Opera x 2

 Yes we have already been to the opera twice since we moved, which is pretty good going I think. 

First up was a matinee of the Merry Widow at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh. It's not our favourite venue because the stage is a bit weird, not very deep but very wide, so sometimes productions look a bit odd when accommodating to it, but as far as that goes the Merry Widow fitted quite well. 

I liked the sets and costumes, and the music is lovely in an 'I'm almost a musical rather than an operetta' kind of a way. Further than that I won't go. The director had updated the action to 1950s New York ad set it amongst a collection of gangster families; Mafia, Eastern European, something else which escapes me. Leaving aside the horrific cacophony of, not always successful, accents this led to, I don't find the mafia a fit subject for mirth and hilarity.  Setting an act in a Sicilian lemon grove with every farcical trope you can think of just annoyed me when compared with the brutal killing of Michael Corleone's young wife in The Godfather. Lots of people loved it, but I'm sorry, I just don't find the mafia funny. Basically because they.re not. 

Obviously you can't take pictures during the performance but here's a photo of the curtain call

The other 'opera experience' was a pop up at the Falkirk Wheel last Sunday. They were doing two performances; a family show with a story about the Scottish canals and the boats that used to use them and a cut down version of The Pirates of Penzance. We're not huge G and S fans but we thought the other one might be fun and the Falkirk wheel isn't far and the weather was nice so we went. 

here's the wheel; for those who don't know, it's actually a boat lift to take boats from one section of  the canal to the other; the height differential is huge at this point. 

A little representation by the Visitor Centre of life on the canals once upon a time.

And the three singers and two instrumentalists who performed Puffy McPuffer and the Crabbit Canals. The children in the audience loved it, joining in with the singing and generally leaping and squirming about with great joy and it was huge fun for the adults as well. The performers were all fantastic. 

We have done lots of other things as well since moving in despite the shingles and the ongoing BT saga and I will get caught up eventually, although we are actually going away for a just over a week tomorrow so when I get back there will be even more to catch up with. I think that's a good thing though. 

The Move - A Retrospective

 Well, it was bloomin' hard work, I can tell you that. 

Moving out day was awful; not because I was sentimental about leaving though. The removal people weren't very good; they were young lads who had no respect for other people's property, I had to keep away from them a lot of the time because I winced every time they tried to get  a piece of furniture  out of a door. I don't know how long they had been with the firm but I hope not long, because otherwise they were obviously unable to learn from experience. It took ages for them to get everything out and then we had to clean. After about two hours of the cleaning I had gone from 'gosh I'm breathing heavily, I know I'm unfit but really this is ridiculous' to ' this is much harder than I expected and I feel a bit sick and light headed' to ' I can't breathe properly and that's quite frightening'. I'd been spending a lot of time on my hands and knees washing skirting boards, and whether it was dust, or carpet mites or cleaning fluid, I was definitely not in a good place. So then I had to sit by an open window and take deep breaths and after about half an hour I felt better. 

Then we locked up and took ourselves off to the ferry as we were doing a bed and breakfast on it and I took a last photo of the house. 

And when we got to the boat I took a last picture of Stromness too, because I knew I wasn't going to be up and about when we set sail the next morning to take it them. 

The following week is  a bit of a blur as we officially spent it in Glasgow but there were so many mornings when we had to be at the new house at the crack of dawn that twice we stayed in a Premier Inn near Stirling just so we didn't have to get up really early and drive from Glasgow to Alloa for 8 o' clock. We did, while in Glasgow, go to M and S and get the OH several new pairs of trousers, since the ones he had had all suffered from ingrained coal dust from the solid fuel stove and now, thanks to the marvel that is central heating, that will no longer be the case. We had various travails with BT, which have already been briefly alluded to and I have no intention of re-visiting that particular annoyance, but we've spent far too much time explaining and re-explaining various tings to BT in an effort to stop them trying to hit us for a cancellation charge we don't owe them. Sky were great though; the woman turned up on time, discussed whereto put the dish, installed it and buried all the cables neatly, and all in the blink of an eye. Well -ish. 

The worst bit was fielding a phone call from the manager of the Orkney branch of the removal firm who was ringing with the news that my beautiful ceramic figure, despite dire warnings from us about how fragile she was, and instructions from him to his workforce to triple blanket wrap her and take extra care, was in fact now in several pieces. He did says his wife was 'quite crafty and had offered to have a go at mending it if I would like'. I would not like. 

Photo of said ceramic for those who might not have ben around when I bought it 

I know not everyone thinks she's beautiful, but I loved her and she meant a lot to me in several different ways and I just cried. I'm still crying inside about it because she was part of a limited edition and there is no way I can replace her, a fact which the insurance company for the removal men seemed quite unwilling or unable to take on board. I am going to be recompensed but there was a bit of an elongated exchange of e-mails. We were also claiming for some damaged bookcases because when the van was unloaded at this end they discovered that something in the the stuff at the front of the van, which belonged to someone else they were delivering to later that day had leaked a thin odourless but very black liquid which was now covering the bottom few inches of some of our bookcases. I was not amused. (possibly printer ink. we still don't know).

I think that's all the worst of it,. I don't regret the move, but I wish the logistics had been calmer and more smooth and that we hadn't  got exhausted from the early starts and the 3/4 days when we seemed to do nothing but unpack boxes and I definitely wish I hadn't developed shingles. I did at one point think that if I had to do ti again I would sell everything at the leaving end and start anew at the destination, but I'm not intending to move again in the foreseeable future. 

Upcoming over the next few days; some of the exciting things we've been doing since we got here - because yes,  we did get past spending all day every day unpacking eventually, although this doesn't mean that we don't still have a few boxes waiting to be dealt with. 

In Which I am Poorly Sick

 I have been poorly sick for a while now; and what I have mainly been poorly sick with is Stress.

This is annoying because, although moving was stressful, that is now behind us and  I feel I should be 'over' it. Sadly, the signs are that I am not. 

I am prone to stress and it has various ways of manifesting itself, but generally it chooses one way and does that to the nth degree, then gets bored and moves out for a while. Obviously the whole moving thing threw it into a whirl of confusion and it decided just to go for gold and hit me with everything. 

So I have very  red itchy palms just now. This is a genetic thing that my mother  and at least one female cousin of mine suffered from ; the cousin concerned is a doctor and she did tell me the medical name for red itchy palms. I can't remember what it is, but I do know it's a pain. 

I have a patch of something nasty and itchy  on the sole of my right foot. I'm not aware that this is genetic, but it is stress triggered and I need to start treating it with a steroid cream soon or it will just spread.

My restless leg syndrome is very present just now, especially at night, and to add to the joy of nations it has been joined by restless hand syndrome. The latter tends to kick in at about 8.00 in the evening and settles down at about 11.00, when the legs take over. I literally cannot describe the feeling of either of these things, except to say that it's basically an irresistible urge to move the leg or hand affected, which sounds like nothing but is in fact extremely unpleasant. Especially since moving the affected part does not in fact take away the sensation of needing to move it. 

All of these I have had off and on for years ( although never more than one at a time until now ) but 10 days ago they were joined by shingles. This is a first for me and I sincerely hope it is also a last because it is not fun. A very  sore and itchy rash, which occasionally prickles,  accompanied by pain in places the rash doesn't reach. It was diagnosed in time for me to be given antivirals - 10 pills a day for 7 days, which was horrible in itself as I hate the physical process of taking tablets - but I still felt rubbish. The best thing to do apparently is to rest and relax until it's all over, but no-one tells you how you rest and relax when you've just moved house and are surrounded by a multitude of unpacked boxes. Nice trick if you can work it. 

So that sort of explains why there hasn't been a blog post for a while, because I really haven't had the energy, but possibly I am really on the mend now because here I am typing away. 

I don't suppose anyone wants to see a picture of the truly horrible shingles rash that I had on my back, because why would they, so instead here is a photo of one of the recently purchased  lavenders at the front door. Because lavender is supposed to have soothing properties, yes?  

May - Wool Stats and Project Progress

Yes, I know, I hear you. I've got lots to say about the move and here I am faffing about with project updates. But I just thought I would get this one out of the way, and do move and recent activity stuff over the next few days.

I am delighted to say that the BT Engineer did turn up this morning as arranged. He then had rather more trouble than anticipated getting our internet to work, as apparently there was a broken cable and this necessitated him summoning a colleague, lifting up a man hole cover and standing in a hole for some length of time. The good news is that we now have stable (so far) working internet. I'm told on the ground floor this is via Ethernet and that upstairs uses wi-fi.  I have no idea what this means, but as long as I can get back on my laptop in a meaningful way, it's all fine by me.

Anyway, to the craft update. Wool in was 200g, wool out was 3164g. V-e-r-y pleasing. The large out figure was for a couple of main reasons. One was that I finished a huge project (see below) and the other was that I finally looked out my very oldest wool, most of it inherited from  my mother and squatting under the guest room bed almost since we moved to Orkney. Most of that went to a charity shop, some of it was thrown away. I also sent quite a lot of my own leftovers to someone I know who makes things on a very old knitting machine in a museum; the things she makes are then sold to raise funds for the museum upkeep. 

So net decrease for this month was 2964g and the running decrease for the year is 6297g. This is all excellent, but on the other hand I still seem to have an awful lot of wool. 

Finished projects. First up a pair of socks 

These are from the Skein and the Stitch weekly advent from last Christmas which means I've done three weeks out of the four. Not entirely sure where the wool from week 4 is just now ..... It will turn up. 

The big project was this

a huge blanket. This was part done and I picked it up at the beginning of April, realising that it would be easier to pack as a single blanket than 5 sets of squares/mini skeins in 5 separate project bags. I hadn't actually done all of the squares at that stage, I think I had about 24 to do, and then they almost all needed edging, before being put together and then bordered. It was a Big Ask, but I managedto get it all done before we moved, bar some of the weaving in of the ends, but I finished that after we got here. I call it my Inkling Blanket, because the squares are made from an Advent themed on The Lion and the Witch and The Wardrobe, and a mini-skein club based on the Lord of the Rings. The square edging was done in a colourway called the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and all the wool came from Giddy Yarns. Sorry the colour is a bit washed out in some parts of the photograph but it was a bright day when I took it. 

That's it for finished things, but not bad considering I moved house in May and my crafting time was severely limited. 

Progress reports on other things. At the end of May the Japanese scarf looked like this

so it had grown quite well, considering I don;t like to do too much in a day otherwise I start to make mistakes. 

The earth dancer cross stitch looked like this at the end of the month

which is very little different to how she looked at the end of April which was disappointing. The only real change was that there was more done of her medicine bag. However there will be lots of progress visible by the end of June. 

And the lavender sampler also didn't grow by much but there's lots more tree and a bit more lavender field, compared to the previous month

So there you go. That was May, as far as crafting went. 

Well, we're in.

Apologies for the lack of a picture but I'm too tired to source one. 

I'm pleased to say that we are in the new house and so far we are loving it, even though there are a few things that need/(ed) sorting very quickly.

However we are plagued with minor frustrations of the sort which I suppose attend every house move, but knowing that doesn't make them any easier to cope with when they are happening. 

Today has been the first day I've had access to my laptop because BT/Openreach are useless and although they promised that an engineer would come last Friday to set up our internet he didn't appear, and the next available slot is not until 8th June. They sent us a temporary battery powered hub to tide us over but the battery doesn't hold a  lot of charge and we won't leave it charging overnight so it has to start almost from scratch every morning. 

More details to come over the coming days; and I'll try to balance the annoyances out with some of the good stuff. 

Moving Out!

Tomorrow is moving out day. Everything is almost all packed and some of it has already been taken away. The house feels odd, with no books, no pictures and no ornaments; it is a house, and not a home.

That said we were looking around today and remembering all the things we have changed in it. Major stuff like the new kitchen and bathroom and building on the sunroom. Reroofing the byre. Painting the outside walls and getting a nice front door. And the almost invisible stuff like new windows, and upgraded insulation and new lighting. Smaller things like removing and replacing internal doors and handles, new carpets and curtains and windowsills and shelving and redecoration. Twenty years of our life have been spent in this house, and we've put care and effort into turning it from a rather ghastly unloved house into a lovely much loved home. 

Of course I'm excited about the new house and the new life we will lead down in the Central Belt.  But today was a day for remembering because even though I don't regret that we're going, I should remember the good things that Orkney and the house have given us over the last two decades. 

Today was for looking back. Tomorrow will be too busy for anything. The day after is for looking forward. 

Some 'last time' things

 So there were a few things we wanted to do 'for the last time' before we moved.

One was a final trip to Geri's Ice Cream parlour where, in honour of the occasion I had an ice cream  dessert and not just a cone,

Mine's the top one, a raspberry ripple and the OH had a Salted Caramel. In the event I might have enjoyed a cone more, but there was nothing wrong with the raspberry ripple really.

Then there was a trip to Celina Rupp's. This was partly a last visit  to her Barrier View Cafe 

and partly to buy a piece of jewellery. Celina is the last major Orkney jeweller who didn't feature in my jewellery box so we felt that needed to be remedied, sort of a farewell present to myself really. After much deliberation this is what I chose

It's from her Harvest Moon collection and I love it. 

Another one was catching the primula scotica. This was going to be a More Walks (2) post but time has gotten the better of me. We saw a post on Facebook a couple of weeks ago which said the primula scotica was out. It seemed a bit early but we decided to give it a go as it would be nice to see it once more before we leave. It only grows in Orkney and Caithness, and as it's very tiny and very low growing it's hard to spot. Once you've found your first one and got your eye in you see loads and we were lucky.

they may be small but they are lovely

thumbnail for size reference!

After we'd had our fill of the flowers we had a wander along the cliff tops at Yesnaby ( which are very close to where the P S grows). I love this stretch of Orkney's coast and have many photos to prove it. here are a couple more from that recent visit

We are still packing but fast approaching the stage where we will only have the last minute things to do which can obviously only be done at the last minute. That doesn't necessarily mean I will have the time, the energy or the means to blog again until after we are in the new house. We'll see. But I'll be back when I can. 

Farewell to Some Old friends

 

Not people; but chairs. 

These belonged to my grandmother; in fact they belonged to my great aunt before that and I assume they came from a set of six but two were all my grandmother had. My parents kept them and at some stage they came to me.They were what Peter Kay calls 'spurr churrs'  but it's a long time since they have ben called into service. We did have them recovered a few years ago but basically they have just been sat in the spare room for years. There is no room for them in the new house, not nohow so, with a heavy heart I took them to the Orkney Reuse and Recycle centre this morning  where the man in charge was very enthusiastic about how nice they were. In fact he waxed  so enthusiastic that he almost made me want to bring them back home with me. 

But sadly there's no point in taking them all the way to the Central Belt where they would sit, in the way and unused again for decades more. I was very sorry to say goodbye to then but the time had come. 

More Happy Mail

So the thing about getting a monthly club instalment very late is that the gap between instalments becomes quite short.  Not very long after the ( late ) March Van Gogh from Yarn Unique, here comes April's William Morris. 

I ordered DK for this as I thought I knew what the yarn would look like and I wanted to use it for  a specific mitten pattern I have. Sadly my impression of what the yarn would be like - I expected it to be based on the colours of Strawberry Thief -  and what it actually did look like were very different and it won't be suitable for the pattern I had in mind at all, as the textures won't show up in anything so dark. 

I'm not devastated! I'll just have to look for a plainer mitten pattern. 

Here's the yarn - and the extras, a bookmark as always and another coaster

Those colours in the yarn really do not say William Morris to me, but I'd be the first to admit I don't know a lot about his work.

This isn't a club where you have to buy it every month and I'm skipping the next two as they're Monet, and I have a lot of Monet themed yarn from someone else, and Turner, because I'm not a fan. If I remember I will be back in July for Kandinski. 

We are still packing but at least some of the filled boxes were taken away by the removal firm yesterday which was a relief. 

A Book Post

 Obviously with an imminent move we are rather busy, with packing, admin ( don't talk to me about BT for at least a month) farewell visits to/from people and oh! did I mention packing. So the blog is a tad neglected. Also I see it is a long time since I updated my reading posts, so here is one about some of the books I have been reading or listening to. Can't do them all, I'm up to 38 and I suspect I've forgotten to write  a few down tbh, so I would be here all day and readers might give up. 

There is a new Mick Herron Slough House book out in autumn and with that in mind I have been re- listening to some of the earlier ones to keep me company while filling in boxes. So far I have done Slow Horses, Real Tigers, and Spook Street, plus the three linked novellas The List, The Drop and The Catch. I've just started on the most recent which was Bad Actors and which is a personal favourite. There are gaps because some of them I don't want to listen to again, or at least not just now. Herron seems to go from strength to strength and I'm eager to get my hot little hands on the new one, Clown Town, once it's out.

Back in the autumn when I went to Bloody Scotland in Stirling Elly Griffiths did a talk and she was publicising her new series of books which features time travelling detectives solving historical cold cases. I wasn't particularly sold on the idea so didn't buy the book when it was published, but recently it was available on Kindle for 99p, so I splashed out and I enjoyed it much more than I anticipated. It's called The Frozen People if anyone wants to check it out. 

Talking of Elly Griffiths a while ago she recorded some Podcasts called The Plot Thickens. I forget how I stumbled across this - possibly Audible brought it to my attention and I enjoyed listening to them. there weren't very many but she had some interesting guests who talked all things crime fiction with her. One of them was her friend and fellow writer Lesley Thomson and as a result I checked out the first of Thomson's series about a mismatched couple called Stella and Jack. It was called The Detective's Daughter. I borrowed this from the library and I have to admit to finding it hard going. Jack is distinctly off-beam, and Stella has a lot of her own hangups and neither of these are as fully articulated as they might be; also there were jumps in the sequence of events, and timelines which were difficult to understand. It was well plotted and with some interesting characters and some surprises along the way and I may well persevere with the series and put the oddities in Book 1 down to sloppy editing if subsequent ones are better. 

Eight down, twelve to go - but it will be more than that by the time I manage another book post I suspect! 

More Happy Mail

 

This arrived yesterday and is the Yarn Unique gallery club yarn for March. No prizes for guessing the March artist. The coasters are wooden and glorious colours, I love them.

March do I hear you say? is it not May now? and indeed it is and I should have had this weeks ago. It was sent but it never arrived, so I had to have a replacement sent out and it came yesterday. On the upside this means it goes into the May count, rather than the April one, which is generally a Good Thing. Another Good Thing is that it gave me some inspiration for decorating our new family room - not that I'm planning to get the paintbrushes out the moment we get through the door, whatever the OH thinks to the contrary! but I've been worrying that I wasn't getting many decorating ideas , and now I have at least one. 

And as I am determined to finish something this month I wound the skein into a ball last evening and cast on this

Socks for the OH. Obviously since he is the bright sock fan of the house. 

ION, we have started packing. Only in a small way. The removal man brought us some boxes yesterday and we made up three and filled them. I suspect that's how days will largely be going for the next couple of weeks. 

Happy Mail, Project Progress and Wool Stats for April

 First the happy mail. 

Top photo is the Little Grey Cells quarter 1 club from Henny Penny Makes. The bottom photo is 2 skeins of fingering weight with bronze stellina in it. These were in her clearance sale and I only ordered one, but for some reason her website  charged me double the postage it should have done so the second skein was sent as compensation for that. Which was very generous. 

I am fairly horrified to have to admit that I completed no projects at all in April. I should have finished at least a pair of socks but I was half way down the foot of sock two when I realised that sock one felt tight in the leg and when I tried to try it on, it wouldn't go. This was totally my fault as I had just cast on my usual number of stitches for a sock for me, without making allowances for the fact that the spiral pattern on the leg  was going to draw the whole thing in. So they had to be pulled out. I cast the yarn on again to make a plainer pair  but didn't get it finished - well, my enthusiasm had, understandable I feel,  been somewhat doused by having to pull the other ones out. 

I also spent a lot of time on a large project which I had hoped to finish in April while realising that it was in fact a Big Ask. I made lots of progress with it, and it will be finished this month, but we're not quite there yet. It is  going to be fabulous though and it will certainly be easier to move in one large piece rather than lots of little component pieces scattered around in five different project bags. 

Given the above the stats could have looked fairly horrifying but in the event were better than I anticipated. In was 869g, and out was 1035g,  which makes a net decrease of 166 and a running total (decrease) for the year to date of 3499g. Slightly better than at the same point last year in fact. 

Progress on the two wips from last month's round up looks like this

the lacy Japanese inspired scarf

I haver  to say this is growing more quickly than anticipated which is a good thing, but I can only work on it when I'm feeling calm, which currently is not very often with the move now quite close. I do try to work on it every day, but it doesn't always happen. It will look much nicer after it's blocked; scrunched up like that on one needle you can;t really see the patterns properly. 

The Earth Dancer cross stitch now looks like this

Much more hair, finished feathers in head dress, a face and neck, and the start of her medicine bags.

Because observable progress is so slow on this, and it's a big stitch, I also picked up a small project which was over half done to work on, as it will be encouraging to get it finished while the other one grows. Foolishly I didn't take  a picture of what it looked like before I started work on it again but this is what it looks like now

There were a few finishing stitches needed on the pot of lavender and the fan ( that rather amorphous blob underneath the perfume bottle ),  and then all the work on the farmhouse, the trees in the background and the start I've made on the lavender field in front is what I've done since I picked it up to finish. 

Really not sure how much crafting time I'm going to get this month but I hope all three of those things will progress, even if only slowly.  Time will tell. 

More Walks (1)

 Well, only two really. 

Here are some photos I took at Happy Valley after we had got over the shock of encountering the stoat killers. 

 

Obviously the draw at this time of the year is the bluebells, but there were plenty of daffodils still out. 

Blue, pink AND white! 

would be arty-crafty photo of moss on tree trunk!

new carved stone. there were a few of these dotted about

a perfect 'Enid Blyton' den! 

the elusive (on Orkney) running water that isn't just field drainage! 

the place seems a lot lighter than usual. maybe it was the weather, maybe it was the late arrival of leaves on the trees.

It's a lovely place for a gentle walk and one I shall miss. 

After we left Happy Valley we continued on to the Ring of Brodgar, not that we particularly wanted to see that again but in case any of the World Heritage Site Ranges were there. A friend of ours, who retired as a Ranger at the end of last summer died very suddenly a couple of weeks ago and we were hoping to find someone who could tell us something about a funeral/memorial service. By the time we got to the Ring the Rangers had packed up and gone for the day and we're still no wiser about any memorial service. We sort of hope there will be one, and before we leave Orkney so that we can attend. Since we had flogged all the way from the Ring car park, which is not as near to the actual site as you might think,  we did have a wander around the Ring itself, not nearly as interesting as it used to be when you could walk wherever you liked and actually touch the stones, not a thing you're allowed to get close enough to do these days. And although I have many many photographs of the Ring of Brodgar I couldn't resist taking a few more. At least the place wasn't full of cruise ship hordes.

The Stoat Killers of Orkney

 

This is their one of their many vans, three of which were parked at Happy Valley when we went there for a walk on Tuesday.

You can't see what it says on the side but obviously they don't brand their vans as being Orkney Stoat Killers. They call themselves the Orkney Native Wildlife Project. This obviously sounds much nicer. but they are basically stoat killers. They were set up solely  to exterminate stoats on Orkney, a non native species that first appeared on Orkney in 2010. The 2010 is according to them. I don't think there is any independent verification of that. To this end they have been given humungous amounts of money from  amongst others, the local council and the RSPB. 

They say stoats are a danger to the many ground nesting birds we have in Orkney - which may well be so, but if that is the case you would think that they would produce some statistics to prove it. Of course, it would be a bit tricky because bird populations in Orkney of all types have been falling since before 2010; when we moved here in 2005 there weren't the numbers of birds there had been when we first holidayed here. So producing stats that adjusted  for the general decline in all species, perhaps with some evidence about why that was happening and showing that ground nesting birds had been more affected since 2010 due presumably tot he stoats, assuming that is when they first arrived, would back up their agenda and go some way to justifying their funding. Such stats may have been produced ( although I doubt it) but if they do, they haven't been made publicly available. 

For their 'work' they use poisoned traps, tunnel like things with bait at one end and a small entrance at the other, which are too narrow to turn around in. Guess what? It's not only stoats that get trapped in them. Small rabbits, voles, feral kittens have all been reported as turning up in stoat traps. Are there any statistics produced about how many other species as opposed to stoats are caught in these traps. Are there chuff. 

When the project was first set up the justification for exterminating stoats was simply that they were a non-native species. When various people pointed out that so was the hare but nobody seemed to be bothered about eradicating that, then the story about the ground nesting birds emerged and was given prominence. 

The large group of ONWP people at Happy Valley the other day seemed to be training dogs to catch stoats, laughing and joking as they tried to get the dog to catch a ( toy? stuffed? ) stoat on a stick that they waved around.  Ha ha. 

I'm not saying that stoats aren't a danger to ground nesting birds. I don't know - because no-one has made an effort to prove it. I'm not saying that the traps aren't the best or the only way to do it, although I sincerely doubt it. I do know they are trapping things other than their target stoats and I think they should come out and admit that. And produce some numbers - although to be honest  I wouldn't trust any figure that came out of their office because they have an agenda and they won't be shaken from it.  But these people are getting large sums of public money and they should be held accountable. I think they should also admit that, given their own comments about the fertility rates of stoats, they are on a hiding to nothing. They will not be able to eradicate stoats because I reckon the task is well nigh impossible, but while they continue to maintain that it is and that they are working hard to achieve it they have very secure jobs. 

I took some lovely pictures in Happy Valley although the trip was overshadowed somewhat by seeing the Stoat Killers and I'll post some of them another day. 

Two Nice Things

 A good friend, having heard about Markko,  got her niece to drop these in to show she was thinking of us. 

Wasn't that lovely?They were still tightly shut when delivered but slowly opened up yesterday and this is how they looked today. Such a beautiful colour. 

And then today I made this (aided and abetted by the OH who is very good at separating eggs). 

Had I remembered how big this was I'd have done half quantities, but it's a very long time since I made it, so that's my excuse. Well not excuse really, just the reason that it's huge. I did this to make a start on pre-move freezer emptying; this is some of last year's raspberry crop. I must cast  an eye over how many we have left and decide how many more fools, pavlovas, trifles and crumbles with raspberries I will need to produce to use them all up. 

And yes, I am finally daring to believe that the move is really going to happen. Tomorrow the valuer for our buyer's lender is coming to give the house the once over , but for various reasons that shouldn't be any sort of a problem. Currently we are looking at a completion date of 23rd May  and moving in to the new house on 24th. I hope writing that down hasn't jinxed anything. 

He didn't often sit in a box ...

 but just occasionally he would surprise us

We were saddened and shocked yesterday to lose Markko, the last of our cats, bar the visiting Alessandro. The OH took him to the vet for a check up, as he had been losing a bit of weight and was fairly lethargic. We thought it was that thyroid disorder that is common in elderly male cats and involves you in a daily struggle to get a pill down their throats, somehow or anyhow. But it wasn't. The vet diagnosed  a large tumour, and said it was best to put him to sleep. Had I known this would be the outcome I would have gone with them but as I say it was a total surprise so I had stayed at home. 

Years ago Markko used to hang around the house, occasionally slipping in to grab food from the plates of the cats we already had. We never knew where he came from but assumed he had been either lost or dumped as he knew about litter trays. He had been picked up at some stage by the local feral cat people and taken to the vets to be neutered and then let go again; we could tell from the nick on his left ear. . When I went to my first conference, in Gdansk in 2014, I remember saying ' I don't want to come back and find that that black cat has taken up residence in the house'. But, as inevitably as rainbows follow rain, when I got back from Gdansk that was exactly what had happened. 

Because of this I called him Interloper at first, and then Greebo after the cat in the Discworld but we eventually settled on Markko. It's odd that all the cats we have named for ourselves have ended up with names ending in O. 

He wasn't a particularly snuggly cat, which was another reason why we thought he might have been dumped. It took years before he would sit on a human knee and I could count the number of times he did that to me on the fingers of one hand. The OH, and Son No 2when here, were much luckier int hat respect. But he must have liked it here because he never wandered off; whether it was the company of other cats, the warmth, the plentiful summer  supply  of rabbits, the food on demand or the large numbers of comfortable spots to curl up and sleep I don't know. But he stayed. 

And now he's gone, and he was the last of them. We won't get any more but that doesn't mean that all the ones we have had over the years aren't remembered and kept close in our hearts. 

Spring is Sprung, the Grass is Riz

 and there is no need to wonder where the birdies is, because they are all over the  shop making the most appalling racket. 

Sorry for the lack of enthusiasm re birdsong there, but the sale of our house continues to be a very stressful process and it's having an effect. 

Today wasn't very spring like to be honest but we have had some lovely days recently; warm, sunny and blue so we've been tempted out for gentle walks. And walks mean photos, naturally. 

First up was The Gloup, which is one of my favourite walks, because it can be as long or as short as you like. You can do the path from the car park to the cliff edge and the Gloup itself, and leave it at that, or you can extend it by walking along the cliffs as far as you feel like. There's a lower path nearer the edge which has better views of the cliff and a higher one from where you can see further and which tends to be slightly drier after wet weather. 

The Gloup is part of the Mull Head Nature Reserve and the cliffs are a great spot for fulmars to nest. I'd say there are more pairs there now than  we've seen in many years and if I'm right that's a good sign. Orkney is still a good place for bird watching but not nearly as good as it was when we first moved here. 

Next up was a trip to Gurness, which is one of my favourite places in Orkney. we didn't go to the Broch this time ( we've been lots and lots of times as it is)  but we  had a wander on the beach which is huge and flat but sadly very smelly. 

We went via Finstown which is where Firth Park is situated - another favourite. Always something to photograph there whatever the season. 

Yesterday we went to Olav's Wood which wasn't as much fun as it usually is. This was partly because the wind was very cold, partly because I was feeling very down about the house and partly because it was a bit too early in the year for the trees to be coming to life. Still took pictures though. 

Today as I've said was grey and horrid and the only place we went was the supermarket. Where I didn't take any photos at all!!