Natural highs and lows

At the end of October, All Hallows' Eve passed quietly in our neck of the woods but, the following morning, a walk into the centre of town provided a glimpse into the previous night's high jinks. Flour, eggs and (hopefully) tomato ketchup were coating walls, doors and pavements as if to suggest that there had been an outside broadcast of a monster episode of MasterChef. Indeed, there was also a profusion of empty paper bags, egg boxes and plastic containers strewn around, and even  some full bags of flour dumped in alley ways . My curmudgeonly reaction probably owed a great deal to my advancing years, but maybe also to the fact that when I was a youth, the ancient custom wasn't yet known as trick-or-treat in the UK, and was certainly less commercial.  However, here in the 21st Century, and wearing my Love Food Hate Waste hat, I was a smidgeon irked.  Returning home, I fired up my computer to see what a starving person (albeit one with internet and a functioning kitchen) m...

As I type, Winter has arrived in Orkney, with sub zero temperatures, a dusting of snow and a personal preference for hibernating on the sofa. This change of weather was preceded by a weekend of gales and we had to spare a thought for any Grey Seal pups on a west-facing shore who will have had a miserable time of it. Shortly before our trip to Aberdeen, we visited the pupping beaches at Burwick in South Ronaldsay. We counted nearly 100 pups in various stages of maturity: from recently born; through the "white fluffball" stage; to moulted into a sea-worthy black pelage and about to take the plunge towards independence. Here are a few photos of the day: Pupping beaches A recently-born pup A suckling pup, piling on the pounds  A mum (on the right) warning off another mum who has strayed too close to her pup It's a wonderful bit of coastline Distant sun rays over mainland Scotland The walk also provided a bit of ornithological interest with a big flock of Barnacle Geese, a cou...

Back in 2018, a post on a social media feed of the Peatbog Faeries alerted me to another Skye band, Niteworks. M elding Gaelic song forms with techno and house beats, Niteworks gave the celtic fusion dial a different spin, which to these ears sounded a little like Kraftwerk meets Clannad. After the upheavals of 2020, when Megan and I began to blend our musical influences and CD collections, Niteworks was not on our horizon, but streaming service Spotify had other ideas. In amongst tunes by Martyn Bennett, Peatbog Faeries, Shooglenifty, Talisk and Valtos, we were fed the occasional Niteworks track. The celtic fusion scene features a lot of collaborative work, and the band's modus operandi of having sung or spoken Gaelic in most tracks has introduced us to even more music artists, like Sian and Beth Malcolm. Niteworks were now our go-to mix and we realised that we ought to try to see them live, but with one thing and another, the opportunity just did not come along. Unfortunately, e ...

On a dreich and dank November morning, on an island contemplating months of wild weather and long nights, thoughts inevitably turn towards jigsaws. Even a rudimentary scan through my social media feed shows that our puzzling season peaks between December and March, and this year we have a new dining table to christen. However, I suspect that this Winter might be a little different, as back in the Spring, we upgraded our television. Megan wasn't totally enamoured about the prospect at first, but once we realised that the online experience was equal to or better than live tv, allowing us to watch the sorts of things we want to watch, when we wanted to watch them, she was completely on board. Quite quickly, Megan discovered that even if it was blowing a hoolie outside or it was dark or we were feeling under the weather, we could still be watching wildlife, and from the comfort of the sofa. And so followed a growing list of Youtube sites with 24/7 access to wildlife around the globe. H...

We've been on holiday, experienced some rather pleasant weather, caught up with family and friends and returned home just before Storm Whoever hit Orkney. Now, here I am writing a blogpost whilst rain lashes the windows and all thoughts of colourful leaves have disappeared downwind at a rate of knots.  In our absence, Cookie and Mocha were well looked after in the comfort of their own home by Auntie Kat who, despite an allergy, is not anti-cat. It all started very early one morning, bleary-eyed and barely awake, stumbling out of bed at 5am to catch the morning sailing from Stromness to Scrabster. This was followed by a chilly drive to Inverness as the climate control module doesn't work in my car and, although at any point during the Summer I could have arranged for it to be fixed, we're now into Baltic season and a second hand unit off Ebay is awaiting the services of a skilled mechanic. Once in Inverness, I dropped off some books at Leakey's Bookshop and we hit variou...

One day much earlier in the year, in a flurry of activity, we began work on digging a pond in the front garden. For a variety of reasons, only one of which was the weather, things did not progress any further, leaving a bank and ditch in the middle of the lawn. In fact, there was another thing which didn't happen through the Spring and Summer, our walk around the three mile loop of the Stromness Loons. It's weird, we'd both been keenly looking forward to see what birds would breed in the wet pasture of the Loons, but Life just seemed to get in the way. One afternoon last week, we did finally have a wander around the loop, six months on from the last time, although of course the breeding season is well and truly over for 2024. Passing the poet's house, we noticed a riot of colour at one side of their garden, then noticed said poet mowing his lawn and remarked upon the profusion of gorgeous blooms. It turns out that he had begun to dig a pond, failed to get much further, ...