Snow Queen has melted

Well, it's all over: the panto, the term, 2007 (well, almost.) Panto was exhausting, with 10 performances, including two Saturday matinees, but great fun. No hiccups at all, which was good, although less interesting from the point-of-view of writing about it. Everyone who spoke to me or whose comments were relayed to me seemed to enjoy it - one of the girls on Stronsay even went twice (which probably says more about being a teenager on Stronsay than the quality of the entertainment.) I appeared on Radio Orkney - not that I remembered to tune in - that's the second time I've been interviewed and I've missed it both times - and got a good writeup in the two local papers. One commented on my 'powerful voice', possibly a reference to my appalling one-octave-below-natural-register rendition of 'Killer Queen.' See above for me with my attendant penguins, bless 'em. (Also a photo of George, the resplendent Dame.) When it was at last over, I went for a long walk to clear my aching head. Thus photo of swans on a freezing winter afternoon. There is about 7 hours of daylight at present, if you're lucky.

The mummers play went well - the kids actually managed to learn all their lines and the audience of parents and children laughed in the right places. The kids succeeding in putting on their own Christmas Fayre successfully and raised £333, which will go towards the cost of their trip to Shetland. (I can't help thinking that a trip to a part of the United Kingdom that isn't another remote, sparsely populated island might be more educational, but perhaps I'm just feeling the effects of end-of-term collapse.) I would just like to point out that Father Christmas had a floor cushion stuffed down her trousers, in case you thought I'd been overeating to compensate for the extreme cold.

I am absolutely shattered. Even packing to come home has been difficult, seeing as BA lost my luggage the last twice flew with them, and so I have had to plan carefully in case they make it a hat-trick. I am dreading crossing London on the busiest Saturday of the year with both a rucksack and an overnight bag, but I am not risking being knickerless and toothbrushless yet again.

Thank you to all of you who have read my literary (bloggertary?) efforts: it has made such a difference to me to know that I haven't sunk without trace from your memories. I hope every one of you has a wonderful Christmas and all the best for 2008, when I shall be in touch once more. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Dramatic events

That's 'dramatic events' in the same way a book review reading 'far less thrilling than his previous efforts' will reappear on the jacket as 'thrilling.' However, reason for lengthy silence from the land where 'four seasons in one day' seems an inadequate way to describe the mutability of the weather is that I have been tied up with pantomime rehearsals to the exclusion of all else, apart from work, which has also involved drama.

When I was told that they take pantomime very seriously here, I wasn't paying sufficient attention. The last two Sundays have involved rehearsals of inordinate length (ten hours and eleven hours respectively) plus rehearsals most other nights and I am shattered. The dress rehearsal is on Wednesday and we have the first of ten performances Friday. On both Saturdays, there are two performances and we are not allowed to go home in between. I have enjoyed it in the sense that I have a great part - non-stop ham acting - but the responsibility is telling on me. I have somehow allowed myself to be talked into directing a one-act play for February's one-act play competition, which apparently is also taken very seriously, as all the islands compete against one another and the winning production goes on to compete in a national event. If I screw this up, I'm assuming no one will ever speak to me again.

Meanwhile, I have also allowed myself to be talked into (do you sense a pattern here?) taking on another job one day a week, when I will be covering for the county Drama advisor, who has been promoted to Arts co-ordinator. This involves working with Primary school as well as secondary-age children. Help! Short people! Ones young enough to believe that what we are doing is for real. I'm terrified.

Finally, my 11 nutters on Hoy have decided that they will run a Christmas Fayre all on their own (I'll believe that when I see it) and that I will be Father Christmas. Last Friday I was very pointedly informed that they had Santa outfits in Lidls for 1.99, so I am now the proud owner of red suit, beard etc. I have written a mummers play for them to perform. I am quite proud of this, although its (very basic) humour is lost on most of them.

The doctor, doing the customary list of cures ("I can cure the itch, the stitch, the palsy and the gout/ If there's 99 diseases in, I'll fetch a hundred out...") has the lines "Rabies and scabies and foot-and-mouth/I've cured in the north and in the south".

Donald: That's shtupit. A human being can't get foot-and-mooth.

Me: It's a joke, Donald.

Donald: No it isn't.

Me: It's a funny play. It has jokes in it.

Donald: Well, it's a shtupit choke.

Rehearsals are progressing slowly.

I haven't taken many photos recently - in fact, with all this rehearsing, I've barely seen daylight. I did dutifully go to see the annual Orkney bird show, as Donald was competing. The other pic is of my housemate, Emma, whose mum has sent up a costume she found in the attic of their house. She's got a fancy-dress event coming up at her school. I think she looks rather amazing, even in the dismal light of an energy-efficient lightbulb. I hope to have some panto photos for you next time. It's taken me hours to post these pictures and they're still in the wrong order. I never had this problem with a packet of kodak from Boots.

O westron wind, when wilt thou blow...?

When I told people up here that , no I wasn't on holiday but had in fact taken a job up here, the usual response was "have you spent a winter up here yet?" Not, "welcome to Orkney" or "Oh how fascinating!" or "bugger off back to England ye peely-wally Sassenach." Now Winter has, not exactly arrived, but sort of waved at us from a distance, I'm beginning to see why. With the clocks back, I now spend my working week in the dark. Weekends it rains. I tried to rid myself of a long-standing headache by going for a walk this morning. Blue skies were smiling on the front and back windows, but each time I opened the door, it wazzed down. I'm beginning to think that there is a little black cloud attached to the Sky dish, probably placed there by Orkney Islands Council in retaliation for us having installed it without their consent.

So it's just been work and kip in the main. Pantomime rehearsals occupy three nights and Sunday afternoons now. In addition to my previously mentioned Queen item, I am singing a duet of a Blondie song so obscure I can't remember the title. Or the words. Or the tune. He's axed my solo number. Can't imagine why.

Fans of the shipping forecast ("and this one's for all you insomniacs out there: yes, it's 'Sailing By', top of the sleeplessness chart since 1937") may have noticed that severe - or extreme - or appalling - I forget what they call it these days - weather was forecast for last Thursday. All schools in Orkney were closed. Hurray! It was my day off and so I lost a day's pay as my supply teaching was cancelled. Boo! It was merely windy here, but was apparently pretty dire on the west side of the island and over on Hoy. Staffroom tales were of flying byre roofs and barn doors.

So, in lieu of actual news or hot-from-the-press photos, I append some of 'oor day oot' in Stromness, just before theholiday. Arty, eh?

A trip to Fairyland

The plane on theStronsay airfield. The livery is that of Highland Park whisky, which is possibly also what it is fuelled by.

I had to babysit two of the Hoy boys on Friday cos they'd 'forgotten' their swimming togs, so they helped me tidy the room, then I let them draw on the board. This is Kieran's drawing of me teaching.















I wish I could pretend I took this stunning picture, but in fact my housemate Emma took it on her mobile phone! This was taken the first weekend we were here, in mid-August.




This is a Green Man in Kirkwall's St Magnus Cathedral. It could, however, be a local fisherman who has caught a squid in his teeth, possibly during tonight's Force 9 gale.



A quiet week, mainly because the flights to Stronsay were so rough I had to crawl into bed when I got home. Thank God (and Lisa and Stewart) for HW Bear, who is, along with lemon & ginger tea, my resident stomach-settler. The new plane schedules started after the holiday: I now have to get to the airport two hours earlier than before. Loganair runs a flight especially for teachers in the winter. They and the Council seemed to be experiencing teething problems last Monday: they'd booked a colleague on the flight who always travels by ferry, while Lorraine, who'd been doing this run for 4 years, was left off the list and so left off the plane. She coped bravely with the fact that she was thus prevented from a day's toil and forced to head off home to her duvet.


The new schedule involved some bizarre routing. We flew over Stronsay, landed at Sanday, headed back south to drop me off at Stronsay and finally the little plane headed off to Westray. On the afternoon trip, the same thing happened, which meant that the Westray teachers spent almost as much time in the air as they did at school and were not very happy. It gave me a chance to see the seals on Stronsay four times though. I've seen them before, maybe a dozen or so, but this time there were hundreds. Last back end they had them on AutumnWatch on some Hebridean island, covered in sand and going blind in a howling sand-storm. Clearly these are the dimwits among the seal population. The Stronsay seals had it sussed. What I had initially thought were sheep in a field proved to be a seal maternity ward. "Catch me lying-in on a beach? Not bloody likely! Give me a nice lawn-birth anytime dear."


The pilots on these inter-island flights are fantastic. They each have their own style. There's an English one who insists on giving us a full safety run-through every single time, even though the passengers are the same teachers who take the flight each time and, in the afternoons, the same ones he took out in the morning. "The emergency exit is the same door you came in by" - just in case, I assume, you fancied using the other one while you plummet. He also gives us a report on what we'll see as we fly to work and the weather conditions. Wouldn't it be great if bus drivers did that? "If you look out of the window to your right, you may glimpse Sainsbury's and, if you're lucky, you might just catch B&Q beyond it." I'm longing for him to say "We'll be cruising at an altitude of 525 feet."


The other one is more laconic. His safety measures consist of "All strapped in?" He clearly enjoys a bit of field taxiing. Why go down the airstrip when you can bump over the grass?


More experienced staff have taken great pleasure in regaling me with things that have gone wrong on previous flights. The time the door flew open at 100 feet and Moira's handbag fell out onto the airfield. "All strapped in?" The time the fog was so dense that the pilot handed the passengers the chart and asked them to shout if they were able to spot anything they recognised.


The highlight of a fairly quiet week and the reason for the title of this week's offering was Sunday night at Woodwick House, a country house hotel down a lane, down a track, down a drive and brake before you fall in the sea. A storyteller called Marita was telling tales of the Green Man, or, to be precise, Green Men, Green Maidens and Green Children. (Had this taken place on Friday, when I had a fairly rough crossing from Hoy, I could have added one of my own about Green Teachers.) It was a wild night and only 7 people turned up, so instead of it taking place in their little theatre, we repaired to the Doocot (dovecot) in the garden, a ruinous stone building covered - inside as well as out - in ivy. Light was provided by an elaborate candelabrum and tealights in each of the little pigeonholes. The ivy was cut away behind her to make space for an old carved court cupboard, so the ivy became a kind of tapestry behind a green altar. She told the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight...those of you who know this wonderful mediaeval story should be able to imagine how appropriate the setting was: it WAS the green chapel!

Hit had a hole on the ende and the ayther syde
and overgrowen with gresse in glodes aywhere,
and al watz hol inwith, nobut an olde cave
or a crevisse of an olde cragge he couth hit not deme
with spelle.
"We lorde," quoth the gentyl knyt,
"whether this be the grene chapelle?
He myt about mydnyt
the deil his matynnes telle."

Fortunately for my health, however, she insisted we move to the house after that, so I enjoyed the tale of the Rain Maiden while sitting by a real fire while cuddling a mug of tea.

Saturday night and Sunday morning

Off to tea with the neighbours


The neighbours (Kirkwall coven, Education Chapter)

Double rainbow at the Broch of Gurness

The Broch of Gurness (or what remains of it)

Sunday morning felt a need for fresh air and exercise. I got soaked. Wuthering Archaeologists on tour.

It's vile today - so rough on the plane coming back from Stronsay, I had to go to bed when I got in. Hope today wasn't too traumatic for all those of you returning to the chalkface.

Hey! I got a comment from a stranger. I have a readership! (in addition to you kind and supportive friends.)

Hope you appreciate the new minimalism - last one a bit lengthy, methinks.

A visit to a lost civilisation

R.I.P. GNER, Britain's best railway co. No more shall I luxuriate in your comfortable first class seats and enjoy your delicious lunches cooked by your on-board chef. Farewell, real coffee in real china cups and endless free cake. Alas, from the end of the year, a different co. will transport us up the East Coast and, although the views will be the same, nothing else will.
***********************************

It may surprise some of my readers to learn that south of here is an ancient and decaying city, called London, and that, without even a visa, I was able to visit it. Such an eye-opener. There is sunshine. There is the possibility of bed sans hotwater bottle. There are hostile natives with shaven heads and ugly dogs. There is Bluewater, a vast temple complex dedicated to the goddess of shopping. Above all, there are friends. And it was worth every second of my 19-hour trip home to see them. So thank you: Simon, for meeting me at Kings Cross; Ian and Sue for arranging great meal in brilliant pub (quick plug for Doom Bar, Cornwall's award-winning ale) (I'd give the pub a plug if I could remember its name); to the England rugby team for beating the French while I was in said pub; to Isabel and Maria-Elena for a lovely day together; to Lucy for a great day's shopping and excellent style advice; to Cheryl for coffee, cake and nice long natter and to Cath and Adrian for a great weekend in Hastings with great home-cooked food and a memorable long walk. I feel blessed.

I have decided that it is time to reclaim the word 'culture' for them as enjoys a trip to the theatre, as opposed to the post-modern meaning of 'lifestyle choice' as in 'chav culture', 'culture of violence' etc. So this paragraph is dedicated to culture - and if you're allergic to it, skip now... When I wasn't seeing friends, getting my hair done, going to the dentist, giving up my allotment (sad one, that) I was in London, enjoying the sort of stuff I should have enjoyed when actually living and working there. I saw the terracotta warriors exhibition at the British Museum. This was fab - quite small, but thus you were able to concentrate on what was there instead of feeling overwhelmed. They are big! About 6 foot, and all different - different armour, different faces revealing various ethnicities. They stand, or drive chariots, or kneel, bow and arrow in hand. As well as warriors, the first emperor had other armies: an army of civil servants, for instance. They've just found an artificial river, with beautifully detailed life-size bronze birds, and musicians serenading them. They haven't even started excavating the main burial mound, where the actual tomb is. There was a big projected message: 'none of this will be excavated in our lifetime' which made me feel rather sad. I want to know! Actually, they will probably never excavate it, as that megalomaniac tyrant is regarded as the sacred founder of China.

I went to see 'Macbeth' at the Gielgud, with Patrick Stewart in the title role. He was awfully good. It was done in 20th c. dress - sort of Great War trench-coats crossed with Nazi uniforms. It opened in a field hospital, the 'bloody man' being wheeled in on a stretcher, tended by 3 nurses who turned into witches once the royal party had left and promptly murdered the poor sod. The banquet where Macbeth can't sit down because Banquo's ghost keeps getting in the way was done as a sort of social-climbers' dinner-party, the witches in attendance as catering crew. I'm not sure how they did the end because I fell asleep - always my problem in an overheated theatre.

Highlight was 'Carmen' at the Coliseum, directed by Sally Potter, who directed 'Orlando.' I'm not an opera fan, but I love 'Carmen.' It was really interesting to see how film director tackles a stage work. She used a gauze screen a lot of the time, so you had filmed images of people in the streets or of prostitutes in doorways and behind that you could see the chorus. I'm not sure why she turned the girls who work in the cigarette factory into prostitutes, tho' from what I used to hear about some of the factory hands in Nottingham, it was a thin line... Potter was criticised for making the opera 'not Spanish enough' but I loved some of the things she did e.g. to fit the toreador business in with the modern setting, she had all the chorus 'off to sunny Spain' (now you'll have 'E Viva Espana' on the brain for the next week - quick! replace it with 'the Toreador's song.' Hmm, maybe not...) and buying pot donkeys with flower vase panniers and sombreros. So it was great, except for Carmen herself who looked like Nigella Lawson in a slip and who was just not sexy. You couldn't believe any man would sacrifice his seat on the bus for her, let alone his life. To symbolise her freedom (Potter sees her as representing a free life v/v a conventional one) she was barefoot. And pen-toed. Outsize feet, too. But everything else was wonderful.

My house is fine. The tenant is looking after it ok. A couple of things disturbed me: returning from London early evening, I found he's gone out leaving open big windows at front and back (and a sign saying 'burglars welcome') and the hot tap on full. Less disturbing, if rather weird, was the discovery that he's taken my invitation to treat the house as his own by wearing my dressing gown.

I managed to miss the train coming back and dear GNER (see obituary above) gave me a free first class travel voucher all the way to Aberdeen. Setting off an hour later than planned meant I nearly missed the ferry. They let me on just as they were pulling up the gangplank. I'll try not to do that again. Being glared at by half-a-dozen ferrymen was an unnerving experience. To quote PG Wodehouse, "it's not difficult to differentiate between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine."

It's a hard life

HW Bear and friend



The secondary school on Hoy, with Mabel, lovely classroom assistant and famed Scottish dancing teacher extraordinaire, hiding in background

Over the seas to Hoy

The ferry to Hoy (jes' kidding) Actually the wreck at the side of the jetty leading to the ferry.



Greetings from the land of the under-employed. I have had a great week of doing not a lot. Feel guilty ("all my friends are toiling away") and elated ("Yes! semi-retirement and being paid for it.")


Lots of students away on leadership training, early holidays, flying (literally) visits to opticians etc, so Tuesday saw me on Hoy with 5 students. I only teach 2 periods on a Tuesday and leave on the 2 o'clock ferry. It was a glorious day and for the first time I was able to sit out on deck and read my book and imagine what it was like to be a Viking sailing into harbour on a glassy sea. (Actually, I guess that should read 'rowing' then.) I didn't have my camera so have attached a photo of a more typical ferry trip.


Wednesday I taught one and a half lessons then the RAF turned up to do activities with the Stronsay kids and I finished my Of Mice and Men display, an artistic arrangement of '30s pinups of Jean Harlow, Claudette Colbert etc juxtaposed with grainy images of breadlines and the Dustbowl.


Thursday - Drama supply at local comp. - was the first there that left me feeling mildly adequate. All went well, possible because B., Chav-in-Chief, was on holiday, which left her posse (I really wish I could tell you these 3 girls' names, but it's not blog etiquette, I believe) strangely subdued. I have not found B. easy to teach (read: I have taught her nothing whatever) but last week was, if anything, even worse than before, as she had had her bellybutton pierced, something she wished to share with me. "Miss, it's infected. Am I going to die?" I gave her some motherly advice on the necessity of hygiene and the efficacy of saltwater, while quelling the desire to throw up in her navel.

Friday - the best yet. Didn't have to go to Hoy; met the class in Stromness and we had a lovely day of taking photos and visiting the new Pier Arts Centre. This is amazing. I was expecting some little village art gallery, instead I found a fantastic place with stuff by Anish Kapoor, Patrick Heron, Barbara Hepworth etc. They provide art materials and we all sat happily on the floor and drew pictures. I get paid for this, bear in mind.

Further joy this week came in the form of a fantastic present from Lisa and Stewart. I had tried to buy a hotwater bottle earlier but the woman in Boots looked at me as if I'd tried to buy Easter eggs in July and said "They've no come in yet." It was the same thing with warm gloves. So last Saturday I'd invested in a sheepskin rug, handknitted woolly gloves and sheepskin slippers ('invested' being the operative word) and then picked up the mystery parcel from the Post Office and there he was. HW Bear. I haven't had a hotty in the shape of a teddy since I was 4. I'm so happy.

Emma, my house-mate, left today. She's off on a volleyball training course for week in Largs, a seaside resort near Glasgow. I took her to the airport at lunchtime and she just rang from the beach. "Gorgeous sunshine, nice buildings, TREES." All the things we don't got here. Happy as I am, I am really looking forward to going home next Friday. And I hope I'll see some of you, so that'll be even better.

Dramatic events

Iwrite with the soporific radio murmur of middle-class English voices in the background, all of them complaining that Radio4 is "too middle-class and too anglo-centric." Those agonized debates about what defines Englishness could start and stop with the ability to complain endlessly about anything. I promise to try avoid this in my blog (although I have to say that the weather since I arrived here has been dire - until this weekend! Hurrah hooray! Warmth, sunshine!)

My big news is that I've landed the lead in the Kirkwall pantomime. This is a huge honour and I only hope I can deliver what they want. So I write to you as The Snow Queen (well you knew it had to be a wicked witch, didn't you?) That's the good news: the snag is that I have to sing. So far, I know there will be 'Killer Queen' with a backing chorus of penguins.

Continuing the theme of Drama, I will draw a veil over my experiences as a supply teacher for the absent Head of Drama at Kirkwall Grammar School, as it's not my favourite event of the week. However, a more entertaining aspect of Drama was my recent debut as a playwright. The Head at Stronsay sprang on me that the entire secondary school (all 15 of them) and all the secondary teachers would be away apart from the S1 group and that I would therefore have to take them for English all day. I felt that this was a shortcut to them hating English for the rest of their lives, so I decided to write them a play. I'd been to see a man performing Beowulf in Anglo-Saxon at a local venue and only fell asleep twice, so I thought this would go down well, if I wrote them a play version. I was so engrossed in writing this masterpiece that I didn't notice the ferry had docked at Houton. Luckily, a ferryman spotted me: "Ye'd best git oaf if ye dinna wantae go back to Hoy." I bumped into the mother of a Hoy student in the building society the next day and, after she'd berated me for not doing enough Shakespeare, we moved onto Beowulf. She and her husband are, apparently, obsessed with Vikings and have not only changed their names to Viking ones, but also do Viking re-enactments and she insisted on lending me some of their gear.

The following Tuesday she turned up at school with chain-mail, helmets, drinking horns and a very large sword, all of which she said would be no problem to get on the plane the next morning. (The chain-mail alone would have caused its tail to fall off. I nearly cracked a rib trying to get it in the boot of the car.) I decided against attempting to get the sword on the plane, seeing as you aren't even allowed a nail-file these days. But the kids loved the other stuff. We rehearsed all morning and performed the play for the Primary School in the afternoon. They laughed in all the right places and S1 loved it. Sadly they'd taken most of their costume off by the time I took the photo, so you can't appreciate the true horror of the monster Grendel's skyblue furry slippers.

(It has taken me about half an hour to work out how to put photos on this, so if there is only one, it's because it's now bedtime. However, I will try to give you a few more...

15 minutes later: well, I tried. There's now a view from the plane as well. The others will have to wait. Night night.)

At last, online in Orkney!

I blame technology.


The Grand Plan was to start this blog around March, recording the mixture of emotions as I swung between the fear of the unknown and the desire for change, the cosiness of home and hearth and the longing for the wide skies of the Far North. Instead, the computer blows up; I then spend several months dithering about what to replace it with; when I finally buy my (wonderful Toshiba) laptop, I find I can't get back on the Internet at home; I then move up here, wait for weeks to be connected to Sky broadband and eventually find that it rarely works. Hence this intial posting will be more of an autobiography than a diary entry. I'll keep it brief.


I bade my neighbours a fond farewell on Sunday night, warning them I'd be off around 5am on Monday 13 August, and all they waved me goodbye as I finally left at 5.30 that evening. I got as far as Lancaster the first night and stayed in a lovely 4* hotel that served breakfasts worthy of an Edwardian country house, something that fired me into driving 400 miles the next day. (Pause for quick preen.) The Scottish tourist office en route advised me to book my accommodation for that night as it was the height of the tourist season (well you could have fooled me, given the empty roads) and thus I found myself in a dismal room over a pub that reeked of chips and all for a mere £68. All the other guests came from the Faroe Islands and none of them could speak English. I waited patiently while the lady tried to explain 'neeps and tatties' and 'battered haddock' to the only Faroese who had any English, gave up and went for a walk, only to find that 100 yards down the road was a superb 13th castle converted into an hotel. Rooms were £40 per night and their chef had just won Scotland's 'Chef of the Year' award.


The last leg of the 725 mile journey took me past the seat of the Duke of Sutherland, Dunrobin Castle, its name being, I assume, a reference to the past activities of his ancestors, who successfully depopulated this part of the country by deporting all their tenants to the colonies. Made it to Scrabster (that's a port, not a local delicacy) in good time and fell asleep on the ferry, waking up just in time to see the Old Man of Hoy, which was jolly exciting, especially as this is the 40th anniversary of its first climbing.


Met my housemate, Emma, for the first time - lovely girl and very easy to share with. We spent the first couple of weeks nagging the council for luxury items, e.g. a shower, central heating that works and chests-of-drawers. 'What do you need a chest of drawers for? You have a cupboard.' 'Do you hang YOUR socks on coathangers?' We wore her down in the end.


The first experience of work was two days of in-service training for teachers new to Orkney. It was excruciating. By the second day, doodling and writing out the alphabet in Devanagari (my usual mental yoga) no longer worked, so I took to wrtiting down all the cliches uttered by the worst of the speakers from the council. I was frantic: so hard to keep pace. They fell from his lips with what would have been astonishing rapidity, were it not for the fact that he spoke at a quarter of the pace of a normal human being.


Here are a couple of samples: "If we had health workers here, they'd be jumping up and down saying 'ah but' yet bear with me. For the broad model I will deal with this in terms of longitudinal time." "These are the folk who in terms of yesterday's terminology are the folk who actually go in on the front line."



I finally got to meet my charges the following week. The ferry takes me to Hoy and a taxi to the school. I teach S1 and S2 (Years 8 and 9, except they're actually the age of Years 7 & 8 - it's very confusing) together, all 10 of them. I like them very much, but the timetable is a pain. Most of their English classes are on Fridays. By the end of Friday, they are not amenable to English classes and we are all heartily sick of each other. We start by devising our own coats-of-arms. One child has problems grasping the concept of what symbols to draw on his shield. 'What interests you? What do you like?' 'I like ship. I like kye. I like ducksh. I like tractorsh.' His coat-of-arms is a masterpiece of drawings of Ferguson tractors both in one piece and in bits, surrounded by sheep, cows and ducks. Across the centre are twin spanners, crossed.



To get to Stronsay, I fly. It is an 8-seater plane and attains a height of 525 feet. My friend Wendy calls it The Clockwork Budgie. Stronsay has a bigger secondary school. I teach a total of 22 students. This is because at the end of September, a new family arrived from Yorkshire and their two children increased the size of my S4 class by 25% and S2 by 50%. (That's your maths problem for the day. Tomorrow, one on how many men it takes to overload an 8-seater plane so that it flies to an island different from the one where you actually work.)



There's so much more to tell you but this is already far too long and I doubt whether anyone will actually make it this far. If you have, well done, give yourself a virtual hippo (a merit system I have yet to introduce my students to) and talk to you soon.