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.

Gainful employment

Greetings, gentle readers. I apologise for my long absence from Blogland. Thank you to everyone who was kind enough to notice/complain. I have been able to see a fair few you in the flesh during my e-silence, so you know pretty much what I've been up to. The main problem for me with blogging is the photograph business. I'm sure this is not the correct way to do it, but every time I want to shove a few piccies on the blog, I have to download all 350+ that are on my camera. This takes forever and I usually end up going to bed because I have to get up so early. (The other thing is, of course, that I am now spending so much time with Bill the Broadbandless Boyfriend that I am not at home to make use of my over-priced internet access. Still, I'm not complaining, obviously.)

Rather than plod through everything of the past few months, here are a few random details. We've had a lot of weather. One day that particularly springs to mind was my final trip back from Stronsay before we broke up for the Easter hols. The flight out was rather like a fairground ride, the sort that leaves you with a sprained coccyx. The pilot appeared to be unconcernedly writing in his log, which comforted me, until I started wondering whether it was actually a farewell note to his wife. The weather worsened during the day and we were amazed to see the plane at all, only half an hour late. It looked like a badly constructed paper aeroplane, now at a 45 degree angle to left, then ditto to the right. The flight home was ghastly: Lorraine next to me was doing impressions of a cat scrabbling to be let out of its box, while I was clinging to her arm and praying. The pilot (the one who does the full safety check every time) was chatting away to the bloke sitting next him as if this 'bandits at 2 o'clock' routine was nothing out of the ordinary. (He has now left us again to return to flying in the Antarctic, so I guess he was just cheered by the excitement of all that lurching and swooping.) On the dashboard of the plane, a notice reads 'Aerobatics are forbidden.'

We were still at school when it was Easter. Had to work Good Friday. Boo! Not only that but we had the dress rehearsal for 'Joseph' and I had to stay overnight on Hoy because the local Gable End Theatre had asked us to repeat the one-act play. The weather was dire - the wind was so strong you could scarcely stand up. By the time I had spent a day and an evening on that godforsaken island I was so chilled I couldn't think. Luckily the cast were used to having a less-than-dynamic director and essentially did everything themselves. The theatre was sold out - it was lovely. I spent the night with my colleague, Jill, in her beautiful house, a converted mill down by the water's edge, i.e. the shore of Scapa Flow. What a place to live! Even in that snow-storm I managed to be envious.

The Easter break was lovely: the schools were closed because of snow, so we got the Tuesday off in addition to the scheduled Easter Monday. I spent Saturday on Flotta, trying to regain body temperature and then Easter Day Bill and I got the 6am launch to the mainland and went to church. This entailed a hair-raising drive into Kirkwall on a completely untreated road, the only main road in the island, in fact. Arriving in Kirkwall, every single little lane had been scraped and gritted. Orkney Islands Council gets their priorities right again. Easter Monday saw a succession of blizzards on Flotta, which was exciting from the right side of the double-glazing, and then the bonus Tuesday was bright and glorious and we went for a lovely walk and saw the first spring lambs. They call this 'lambing winter': you had to pity the poor shivery little things.

The Tuesday off meant the cancellation of one performance of 'Joseph' (shame) but they did it Wednesday when I was in Stronsay. Then they decided that I mustn't miss it, seeing as I'd directed it, so they did it on the Thursday night and I had to spend another night on bloody Hoy. Actually, I'm pleased I saw it: it went really well and the kids were just lovely. The icing on the bannock was that after the show I saw the Northern Lights for the first time - not the incredible psychedelic spectacle, admittedly, but an impressive weird green light, like the first gleams of dawn only at 11pm.

Two days later I was flying down to London, a subject for another time, seeing as it's already very late.

But before I go, why the title? Just to let yo'll know that I was interviewed for my (currently temporary) post last week and and I got the job. So I now have a permanent job up here. As Lorraine said, 'You're now DOOMED!'

Photos: farewell to Ian, the safety-obsessed Loganair pilot, who's off to Anarctica; a partly-built igloo on Flotta (presumably built by Inuits blown in on the gale); 'lambing winter'; some of the shortest and most enthusiastic cast members of 'Joseph.'

'Break a leg'

An eventful few days. In brief, the play I have been directing opened the one-act play festival - and failed to win. I do not care about this: the adjudicator was, in my opinion, fair and his ideas were good. He praised my direction, which was most encouraging, seeing as it's the first play I've directed (apart from a group of teachers in the SATs scenes from 'Romeo and Juliet' a few years ago in Wembley, something that had the happy outcome of introducing Andrew (Romeo) to Charmaine (Juliet) and bringing about a romance that has, for all I know, ended in marriage.) Unfortunately, one of my cast of two is, in her own words 'highly competitive' and I doubt whether she will ever speak to me again. It was good, but the other plays were better. We did, however, receive high praise for the 'Ecuadorian fertility figure' - our best prop - and I hope to embarrass yo'all with a photo of it very soon.

The morning of the play I slipped on the highly polished lino of Kirkwall airport and have sprained my ankle. I was in shock, methinks, which led me to attempt to get to work notwithstanding (literally - I had to be pushed down to the plane in a wheelchair) I had to get off at Sanday to let off another teacher, so I told the airstrip chap - imagine elderly Orcadian Viking-type - that I needed his arm because I had fallen over. He glared at my shoes (as chosen by Mrs Martin, stylish yet sensible) and said "This wouldna have happened if ye'd been wearing rrrubber boots!"

I got to Stronsay, whereupon Mae, the Head, packed me off to the doctor, who decided he'd like to put acupuncture needles in my foot. "Can you feel that?" I could feel nothing, as between the sub-zero of the plane and equal chill of his surgery, my feet were numb with cold. I then went home on the ferry, took a cab to get my car from the airport and went to bed for the rest of the day. Thus not going to work took 5 hours and cost me 14 quid.

Today I hirpled to Hoy (yes, they actually say 'hirple' here - I thought it only existed in the novels of Sir Walter Scott) to endure several hours of Andrew Lloyd Webber. The kids were great - I explained that I had hurt my ankle and was therefore in pain and in a foul temper and they ran round fetching me chairs for my foot and fresh ice-packs and being good, bless 'em.

I have taken no photos since last week, but the photo above is for Doctor Mom. (It's just the alternative route to Stronsay, Viva.)

Stranded in Sanday, Afloat in Flotta

Bloggable - my new word. I have had a lovely fortnight, but unless this turns into the online equivalent of a newspaper's 'Nature Notes', not a great deal that is bloggable, as a lot of the pleasure has been in seeing amazing skies and being aware of rapidly lengthening days, so that a trip to Hoy was in the dark on a Tuesday and in the dawn by the Friday.

There is no half-term holiday for teachers this term: the kids had two days off while staff had to attend in-service training, but as I am only contracted to teach 0.8 of a timetable, I had to go to only the first day and thus was able to spend three blissful days on Flotta.

Last week brought the only fly in the proverbial ointment, when the short flight home turned into five hours of frozen misery, as Kirkwall airport was fog-bound and we flew, first to Sanday, where we hung around for over an hour while my body temperature plummetted, and next to Westray, where we waited for a ferry for even longer and I was approaching hyperthermia by the time the ferry arrived. It is, however, a large ferry, and served hot food. I'm not fond of bacon butties, but mine tasted like manna from heaven.

On Thursday I did my first day of my new job teaching Drama here there and everywhere. I was sent to Dounby and earned a day's pay for two hours work. I stayed in the afternoon to see the little ones enact an Orkney wedding as part of their work on 'festivals.' It was very sweet: the bride and groom, only three feet tall, took their vows very seriously in the 'kirk' and then there was a reception in the hall, with traditional food and Scottish dancing and even a real wedding cake. The 'brither o' the bride' made a speech, in which he declared he'd be 'glad tae see the back of her cos she used to break ma peedie tractors. No, but seriously, she's no sae bad and bakes the best floory bannocks in Orkney.'

Fridays I now teach two gifted primary school children for an hour before my own class. It was a stunningly beautiful, very still and frosty day, so I took them outside with notebooks and they just listened and wrote down everything they experienced, then went back in and wrote poems. Mary, in particular, is very creative with language. I pointed out that the sheep were silent but that in a few weeks the fields would be full of baaing and bleating, once the lambs wwre born, as all the ewes were pregnant. 'It's field hospital,' said Mary thoughtfully. A flock of starlings descended on the roof of the school and started showing off: 'The starlings are seeking stardom, ' she wrote.

It has taken me several days to get this to publish, as the broadband connexion keeps failing, so refs. to 'a fortnight' have stretched into two and a half weeks. Photographic offerings are of dawn over Scapa Flow, the first from the road in a gale and the second from the ferry to Flotta on a beautiful morning, while the other two feature the penguins of Flotta and the spectacular aerobatics of the Coast Guard helicopter. (He bought me a box of Milk Tray.)

The North wind doth blow and we shall have...

a day off school. Thank you, Orkney Islands Council.

The O.I.C.

is turning me

into a lounge lizard

as on Friday

they decided

there'd be a blizzard.

There wasn't, I'm pleased to say

but I had a duvet day

and Saturday brought snow

to make Kirkwall almost pretty,

which sadly has all melted

as down the rain has pelted

so I must return to work, which is a pity.

(Blame Mrs Martin for this nonsense. She requested poems.)

Yes, it's been a week of serious laziness. I worked Monday, the usual half-day Tuesday and that afternoon flew to Inverness. I cannot comment on the beauties or otherwise of Inverness as it was dark when I arrived and was raining so hard throughout my stay that I formed no opinion of it. It does have a lovely river running through it, though. I stayed in a B&B run by a very camp elderly Hebridean (quite a bizarre combination) and attended a course at a posh hotel the next day. The course turned out to be completely inappropriate for me, as they informed me when I arrived (a bit late for that) but I dutifully took notes and enjoyed a fantastic lunch (which more than made up for the curling sandwiches offered by OIC on my two previous lots of in-service training.) I just had time to hit the shops, stock up on Marks and Sparks knickers and a fresh supply of thick tights and bought a £320 suit in Debenhams sale for 80 quid. Result!

On Thursday, I was meant to be in Hoy, but my new boss, the performing arts co-ordinator - had forgotten to make the necessary arrangements. I offered to go anyway, but he said that the weather was too risky and I might not get back (a night on Hoy - horrors!) so we went together to a primary school to discuss the drama I'll do there, as I will be covering his work every Thursday. I got paid a day's wage for this brief jaunt. Afterwards, I drove him to Stromness to pick up his car from the mechanic: now, that was hairy. There was a hailstorm on the way, with jagged hailstones like shards of glass, and a wind so strong I was quite concerned the car might be blown off the road and I'd be viewing Harray Loch from under the surface.

The promised worse weather never arrived, but Saturday morning it snowed a bit, then it snowed a lot. Very pretty. Emma and her mates went tobogganing. They didn't want to fork out for sledges, so she nicked some aerobic steps from the gym at Kirkwall Grammar School. She later went out to watch England lose the rugby (by that I mean they lost, not that she hoped they would, quite the reverse) which was great as (a) she shouts at the telly and (b) it meant I could watch 3 hours of David Attenborough's The Blue Planet uninterrupted. One of the things I failed to do failed to do when young enough, along with dyeing my hair green, was drop acid (other than in the more conventional sense of ruining my science overall) but an hour of the strange luminous creatures in the deep ocean made me feel as if I'd the experience without any unpleasant side-effects.

Photos are of our front garden, the Earl's Palace in Kirkwall, St Magnus Cathedral and A Cat ( for cat-lovers out there - you know who you are.)