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.
