Of Mice and Meerkats

The previous owner of our caravan lives on Stronsay. Despite the van being kept at the back of his L-shaped house and sheltered by an earthen bank and a fence, he had a huge iron staple driven into said bank and kept the caravan tied down, with the mooring rope going through a similar staple embedded into an oildrum full of concrete. Here on Flotta, we have to park it in a windswept area on the shores of Scapa Flow. We also have no means of tying it down. So, rather than wake up one morning to see our beloved caravan joining the German Navy (i.e. the one that was scuttled at the end of the First World War) we drove it down to a farm in England, just off the M6, where it's going to spend the winter courtesy of a Mr Skidmore. We thought this would be safer than leaving it somewhere in Scotland. I discovered today that we had both had a more or less identical nightmare about the van being swept away in the Cumbrian floods. Still, better with Mr Skidmore than here, as the weather is grim! Gales, driving rain, very cold...

We had a lot of things to do at the house, such dealing with the usual Autumn influx of mice (ugh!) and having a new carpet fitted (gorgeous!) so little time to catch up with pals, unfortunately, but we did manage to see 'Turandot' at the Coliseum, which was fantastic, as well as a day at London Zoo, to feed our meerkat obsession. We'd just walked in when a child spoke to me: to my great embarrassment, I'd no idea who she was. As she was a kid I teach on Stronsay, who I'd seen only a week previously, I felt a bit of a fool. Autumn was especially beautiful this year - the first Indian summer since I first moved to London in 2002 - and it wasn't until we got back to Aberdeen that the weather broke. The ferry journey home, normally a tedious six hours, took nearly eleven. A life on the rolling wave etc. We'd had to come back early because I was supposed to do a day of in-service training: I woke up in the B&B at the time it was due to start, so I went home instead, which almost cost me three days pay (a Friday and a weekend) but I'll say this for Orkney Islands Council, they are quite understanding when it comes to seasickness.

The problem with living on Flotta is that you can't get off the island in the evening (not unless you want to pay for a restaurant meal and a night in a B&B) so no pantomime for me this year, or any other social activity, so I have started a Drama Group, a Flotta first as far as I can make out. I have written a play for them to perform, so with any luck news of its World Premiere will soon be on its way. Rather ambitiously, it has a cast of 14: so far, I haven't had that many people turn up to audition, but I have already had complaints that my chosen time coincides with 'folk needing to go the byre' (that's mucking out the cowshed to you and me) and couldn't I hold the rehearsals on an evening during the week? I pointed out that all but four of the island's children and teenagers are away as weekly boarders at the Kirkwall school during the week and it was mainly to keep them occupied at the weekends that I'd set up the group in the first place. However, I'd forgotten a key fact of rural life, i.e. that if you do anything or nothing, people will find something to bellyache about.

Photos: Caravan prepares for hibernation; an iguana (?); otters; aardvaarks underground; Meerkat Rex; view from our house north; and ditto south.