I Bought a Bowl

For some time we had been promising ourselves a visit to the gallery and workshop of Michael Sinclair, woodturner, website here , and about a month ago we finally went. 

Now I know when you go to craft shows there are always several woodturners exhibiting and I have in the past been totally indifferent to their wares, because let's face it a wooden bowl is a wooden bowl and I once had a lovely  wooden fruit bowl that took too much looking after when I had small children and which as a result got spoiled. This taught me the, perhaps incorrect, lesson that wooden bowls were more bother than they were worth.

I don't remember quite how or when I started to become conscious of Michael's work, but I do know that I realised very early on that this was not just anther  retired bloke with a woodturning lathe in his shed keeping out from under his wife's feet. This man was an artist in wood. We had seen his work in shops around Orkney and then I started following his Facebook page and he was part of an exhibition we went to earlier in the summer where he was displaying some truly beautiful pieces. So I knew that if we went to the gallery chances were that we would buy something. 

And lo! it came to pass.

Actually to be strictly accurate I bought something because we couldn't agree on what to get, so I got my bowl and the OH is going to go back sometime and choose something for himself. And that way  we will both be happy.

In addition, in chatting to Mrs Sinclair, the OH let slip that is main interest is astro-photography which she seized upon as she is, although we had no idea of this at the time, on the committee of the Orkney Camera Club and the upshot is that he is going to go and give them a talk about it in December. 

And naturally, there is a picture of the bowl. 

A Walk to the Knowes of Trotty

With my vision restored - or, let's be honest, when it comes to seeing distances,  not so much restored as established,  it seemed a good idea to start going out again, and not just into supermarkets  where I could cry out joyfully at being able to read the signs above the aisles, but really out. So we dug out our old Orkney walks book and started plotting where to go. 

This got us nowhere, as we both had different ideas about what we should do and how far we should try to walk, and when we looked through the book we had actually done rather more of the walks on Orkney mainland than we had previously thought. And then we checked when the book was published, and discovered it was 2004, and we knew at least one of the walks is now impossible since a local landowner has cut off access to some of his land ( and yes that is illegal in Scotland where you have the 'right to roam', but there's only so much arguing folk can do with gates secured with barbed wire), and we wondered how much else had changed .... so the upshot was we took ourselves off to the Tourist Information Office and splashed out the princely sum of £6.99 on a new book of Orkney walks. Now obviously a lot of these books repeat one another, but there were some in the new book that we hadn't seen before and the Knowes of Trotty was one of them, and it didn't look too long or too difficult so we decided on that. 

The Knowes are a set of bronze age burial mounds, positioned in two rows over in West Mainland. Apparently it's the largest bronze age burial site in Scotland, and the bronze age bit makes them quite interesting to me as generally bronze age archaeology doesn't get a look in in Orkney as the neolithic stuff grabs all the headlines, and most of the funding. These were partly excavated in the 19th century and four very thin gold discs were discovered in a burial cist, along with a large number of amber beads and some bones. The discs and beads are ,naturally enough(!) now in the National Museum of Scotland, probably mouldering away in a drawer somewhere. Some more excavation was done in 2005 but without turning up anything of significance.

It's quite rough walking once you're off the farm track and I have to say I hate that. I can walk for a long time on a metalled road, but rough tracks I don't like. This is partly because they all tend to be angled so that it's impossible to put your feet flat down on the ground. It's also because the ground is uneven but covered in vegetation and therefore a pit for the unwary. The OH scoffs at this, but then he hasn't had two broken ankles. I am therefore a real moaning minny when we're out on walks and really its a tribute to his patience and good nature that when I suggest going for a proper walk, that he agrees so readily. 

There's not  a huge amount to see when you get there, except for a few mounds (well the clue is in the name really) but the views over to Hoy and sections of West Mainland are lovely. We saw lots of wild flowers. some of which we could even identify, saw and heard gaggles of geese, and went for a couple of hours without seeing either a house or another human being. That's quite special. 

The walking seemed even harder than usual and when we got home I discovered why. My boots were literally rotting away. In fact there was daylight visible between the sole and the upper on one of them, and the other wasn't in a much better state. So they went into the bin and I screwed up my face at the thought of having to pay out for a new pair until I remembered quite how long it was since I had bought these and decided they didn't really owe me a penny. Not sure when I'll have a  chance to replace them; I suppose walks will need to be restricted to roads until I can do that though. 

Meanwhile there are pictures. If anyone knows the name of wither the blue or the white flowers below, please feel free to let me know in the comments. It's why I took the pictures really, so that I could ask people what they were. 

The starting point

Funghi

Flora

More flora

And more funghi

Some of the heather was in bloom. It's beautiful but gosh the roots are tough and difficult to walk over

Bog cotton

The fearless leader of the expedition

Orkney's best go at a babbling brook

Not the best photo of geese in flight that you'll ever see but I was just amazed to capture them at all given that I couldn't really see the camera screen.

Towards the end - a view towards the hills of Hoy. 

Baking Subscription - July and August

So it was just late last week that I realised I hadn't ever put up a picture of the July baking club bake and yesterday the August box arrived and I made the cake straight away. So it's two for the price of one this time.

First up July. This was meant to be a raspberry Eton Mess cake with small meringues through the cream n the middle and on the top. Death by Sugar Rush in fact. However I made the sponge one day, intending to do the meringues and finishing off the next, and then someone came round for coffee unexpectedly so I just whipped up the cream and put the raspberries through it and never bothered with the meringues. I added the supplied dried raspberries to the top and garnished it with a bit of very finely grated dark chocolate. It still looked and tasted good without the meringues. 

This months was a lime and coconut loaf. I am sorry to report that it sank horribly in the middle and I was at a loss to account for this. However on checking the Facebook group, I find this was a common problem with this pack, and I can only assume that they have misjudged their baking powder quantities. It was disappointing, but to be fair their recipes have all been spot on before this. The sunken hollow was easily disguised by the mascarpone frosting and it certainly didn't have an adverse effect on the taste. It was gorgeous. I shall definitely make it again.

The Flower Festival 2018

Regular readers may remember that I was less than ecstatic about the flower festival last year, and hoped at that time for something a bit more conducive to floral interpretation than the 900th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of St Magnus had proved to be. Well,  my wish was granted and this year's theme was inspirational women. It's a wide field, a fact that was reflected in the subjects chosen for depiction. 

I did not take pictures of all the displays and I'm not going to post all the pictures I took but there was some amazing work.

This was Sylvia Wishart, an important Orkney-born  artist.

Boudicca, or Boadicea as the program had it. Not sure what she inspires - homicidal hatred of Italians in togas perhaps? Great colours though.

Grace Darling. This was probably our second favourite.

The next three show parts of our favourite, a very large exhibit dedicated to J K Rowling. Rowling is such a dedicated Unionist that mostly all she inspires in me is uncomprehending rage, but that said she is a bit of a role model for girls I think and a lot of thought and hard work had gone into an excellent display.  

 don't you just love the floral owl?

This I'm going to beef about. Every year there are small 'filler' displays between the main ones; a little something on the pillars and some other scattered arrangements. They aren't generally themed, but this year they were. The pillars all had shoes filled with flowers, as above. The larger pieces all incorporated what I might call 'wedding hats'. This struck me as both silly and wrong. Women are about more than shoes and hats. In fact, women's feet and heads have been  subject to fetishism by male hierarchies altogether too much; feet binding, veil wearing, hair covering, so it seemed  out of place to have these shoes and hats in an exhibition that was supposed to be all about inspiring women.  

But I don't want to end on a negative, so here is one of several beautiful tributes to the Suffragettes, whose struggle for the right of women to vote truly is inspiring. 

New Things 2018 Number 4 - Going to Gleneagles

So just in case anyone reading this doesn't know, Gleneagles is a very posh ( 5 star ) golfing hotel in Perthshire. Website here. It features, amongst other things, a restaurant run by Andrew Fairlie which has two Michelin stars. The OH would love to go there and eat, but he knows neither my taste nor my nerves would stand it. He will have to find someone else to go with one day, but meanwhile he booked afternoon tea in the lounge for us instead to celebrate my birthday.

It was great fun. In fact, anyone who has read the previous post will realise it was probably the only fun we had last week. 

We had a little raised alcove all to ourselves, and here's the OH sitting in it as to the manor born

For some reason afternoon tea starts with two savoury amuse bouches The day we were there, and for all I know every day, they were a tomato consommé and haggis balls with a whisky mayo. I couldn't quite finish my tomato consommé, although it was very nice, and perfectly clear as consommé should be (you see, all those years of watching Masterchef have taught me something!) , but the haggis thing went down a treat. 

Then they bring you a tea stand with sandwiches and cakes. You eat the sandwiches and then they bring round scones and Dundee cake. I got to eat truffle! I was going to say that I got to taste truffle, because there was a little gruyere tartlet on there with a truffle crumb topping, but all I tasted was the cheese - not that it wasn't lovely. The sandwiches quite honestly were a bit much for me,. They were all full of fresh zingy flavours, and I could have done with a bit less fresh and zingy and a bit more cheddar and pickle. The roast beef one had horseradish, which I'm not huge fan of, and I didn't like the mayonnaise in the egg one. This is not meant as a criticism, it is simply a reflection of my palate. I know fresh zingy flavours are what chefs are after, and it is not their fault that my taste is somewhat more plebeian than their menu. 

There was a choice of scones and I went for a fruit one and a treacle one, since it is years since I actually had a treacle scone. They came with a little tray - 

- from bottom left, clover honey and lemon curd, strawberry and elderflower jam, clotted cream and blueberry and whisky jam. They were all delicious, as were the scones. There was also Dundee cake for this 'course' but I passed on that.

There were five cakes which seemed an odd number for two people. The one on the left was a raspberry and rose mousse cake, next to it a strawberry shortcake. Not sure what the one like a pink snail was. There was also a chocolate praline fancy and a banoffie thing. We accounted for three between us and I am happy to report that the ones you don't eat are, as a matter of course,  put in an elegant little cardboard box that looks a bit like a handbag and given to you to take away. 

Overall it  was a very nice experience and the food was delicious and beautifully presented. My two niggles would be the music - does there really need to be background music, and if there does, does it have to be jazz?? and the speed of the service. I am sure the hotel would describe the service as relaxed, and that is fine as far as it goes. When you've stuffed yourself with zingy sandwiches you do need a few minutes to regroup before you can start scoffing scones, but when you have totally finished, there is no need to be kept waiting 20 minutes for the bill. That's not relaxed, that's just annoying. 

Drawing a Veil.....

...over last week.

We were in Glasgow for a week and I was soooooo looking forward to it. We were going to have a treat for my birthday, do some nice shopping, visit the Charles Rennie Mackintosh exhibition and then have three lovely days with our daughter in law and grandsons who were visiting the UK. 

Son no 2's flatmate had just moved out and we knew there was a bit of tidying up to do after her, to get the place ready for the family visit, but that was fine. We thought. 

Well we got the birthday treat, since that was pre-booked and expensive and non negotiable. It was afternoon tea at Gleneagles and I did enjoy it very much. It was however the only enjoyable aspect of the week.

We exhausted ourselves cleaning the flat, including packing up a LOT of stuff which the flatmate had left behind in her room,  but also doing a deep clean on most of the rest  of the flat too, which was in a state that did not amuse me in the least. I have never been so exhausted as at the end of the three days we spent cleaning. I know I used, in addition to much else, a whole large (120) pack of kitchen/bathroom wipes. 

All I am going to say about the family visit is that it was more of a penance than a pleasure. Tales of other people's badly behaved children or grandchildren mean little to those not immediately involved, but I was shocked by the behaviour of my elder grandson and by the fact that  he was allowed to get away with it. It saddens me to say that by the end I was counting the minutes until they left and felt an incredible sense of relief once they were safely in the taxi that was to deposit them at the station. 

We didn't get to the shops, or to the exhibition, or to the theatre to buy the first lot of tickets for Scottish Opera's 2018/19 season, I am totally frazzled and in need of at last two weeks total peace and quiet before I am recovered from what was a tiring and painful experience. 

Tomorrow however - pics from the Gleneagles Afternoon Tea! 

R I P Domingo

It's now three weeks since our oldest cat Domingo died and I can finally face recording the fact here. 

When we moved to Orkney in 2005 we brought three cats with us and Domingo was the last survivor. We never knew how old he was, because like all our cats he  just rocked up and moved in, but we reckon about 17. He was young, but fully grown when he came to live with us and we had two/three years in Leeds after that plus thirteen years here, so he had, as they say, a good innings.

Of all our cats he was the most 'human' in some ways. He would lie on your chest, pat your cheek with his paw and look urgently into your eyes as though he was trying to tell you something; I used to say he was a human enchanted into cat form and he was begging us to find the spell that would turn him back.

I remember the trip up when we moved her; we bought one of those big dog cage affairs and put it in the back of our then estate car; plenty of room for all the cats who, despite our fears, seemed to really enjoy the journey. Domingo in particular, spent a lot of time on his hind legs looking out of the window! 

And he loved Orkney! He would have loved anywhere rural I think as he had so much space to roam in. In the early days he used to scare us to death by staying away for three or four days at a time, but he always came home. I'm convinced he used to wander so far that he was too tired to get back and would kip away form the house, and slowly make his way back to us. 

Despite his name, given to him because he was the most placid cat we had ever met, he proved to be  a demon bunny killer. The only time we were ever worried about his temper was the day he caught and ate four rabbits in a row, and then dragged himself into the house and snapped at anyone who came near him, while intermittently giving out the most heart rending wails...

Over the last couple of years he had had several on-going health issues and was on several sets of medication which he sometimes took easily and sometimes not. We were fortunate in that, although he was getting visibly frailer practically by the week, our vets were very supportive of our decision not to put him to sleep while he was pain free and obviously still getting some enjoyment from life. When the day came recently that he had passed that point one of the vets came out to the house to put him to sleep, and it was all very gentle and he was in familiar surroundings with people who loved him around him - not that I think by that stage he had any idea that we were there. The best end, if end there had to be.

The little girl in me who still believes in magic, waited for the spell to lift and the cat to turn back into the Prince who fell foul of a sorcerer, but it appears alas, that magic really doesn't exist, and our beautiful Domingo really was 'just a cat' all along. But one of the best.  We miss him.