Poop poop!

This post is solely for the purpose of showing off. No more Mole! Now I am MRS TOAD!! We have a new car. Yes, new, as in 8 delivery miles on the clock. It's metallic blue. It has gizmos hitherto unknown to (this wo)man. And it's a CONVERTIBLE!!!

(Oh yes, and we had a lovely dawn the other day.)

Here comes the sun

I finally feel moved to put fingers to keyboard to celebrate the fact that today I drove to work with dipped headlights because...drumroll...it was almost light as I drove to the airport. My two-month vestigial hibernation is over - expect blogposts with more regularity from now on as I emerge, blinking, into the daylight. My two classrooms both have very poor natural light, and, as previously moaned about, I do 12-hour days, so for the past two months I have seen little daylight. Years ago, I played Mole in Toad of Toad Hall - I see it now as a rehearsal for life here. (But more of this in the next post, she added mysteriously.)

Last October, I was packed off on the first part of a training course that has enabled me to teach with considerably less effort than hitherto. Basically, I wind 'em up and let them go. It's brilliant. If anyone gives you the chance to do 'Critical Skills' training, take it. As a result, I now do even less work than I did before (hard to imagine, I know...) I have, however, written another play. Rehearsing this with the kids on Hoy is a strain but it is slowly coming together. Meanwhile, Stronsay is currently without a Head: there was a perfectly good Acting Head, but the council in their ineffable wisdom, decided to get rid of her and replace her with someone who couldn't start for several weeks. To steal a line from a pal who was working in a dysfunctional school, 'I just get my head down and pretend I'm self-employed.'

I will draw a veil over Christmas - Bill and I enjoyed each other's company but his brilliant idea of inviting his sister to spend Christmas with us was a disaster. I haven't actually spoken to her since. We did, however, manage to see The Nutcracker at the Colisseum, which was the highlight of our trip. If you live in London and have been wondering why we failed to so much as phone you, it was due to circumstances beyond my control.

Both Hogmanay and Burns Night were blighted by The Bug that has afflicted practically every inhabitant of Flotta. Dedicated readers may recall last January's Burns Night as one of the social events of my year: this year even young Graeme wasn't well enough to turn up. I repeated my error of last year and had three helpings of haggis, but there was no question of dancing anyway, as about 5 minutes after they cleared away the tables Bill announced that we needed to leave NOW and thus managed to make it home just in time before he was violently sick. It was nothing to do with the food: not only was I fine, but I also had haggis for school lunch that same day as well as for Sunday dinner. That's it for this year - haggissed out.

Thanks to those of you who posted comments - cheered me up no end. Pictorial offerings this time are of the oil terminal, the little settlement where we live and my Christmas present to myself. Those of you who admired 'The Snow Queen' as a child will understand how pleased I am to finally own a coat like the little Robber Girl. A lifetime's ambition realised! Excuse the apparent vanity of sticking two pics of myself on the blog, but as I couldn't see any of you over Christmas, I wanted to share my joy with you.

A nocturnall upon St Lucie's Day (well, more or less)

Lots of excitement chez nous. The roof is finished. We have a beautiful new front door, one that closes without slamming and, better still, lets in light. And we have a floor-to-ceiling window with a glazed back door filling the south-facing livingroom wall, giving us a superb view of the island and the Scottish coast away in the distance. The house is - finally - warm. They have also replaced the manky strand of wire that marked the garden boundaries with a proper wooden fence that makes the garden look like the little house on the prairie and hopefully will enable us to grow something next year. (Whatever thrives on the Siberian tundra.)

My first civic appointment this past week! I was asked to coach the little girls who were St Lucy and her attendants as part of the tree-lighting ceremony, a major production number with visitors from the Norwegian town that donates the Kirkwall tree, numerous musicians, a choir of tinies and assorted civic dignitories. All went well. St Lucy looked suitably angelic and spoke up as instructed, the fainter failed to pass out (my main concern) and the rain held off till after it was all over. Bill and I decided to stay the night in Kirkwall so we could go to church the next morning, me because I wanted to and Bill because he wanted to liaise with the vicar re: the wedding, but even he was impressed by the sight of The Bishop in full fig standing outside the church to greet the congregation. He looked most impressive and gave a good sermon, although Bishop Bob is a less than dignified name, I feel.

The problem with staying overnight, apart from the vast expense (we could have had a weekend in Paris for less) is that you can't get home till Sunday night, but the weather wasn't too grim, so after a nostalgic tour of Woolies, we drove to Skara Brae, where Historic Scotland was holding a free drink+end of season sale in the visitor centre and we were able to tour the oldest settlement in Europe on our own.

Only a few more days to go till we break up - can't come soon enough. I'm shattered. Christmas in Londinium - hooray! If I don't get back to the computer before then, hope you all (although I fear my readership is now down to 2) have a great Christmas. Finally, Lorraine's joke:

Did you hear about the dyslexic devil-worshipper? He sold his soul to Santa.

Puff C. v. OIC

Above: seals in Flotta harbour

A quiet month. Settling down in domestic bliss on Flotta is wonderful from a personal point of view, but lacks the drama and conflict necessary for literature, even at this bottom-of-the-pond level. However, turning Bill's bachelor tip into a 'cosy wee home' - with the emphasis on the 'wee': it's minute -has been a joy for both of us. We now have a lovely new livingroom carpet, a freshly painted kitchen,bathroom and livingroom and new flooring in the hall, porch and bathroom. That's our own work and expense. But it's a council house and the council, in its wisdom, has decided that all their houses on Flotta need renovating. I'd have done this during a period when the days were longer and the weather less inclement. But the Council clearly thought that November was just dandy for re-roofing, so the house has been covered in scaffolding for the past fortnight and occasionally the weather permits the workmen to hang a few more tiles before they have to retreat to their hut or else are blown into the sea by another storm. We are also to get a new front door - the present flimsy plywood effort blows open in the night when the weather is really bad - as well as a French door into the garden. This will not only enable us to see the glorious view when we are sitting down instead of the present sheet of plywood (maybe someone on the council had shares in the company) but will also mean that, in the event of fire, we would have a chance to escape. These one-door houses would be illegal in England. Just thought I'd add that patriotic health-and-safety point.

My new working arrangements are not ideal. My timetable on Hoy has been changed so I can no longer take advantage of leaving early on Tuesdays. I leave the house at 6.40am and catch the launch provided by Talisman for their oil terminal workers to the mainland. Mondays and Wednesdays I then drive to the airport for my day on Stronsay. The plane gets back about 3.30pm, so I then have to fill in a couple of hours before driving back to to catch the launch at 6.15, arriving home at 6.40. If the flight's been particularly awful, I fall asleep somewhere. The Hoy trip is less tedious, but more frustrating, because I can actually see Flotta but can't get there until - you guessed it - 6.40. 12-hour days consisting largely of travelling and hanging around are taking it out of me. Still, beats working in Dartford hands down.

The journey to work last Wednesday week was awful. The sea was so rough that I was actually thrown out of my seat on the launch. I couldn't believe the plane was going to go, but, sadly, it did. We flew higher than usual, presumably to allow room for the sudden vertical drops we kept experiencing. Apparently it got worse after I got off at Stronsay. At the next stop, Eday, the plane dropped like a stone and bounced off the tarmac. (Maybe he should have done what he did on Stronsay and landed in a field.) The wind was worse coming back and we were all a little green as we staggered off the plane.

I don't know if there's a pattern to this, but the plane flight this last Wednesday was just as frightening. I sat at the back and I confess I took a slightly sadistic pleasure in watching my new colleague's head bashing against the roof of the plane, as he had been somewhar smug about the ease of the job and how very simple being an itinerant was compared with whatever it was he did before embarking on a teaching career.

I only got as far as the mainland last Friday. Radio Orkney announced that the only school closing would be the one on Hoy, so I got back on the launch and straight back to bed. Bliss! It snowed in the night and Saturday we had sort of blizzardettes. I've put a couple of photos up - it reminds me of a trip I made once to northern Norway. Yes, dear reader: I have actually chosen to live here. I remember thinking, as the train whizzed through various isolated settlements on that Arctic trip, 'how could anyone live here?' Well, now I know.

How I lost my hat

No photos this week. I am trying to avoid carrying anything superfluous. The weather has been somewhat inclement. Coming off the ferry Saturday, the wind was so strong I felt myself being lifted off my feet and had to hook my arm over the jetty rail, so it was my woolly hat that got blown into the sea and not me. I dunno - I bought that hat in Kathmandu 19 years ago and it's survived the Himalayas but it didn't survive Flotta.
Yesterday's plane ride back to Kirkwall was frightening - horizon 20 degrees off vertical. Looked like one of those Second World War films (you know, the point just before our hero is gunned down by the Luftwaffe.) The boat home was, by comparison, a piece of cake, so I read a short story as we bounced over Scapa Flow. However, I abandoned Jack London halfway through, as it turned out to be a tale of man freezing to death in the icy wastes of Northern Canada and the subject-matter seemed a little too close to home for comfort. The Hudson Bay Company used to recruit in Orkney right up to the 1950s. They preferred Orcadians, presumably because they found the bracing climate of the Arctic just like home.
Today, a blizzard came on just as I was setting off down the jetty to the ferry, so I arrived in the passenger lounge completely covered in snow. A man said 'I see Christmas has come early.' One of my colleagues suggested taking my photo and using it as part of the Council's recruitment drive for itinerant teachers. We arrived at school just in time to see the kids being sent home. I was back home by 11.30am. Hooray!

The Scottish Midge, a horror story

So, back again. Weather lovely, Great Outdoors out of bounds, due to The Midge, a miniscule insect that abounds in vast clouds and sinks its microscopic jaws into any available part of one's anatomy, though preference is given to eyelids and bits normally covered by underwear.

We had a wonderful summer and were on our way back up the east coast of Scotland, healthy and relaxed, when flood warnings on our intended route sent us over to the west coast. Now the west coast of Scotland is deservedly famous - hauntingly beautiful, steeped in history - but a night's camping in Glencoe resulted in Bill being bitten so badly that I thought I'd have to take him to A&E. Face almost unrecognisable, eyelids swollen nearly shut, high temperature. The journey home was a bit of a nightmare and he's not really been well since.

Anyway, to happier memories. We were away for about 5 weeks, commencing with a journey through the Highlands, the highlight of which was our visit to Culloden. It was very moving, particularly for Bill, who had ancestors killed there. We also went to Edinburgh Castle, Bill in his kilt. He now features on the snapshots of dozens of Japanese tourists. We spent much of the holiday in England - a few days in Hastings and a few days in Cornwall, both courtesy of dear friends, bookending a long stay in a very sunny London. Great to see lots of old friends and a privilege to be at baby Annabels' welcome to the world. Clothes were purchased at Petticoat Lane and Bluewater (of course!), theatre was Kneehigh's brilliant production of Brief Encounter at the Haymarket Cinema and we went to the first Folk Prom, wonderful, apart from the Bartok, which bored me senseless and sent Bill for an early trip to the bar. Perhaps our best night out was Deep Purple at the Motor Show on a gorgeous warm evening with a beautiful sunset to drive home in.

We also took a day trip to France. We got to Folkestone and I drove into a carpark and asked if it was the right place for the ferry to Boulogne. 'You're too late,' the attendant told me. 'About 8 years too late.' Apparently there no longer ferries from Folkestone, so we went to Calais instead. I got very confused at the terminal in Dover. Looking for a place to park, I accidentally started driving onto the ferry, without a ticket, so they sent me through a tunnel where I was stopped by customs. 'Stop!' I threw my hands in the air. 'They're not armed,' Bill said gently. I think I've been watching too many American films. It was hard to convey what I'd done wrong - they thought we were returning from a booze cruise. Calais has really changed from the last time I was there, nearly 30 years ago. Then, it looked like the war had only just ended; it's all smart now.

The first few weeks back were difficult for me: I was homesick and found it hard to get back into life here. But am now happily settled into my new home with Bill on Flotta and my new timetable and classes. The teaching is going well; I feel better organised, for one thing. The nice little Drama job one day a week has been axed because of funding cuts, so money is tighter, but working 4 days a week is very pleasant! A new timetable on Hoy has meant that I am now timetabled for one afternoon's Drama a week and I'm pleased to say they're rising to the challenge. (Pause for quick preen.) I did a whole day of Drama on Stronsay last week, when several classes were off on trips, so I had the whole of Primary 7 and Secondary 1 (sounds impressive, but there were only 17 of them) together for a day of acting out Scottish folk tales, which was great fun. Not so many funny things to report this year, perhaps because the kids and I are more used to each other, but I struggled, as usual, to teach iambic pentameter. 'It's called iambic pentameter because each line has 5 ti-tums, called 5 feet. What do you think each individual ti-tum is called?' 'A toe?' How much more sensible than a foot, eh?

Bill took the better photos, but I haven't yet sorted out how to get them on this blog. Above are: Bill, a redcoat and a Jacobite at Edinburgh Castle, a scene from the War and Peace Show in Kent (I also have a video clip of a Spitfire that suddenly appeared overhead and rather stole the thunder from the parade of tanks), a roadside scene in the Highlands of Glen something-in-Gaelic-I-can't-spell, and a random Italian tourist with a stag that turned up at a tea van near Inverness .

Midsummer

Apologies to all of you who are kind enough to urge me on - sorry it's bin another lengthy gap between blogs. Problem is, my year of underwork has caught up with me and I've been discovering all sorts of things I should have been doing and didn't know about. I'm not trained in the Scottish education system and there's an assumption that I can intuit various things that are required of a Scottish English teacher. I do sometimes miss being part of a department (not often admittedly, but just occasionally.) Apart from apologising, I'd just like to send out a couple of messages: Simon - your French email address doesn't work. I tried and tried! Kushal: how lovely to hear from you. How's it going? Now back to the blog...

The big event of the past few weeks, workwise, was the trip to Shetland with the Hoy kids. The entire secondary school, bar one who had to attend a funeral, spent 4 days on a trip organised by Alaric, another itinerant teacher and all-round Outdoor Man. I was the obligatory female teacher. I had mixed feelings about this trip, not least because the Head rang me to say that she wasn't happy about Alaric's cavalier attitude to health and safety, and I was having visions of fishing kids out of the sea. As it turned out, though, he was a brilliant leader, just allergic to filling in all those quadruplicate forms.

We took the overnight ferry. I had the cabin between that of the boys and the girls, while Alaric had to sleep in a chair, having only booked one staff cabin - WHAT?! - but the Head informed him that that arrangement was unacceptable, so I didn't have the embarrassment of telling him so myself. The girls, who were absolutely brilliant all week, went straight off to sleep and the boys didn't. I eventually fell asleep and woke in the morning to find 4 of the little sods had kept the others up all night, so the first day was marred by the fact that those who needed their kip were really quite unwell. This meant that my trip to the fantastic brand-new museum in Lerwick was curtailed by having to look after vomiting children and I missed some of the best stuff.

Shetland is wonderful. It's much more like Norway than Orkney, despite the Orcadians insistence that they're not really British. The weather was fantastic , which meant that we were able to wear the kids out with lots of outdoor activities, so we didn't have any repetitions of the night on the boat. Selected highlights: Mousa Broch, the most complete of all the weird milk churn-shaped dry stone towers unique to the North of Scotland. The Norway Bus Museum, dedicated to the Shetlanders who risked their lives sailing to Norway during the war to rescue Resistance workers in tiny fishing boats while the Luftwaffe rained bombs on them. North Atlantic Fisheries College, where mariners are trained and scientific research is carried out into all aspects of marine life. (One thing I was particularly pleased about was that Graeme announced after we'd been there about an hour that this was where he wants to study: that boy has grown up so much over the past year - brilliant.) They've got a sort of zoo where you can see - and handle - some of the weird creatures that live in the seas round here. Visiting another Junior High School, where Sam blew their kids out of the water with his accordion playing. Dressing up as Vikings to tour a reconstructed settlement. Touring Jarlshof and seeing how fascinated kids can be by archaelogy if it's presented in an imaginative way. Donald on the phone to his mum every night for an hour - " We had mince and tatties tonight. Aye, it was aal reet" - and proudly showing me the little gifts he'd bought for his brand-new baby brother at every gift shop. Going round the Aith lifeboat and, when the coxswain asked them if they'd lost any relatives in the Longhope lifeboat disaster, the sensible way they conversed with him about it. (I was astonished how many relatives of the kids had died. A grandfather, several uncles...)

All in all, they were brilliant. Even on the boat going home, we found an Estonian young woman who was to play in the Orkney Folk Festival - which I missed, as it coincided with the trip and I was too tired after to catch the last couple of gigs - and she and Iona sat for an hour and played fiddle together.

We had chartered a boat to take them from Stromness to a jetty at the top of Hoy, which the skipper agreed to do as long as we could dump the kids and go, so we got back at 11.50pm only to find no parents, as the letter had been sent out with the wrong time, so there was a hairy half-hour in which Alaric and I feared we'd be abandoned in the most desolate place you could imagine. Eventually parents started arriving and, of course, no one, apart from Iona's mum, bothered to thank us or even say 'good evening' - par for the course I've always found on school trips.

Other events of the past weeks have included a weekend in Dundee, home of the Beano and the Dandy, which included two beautiful drives through the Highlands - the Cairngorms still had a lot of snow on them - and me driving at 90 mph along the John o' Groats road to try to catch the ferry, only to find that they'd given us the wrong time and we were 2 hours early. Clearly the good folk at Northlink Ferries haven't quite grasped the 24-hour clock. 7 o' clock is NOT 1700 hours, ducky.

I've enjoyed 2 terms of teaching Drama on Thursdays, but the Council has axed the funding for that post, so next term I look forward to a 4-day week and incipient poverty. However, we break up for the summer hols next week and we're enjoying White Nights at present, so there are plenty of Reasons to be Cheerful.