full. Even when Irene, Claire and Rosa left, another family who were visiting the island for a day to look for property arrived. The weather outside was turning angry again, (it obviously hadn’t been for about an hour!), so we wished them a safe crossing for what I’m sure was going to be a bumpy journey back to the Mainland.

          I’d survived a week. At times I really didn’t think that I would. John had told me about ‘eighteen monthers’, people who come for the summer, endure a winter, enjoy a second summer and then remember how much of a bitch last winter was and decide to naff off home. I have a long way to go even to qualify to be one of those but at least arriving during the winter I hope shows an intention to stick around for a good while yet.

The Old Tractor Shed

I suppose, before anything else, I ought to provide you with a description of the curtilage.

It has a front door. That is to say that there is access to the property, albeit not exactly at the front, and that, once upon a time, the feature over the step could have been a door. The furniture both inside and out is hanging off and many of the panels are rotten or absent. The glass panels are intact but there is a layer of the great outdoors on each and I am only guessing that they are glass because of the hint of opaqueness about them. There is also a fair amount of tape around the frame of the door to block out draughts. The problems are exacerbated by the fact that it is quite a job to open it without kicking it. Sooner or later someone’s foot, or at least their footwear, will become a fixture.

Once indoors and at least partly protected from the elements and their excitable choreography, you arrive in the hallway, with doors, mostly with handles, to the left, right and ahead. The first thing that hits you, or more accurately does not come anywhere near hitting you unless you happen to be Andre the Giant, is the height of the ceiling. Now I have to pause while I break out the tape measure. It stands at nine feet and three inches. OK, so not quite stately homes proportions, but this edifice is hardly a stately home. (It is a state, though!) Another thing that will not have escaped your notice is the bare concrete floor, which currently features throughout.

The door to the right leads to a store room. It also provides, theoretically at least, access into the loft. This is primarily as it benefits from not having a ceiling. The electric meter lives here and also the spaghetti of cables heading off to all corners of the house. Presently it is home to a pair of Poang chairs, a reclaimed dresser, the Vax and the fridge freezer. Looking up you will see that the underside of the roof is boarded and seemingly, touch wood, dry.

The door to the left of the hallway leads to the first of the Goat rooms, so named because the previous owner kept a sickly goat in there until, so we are told, its demise. There is a large, many paned window in the South wall, bathing what is a largely unpopulated room with more light than it needs and which would be put to much better use if it could, somehow, be allowed to flow into the kitchen. Plans are afoot to execute such a notion. Given its veterinary history and situation, I don’t see it being on the top of anyone’s wish-list to stay in, but perhaps when the removals boxes are removed, the Poangs, a stereo stacking system and all my guitars, not forgetting my coffin-sized bass amp and others, can take up residence. The only other door in the room leads to Goat room two. Again a profusion of cardboard boxes obscure that it is quite a generous and accommodating nine and a half feet by six and a half. There is a smaller window again on the South wall. The room’s external walls are not presently boarded or plastered, giving it a particularly utilitarian ambience. Another functional room, therefore. I’m hoping to be allowed to set the telescope up in here, although common sense suggests that it would be more usefully sited in the first Goat room so it would make it easier to take outside when the weather permitted and the need was greatest.

Returning to the hallway, the door opposite the front door leads to the main living room. This cavernous space measures over twenty three feet in length. Half of it is utilised as a kitchen/diner, with the back of a pair of dining table chairs backing on to our sofa, which designates the division into the living space.

The kitchen space has a marble effect work-top along most of the South wall. There is no window, hence the desire to knock a hole in the wall for a window of some sort to share in the glorious effulgence enjoyed in the Goat rooms! There is a narrow space at the end of the work-top for a cooker. It is however five centimetres narrow than the cooker that Gail has ordered from Scottish Hydro. Guess who didn’t bring a saw? There is a cupboard largely dominated by a hot water immersion system for the kitchen sink. A large under-counter space has plenty of room for a washing machine but not for another appliance beside it. A drawer space with no drawers lies below the counter at the other end. The splashbacks are tiled but have been crudely painted over and the gaps need sealing. It all gets a bit weird behind the space where the cooker will eventually be shoe-horned. Our beloved dining table and chairs fit in quite well, more by happy accident than design.

The remaining living space is quite a good size. Gail is keen for me to set up her Kinect for the x-box and I must confess that it makes a change not to be intimidated by the looming proximity of the television.  To be honest, it looks quite titchy now. This’ll be the cue for my better half to start insisting for a larger screen. Instead of a coffee table (which we broke some of the plastic lugs of when we disassembled it), we have a large four-seater footstool to pile our rubbish on. It sort of dominated the living-room in Fareham but here does not. A rug allows us to put our feet on the floor without all our body temperature being sucked out through our socks. As well as flooring, the walls need a fresh lick of paint, preferably something that will allow for a little movement and maybe a little condensation without flaking off all over the place. Another massive window allows massive amounts of light to pour onto the TV. Blackout curtains will surely become a necessity in the summer months. The North end of the room has a single door in it.

The small, confined, unlit hallway beyond has a door in each wall. The South, obviously, leads back into the living room. West leads to bedroom two, North to the WC/shower room and East to the ‘mistress’ bedroom. I am hoping very much that Smokey’s litter tray will not become a permanent fixture.

Bedroom two is over eleven by nine with a window facing North. I’ve set up the bunk-beds in there. Otherwise it acts as another storeroom full of removals boxes. It has a pair of curtains and a lampshade, but it’s far from welcoming at present.

The WC is functional. I sorted out why the cistern leaked at any rate. Now I’m just concerned where the rest of the damp on the North wall is coming from. More disturbingly, the bird crap too. I think that both have something to do with the extractor fan being improperly sealed and every avian’s second choice perch. Their first choice of perch being the car, which I am sure used to be blue before it got covered in guano! There is a shower cubicle but we haven’t used it as the shower itself is what can best be described as ineffective. The water does not get very hot and there is not a lot of it. Given that the room itself is cold and damp it does not exactly encourage use.

The master, sorry I mean mistress, bedroom is the most popular room in the place. The best thing that we’ve ever bought, in my opinion, is our wonderful cast iron bed. It has a great mattress on it and a twelve tog duvet that has attractive properties in that you never want to leave it. I try hard not to and Gail has even less success in escaping from it. A large window faces East and will constitute a liability in Summer when the sun starts coming up at three in the morning. There is a second door in the room that leads to what was intended to be an en-suite shower-room. It has a small window in the North wall. It is very much unfinished. The walls are bare breezeblock and the ceiling is unplastered. There is also no artificial light in the room. It also has no fittings for an en-suite shower-room meaning that it is also just another store room.

Thereby ends the tour. Thank you for your patronage. Please make your way out through the gift shop.

The journey North

We left Fareham on the fifteenth as planned, but not as early as we’d have liked. It’s amazing how much you have to do even after all your stuff has supposedly been packed up and shipped off the day before. We found loads more of our gear that the removals guys didn’t take and consequently spent an age filling the garage with it all instead. This included all the practical stuff like gardening equipment and things you need for the car when undertaking a long journey, like a foot pump, WD40 and spanners. Pah! Who needs all that clutter, eh? All the space in the back was taken up with a huge cage, which the cat was hardly ever in!  

Poor old Smokey despises my driving, but after we’d let her curl up on Gail’s lap, she chilled and was not really a problem for the next three days. Bless her. Did the whole first leg to Cumbernauld with only one petrol stop at Gretna. That’s how far a three-pot Skoda gets you on a bellyful. We spent the night at the Travelodge there and phoned out for a fantastic Chinese from Pearl’s. Absolutely gorgeous, except for the banana fritter that was just that little bit too weird for me. Cosmopolitan, I am not. The huge bag of complementary prawn crackers made up for that. Smokey didn’t like the traffic outside in the hallway and tried to bury herself in the far corner of the room. It could be that the last residents of the room included a big dog or something, but she clearly wasn’t happy. When I piled all the bags in the corner to stop her, she slept on the bed with us in the end.

In the morning, I looked out of the window to see that it had snowed during the night. The weather forecast assured us that this was the Northern limit of the winter weather so I happily abandoned my alternative route. Had the storm that had been forecast hit, I knew that I would have been too much of a coward to risk the A9 over the Cairngorms and, instead, had plotted a circuitous route via Aberdeen, all the way around the East coast. But with the promise of a fine day, we hopped back in the car and set off for Aviemore. I am so glad that we did. The snow-capped peaks were pure eye-candy and it seemed as if everyone else had been overcautious and given the mountain pass a miss, because it was practically empty.  We came down the other side into Inverness for the second petrol stop. When we crossed the bridge over the Moray Firth, we left the civilised world that we had known behind us.

View back to the Dornoch Firth from the A9

The Northern Highlands

Just as we were losing the light, we skirted around Thurso and headed for Castletown. The hotel there is brilliant. It’s a tiny community but the place was rocking because it seemed that all of the local businesses were just finishing their Christmas lunches. Gail was reunited with her beloved Orkney beer, Smokey had an Empress size bed to monopolise and a windowsill to taunt the neighbour’s dog from. Fed and watered we retired and even the raucous Karaoke from the evening revellers failed to wake us.

If the weather had turned nasty, it would have been fabulous to have had to spend the whole weekend there, but alas we had a ferry to catch. Gail, in my experience, has been extraordinarily lucky with ferry crossings. The North and Irish Seas and even The Minch to Stornoway were mirror calm when we crossed them. The Pentland Firth, however, is a different proposition. The waves rolled in from a lumpy sea and I was concerned that the ferry had to turn around outside the harbour wall. The souvenirs in the gift shop clanked and banged and Gail sent me off to find her a barf-bag and a bottle of water to wash her medicinal Pringles down with. It was a bit of a rollercoaster ride until we got into sheltered water toward Scapa Flow. We soon docked at Stromness and then had to drive to Kirkwall to catch the next ferry to Loth Pier on Sanday. We made it in plenty of time, so I was sent off to Scottish Hydro to buy a heater.

A miscalculation had meant our second boat of the day had to stop at two other islands, Eday and Stronsay, on its way to ours. Consequently, Smokey was left in the car for nearly three hours, but if anything seemed peeved when we finally got back to the car deck and woke her up.

We were on Sanday, albeit on the opposite side of it from the one we were headed to. It was dark. The huge, white windturbines turned lazily overhead as I raced after the row of tail-lights ahead of me that I was relying on to guide me. One by one, they reached the end of their journeys, leaving me to find my own way. They really don’t have much truck with roadmarkings and signposts so it really was trailblazing. Eventually I saw the dilapidated horsebox that stood beside our gate. We were home.

My first job was to inflate the two matresses on the bare concrete floor that would be our beds for the next couple of nights until our furniture arrived on Monday. The next was to unpack the heater. Six degrees centigrade is just plain not warm enough. Our sleeping bags were tiny and how the hell we didn’t die of exposure remains a mystery to me.

Over the weekend, two neighbours to the East of us dropped by with bottles of wine and warm welcomes. We took a walk around the garden, explored the dunes and Lopness Bay and then drove off to have Sunday Lunch at The Belsair in Kettletoft. The place was empty and it was just as if the owners had opened just for us. Perhaps they had. We also availed ourselves of their wi-fi connection afterwards, which allowed Gail a second bottle of Orkney beer.

Back at the shed, all we could do was twiddle our thumbs and wait until our stuff arrived. Now that’s a different story.