When and where the dark eclipses be

Physics has never been my strong point.  In fact, I only ever took one exam in the subject.  I wrote my name at the top of the paper, 'Physics Examination' and the number 1 in the margin.  You know how they always give you a really easy question for number 1 so that everyone gets at least one mark?  I couldn't even manage that one.  So I fall back on this as a pathetic excuse for why I got up at 6 am in order to watch the partial solar eclipse on 4th January 2011.  As it doesn't get light up here till after 8.30, this was a little premature.  Nonetheless, I stationed myself by the window, camera in hand, and watched the sky slowly lighten. I noted the length of time it took, contrasting this with sunrise in the tropics, where at 6.27 am it's pitch dark and by 6.32 am brilliant sunlight.  So far north, you see, I said to myself, pleased with my startling astronomical insight.  But by 9.30 it was pretty sunny, and the moon hadn't put in her anticipated appearance.  It was at this point I realised that, in order to observe the eclipse, I needed to be on the other side of the hill I was looking at.  So I rushed out, jeans over jammies, drove towards the sun... and got it full in the face as it rose over the headland.  Quite painful, really.  If I'd got up later, had a leisurely breakfast and driven to the farther side of Stanger Head in the pre-dawn, I'd have had a perfect view.  Two eclipses in as many weeks and I've failed to see either of them properly.  Heigh ho. Hope you like the pictures.

It is the yeare's midnight...

An official end to puffinsilence. I have been ill for a long time, but just as St. Lucy's Day is now past and the days grow longer, I am past the worst and hoping to return to all the fun of seasickness and getting soaked and the other aspects of working life here that make it such a unique experience. Since June, I have worked for exactly one hour and forty minutes. (It was hell, let me tell you. ) I have missed all kinds of excitement. The 'Autumnwatch' team turned up on Stronsay and talked to the kids about careers in media. (I hope they impressed on them the importance of passing their English exams, as I have so far failed to make such an impression.) The main impetus for change on Hoy actually occured just before the end of the summer term, so I was there, when the headteacher simply quit with virtually no notice. She was followed by another member of staff (I was going to write 'of the team', but 'teamplayer' is the last thing he was) who outdid her by resigning on the last day of the school year. So two down; then I fell ill at the start of the hols; then the Upper Primary teacher had a burst appendix and is still off. Still, with the entire roll down to 19, I guess the school can cope better than, say, an establishment with 1500 students that loses a sizeable portion of its staff. There are now three kids in the secondary school.

We have had snow, not enough to be inconvenient, just enough to make every day joyous. It has been very cold and very still, with the sea like glass and the air so clear you could see the distant coast of Scotland with its own snow-cover. The lunar eclipse on the winter solstice was very clearly visible - most impressive. Sadly, although Flotta only has three lamposts, one of them was right next to the moon, as seen from our house. On any other day, I would have gone up the West Hill to take a view with less light-pollution, but I was due for my second day of 'phased return to work' so I was employed in attempting to drive to the ferry at the time when the eclipse was at its most impressive. Although the island's roads have been kept ice-free throughout both recent spells of heavy snow, those responsible for this (note my careful use of non-specific pronoun) never, ever clear the area in front of our house, which faces north and is low-lying and consequently, once frozen, remains friz. It is a public highway, thirteen households park their cars there and most need to get to work, but a species of island apartheid operates when it comes to the allocation of grit. So I failed in my attempt to shift the car, while my exertions brought about a massive asthma attack and subsequent collapse and (yet another) day in bed. All this is an excuse for why there is no photo of such a spectacular celestial event.

Finally, back to warmer days.  We are inordinately proud of our vegetable patches (created by digging up areas of the lawn.)  Eagle-eyed readers may have spotted the lack of trees and thus of shelter.  Despite this, we kept ourselves in veg this year and...wait for it...by placing an old window over the lettuces we have kept them going right up till now.  Our own salad in December!  I preen.

The play what I wrote

At last something has happened that I can write about (other matters being things that it would be unprofessional to relate.) We splashed out on a night in Kirkwall in order to attend the BBC recording of 'Mark Steel's in Town', a Radio 4 show in which the comedian goes to a town and takes the mickey out of it. He did Dartford proud (hard not to mock Dartford) but seemed on shakier ground wi' Kirkwall, possibly because he'd read the Orkneyinga Saga and discovered that these people's ancestors were seriously violent, a trait that still emerges in the annual contest of The Ba', one of those ruleless games in which the entire male population participates. The broadcast is on Wed. 12th May at 6.30.

Had Mr Steel hung around for a few more days, Flotta would have given him some additional material, because on Saturday it was the site of the WORLD PREMIERE of Ghosts in the Machine, a comedy written by your truly. I formed Flotta's first-ever Drama group last October and wrote a play for them to perform. Rehearsals had to be fitted round the pecularities of island life: all secondary-age kids are weekly boarders in Kirkwall; shopping and music lessons occupy Saturdays and Youth Club takes up Sat. nights; Sunday includes Sunday School and Kirk and adults who work at the oil terminal do 12-hour shifts. This left one hour per week to rehearse, so it was a miracle that we got it together on time. The plot concerned a group of ghosts who are doomed to spend all eternity on the Orkney island of Flirtay, a place where nothing happens, and the machinations of the Orkney Council, who are determined to spend even less on Flirtay than they do already so that they can go on all-expenses-paid trips to Norway. (Any resemblance between this bunch of incompetents and my employers is purely coincidental.)

Half the population of the island turned up; they all laughed in the right places; the cast of adults, teenagers and kids really did me proud. I only wish we could do the play again, seeing as they all worked so hard. We've been invited to do the play again at the Gable End Theatre on Hoy, but although the two islands are only 15 minutes apart, transport links are so useless that I fear it may be impossible. (On Fridays, I teach for 1hr 40 min. and spend nearly 4 hr. travelling, out of the house for 9hr in total.)

Meanwhile, Spring keeps attempting to spring, only to be driven back by winds straight from the Arctic. But the lambs are thriving, nonetheless!

The 0.01 of a mile high club

April may have been the cruellest month to an ex-patriate American who could enjoy the pleasures of London in January, but here on Flotta, January is the pits. Once England thawed, our glorious weather turned dreich (an untranslateable Scots word that encompasses sideways rain, squally wind, poor light and an accompanying sense of misery) and, apart from going to work, I've scarcely left the house. The weather was so bad on Thursday that our Burns Night supper on the following evening was a washout. The wind had calmed, but I imagine that most people thought the island would be inacessible and so failed to turn up. Thus the anticipated 130 punters became 51, leaving us with a dozen uneaten haggises and about a quarter-ton of clapshot. The leftover mince has been frozen: I wonder how long it'll be before the 'Old Folks' who are provided with a free lunch every month will notice that they've been served the same meal every time?

The sole event of note over the past few days was that I was given a chance to experience the world's shortest flight, solo. The new pilot, John, couldn't believe that I'd been here two and a half years and had never flown from Westray to Papa Westray, so I got a free ride! I also got my certificate and a free bottle of Highland Park whisky. Hooray!

Snow? What snow?

The temperature in the UK may be only 2 degrees warmer than Antarctica (well, it IS summer down there, after all) but here in Flotta, it's almost balmy. Cynics might say that the infamous Flotta Flare (Flotta's own contribution to global warming) is keeping us snow-free, but whatever the reason, it's really been lovely here, with crisp sunny days and beautiful views of the snow-covered hills of mainland Orkney and of Hoy, which looks like Spitzbergen got towed down here for a refit.

What with being ill for the last week of term, and the school on Hoy failing so far to reopen, owing to an invasion of polar bears, I have done one days work since 16 December. If things carry on like this, I'll soon be unemployable. Coming back from my one day's toil last Wednesday, I was just dozing off nicely in the plane, when suddenly the pilot put it into a near-vertical climb, rather alarming to say the least. (I did the unforgivable and shrieked: we itinerants are supposed to display sang froid at all times.) Turns out the manoeuvre was to avoid a flock of geese, so it could be he'd saved our lives. One of the notorious near-misses of itinerant flying folklore is the time a flock of geese was NOT avoided and an engine went out because a goose got sucked into it. (When they dismantled the engine to assess the damage, they found the poor goose was still alive, despite being completely featherless.)

Christmas was lovely: Bill and I took turns to be ill this vacation, but both managed to be well for Christmas Day and New Years Eve. Bill cooked a fantastic meal on each occasion - duck, wild boar - I had the East Midlands traditional pork pie-for-breakfast on Boxing Day (yes, even the East Midlands has traditions) - and New Year we were first-footed and then went first-footing ourselves. It was fun - I'm more used to rising than coming home at 5.45 am these days.

Photo is of seabirds I startled as I walked past Kirk Bay (on my daily walk in the sunshine. Just thought I'd mention that again.)

Merry Christmas, Snorri!

When I was little, I had a book called 'Snorri the Seal' about a baby seal called - you guessed it - Snorri and how he coped with murderous attempts on his little furry person by Orca, the killer whale, and how he met the elves who create the Northern Lights. Well, up here the Northern Lights are called the Merry Dancers, but we do have pods of orca in the Flow and we certainly have thousands of little snorris. Twice a week, I fly over the island of Lingaholm, which is just off the coast of Stronsay and apparently is where one-quarter of the world's population of grey seals goes to give birth. You can see them packed like - and, from a distance, resembling - sardines, all round the entire coast, with the overspill ensconced on the grass.

When I first started flying, I was lucky enough to see two seals swimming agilely under the glassy surface of the water, chasing fish, and I'd always hoped to see that again. Down in the harbour, we have our own (much smaller) seal colony here on Flotta and it's a real treat to be able to wish them good morning as I stroll down the pier to my 7a.m. boat. But I've got their number: these chubby whitish babies heave themselves into the water, giving Mama and aunties the illusion that they're off to swimming practice, but on a still day you can see them, sitting on the bottom, on a nice cushion of seaweed. Do you remember doing that when you were supposed to be clocking up your compulsory 10 lengths?

Most of our seals have gone now. You can occasionally see a head poking above the surface in the harbour, and Lingaholm still has a few half-moon shapes curled up on her shores, but I had assumed that most of the colony had left for the open sea. However, two weeks ago, I was flying back from Stronsay and spotted a seal swimming through the kelp. Excited, I tried to see some more. There were, dozens, no, hundreds, then - to my amazement - I realised that I was looking at thousands of seals, all swimming in the same direction. I can only assume that I had witnessed the winter dispersal of the colony, as they only congregate in order to give birth and mate again.

We haven't had the severe weather that has hit England. Bill went into Kirkwall to do the Christmas shopping (I've been bed-ridden since last Wednesday with a 'viral respiratory infection') on Monday and said both Mainland and Hoy were covered in snow. But Flotta remains snow-free and all of half a degree above freezing. Positively balmy! To recall sunnier days, I've done my best to upload a video of Snorri and co. plus a few photos, including one of the harbour as it appears on those days I manage to get home on an earlier boat and catch a little daylight. MERRY CHRISTMAS one and - if there's more of you - all!

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.