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Note: Apologies for the radio silence but it has been an odd couple of weeks.  I have been keeping notes; I just haven’t got around to adding them to the blog. To help me keep track I will be back-dating the posts, so the previous few and next several posts will catch me up to date.

One of my plans before leaving Canada had been to join an Orkney chapter of the Women’s Institute. When I first retired, I joined Milton’s CFUW (Canadian Federation of University Women) and I now have a whole raft of terrific friends whom I would not have met otherwise, and I take pride in all our club does for local girls and women (scholarships, public forums for elections, advocating for the elderly, etc). So I figured I could do the same in Orkney: give back to the community, and make new friends. I should say, despite indications to the contrary, I find things like this hard to do. It’s hard to walk into a room of total strangers, to put myself forward in an unfamiliar situation. My sister and many colleagues find this difficult to believe, given my demeanour and my career, but I do get nervous doing things like this – I just don’t show it (I am a much better actress than people realize).

So I did a bit of online research to find a local chapter of the SWI (Scottish Women’s Institute), but didn’t find any (I have since realized that I didn’t look very hard, and I was using the wrong terms in my search – and with COVID much club activity had died down and was therefore much less obvious). But I was in the stationer’s shop one day in September and I blatantly eavesdropped on a conversation – they were talking SWI! As the one lady left the shop, I accosted her and asked about a local chapter. Bingo!

So off I trotted to my first SWI meeting – it was a group of 7 or 8 lovely ladies – apart from the other newbie, I was the youngest in the room. I won’t go into everything that was discussed in that meeting and the next, but I did find a couple of aspects funny/interesting.

They are a fast-dwindling group so were most intrigued by CFUW Milton’s membership size and growth, so at the 2nd meeting I came with a list of ideas that the Kirkwall SWI might want to implement. (Because, yes, Elaine, that is exactly what people want: a total stranger to waltz in and tell them how to do everything better. Well, they had asked, and I did preface my list with a deferential “these are just some things that worked for us in Canada” speech.) I focussed on social media and advocacy, because they want to attract younger women and that’s what seemed to draw the under 50’s at CFUW. They liked the FaceBook ideas, but seemed much less keen on the Advocacy which, now that I’ve googled ‘Scottish Women’s Institute’, does make more sense – the focus seems to be on maintaining Scottish crafts and heritage rather than on advocating for women and girls.

Which leads to my 2nd experience: at each month’s meeting members are asked to bring in two items for a wee ‘competition’, often something homemade or handcrafted. Last month it was ceramics (so I brought the plate with the levitating hedgehog that I had painted back in the summer), and a handmade Christmas card (which I did not take). The three photos here show: what I tried to make; what happened; and why I’m glad I gave up. The first photo is a card I found on YouTube, with clear instructions. So I went out and bought card stock, ribbon, and glue, and tried to follow the video (I used PowerPoint & my printer to make little cheater stars). The second photo is the point at which I gave up, when I discovered the glue I had bought had a hole in the bottle and the glue had become a single, hardened lump. No, I couldn’t go out and buy more – I was doing this on the day of the meeting. (I’d had a month’s notice, but why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?) And the third photo is what the SWI members had produced. They were stunningly beautiful; thank God I had not finished and produced mine.

Anyhow, back to the club. I have decided not to join the club, as I am more interested in giving back to my temporary home here and have found a few organizations that I prefer to support (more on those later).

Note: Apologies for the radio silence but it has been an odd couple of weeks.  I have been keeping notes; I just haven’t got around to adding them to the blog. To help me keep track I will be back-dating the posts, so the previous few and next several posts will catch me up to date.

This joke has been making the rounds recently on social media, and while I do think it’s a cute joke, what has really tickled me is that Scots don’t get it. Me included.

The English get it, usually right away. I’m not sure if Americans would – I think they have an even different word than the Scots and the English. I’m pretty sure Canadians use the same word as the Scots, but that could just be because I’ve only ever used the one word.

The joke is this picture with the caption: I ran into Neil Diamond in Tesco this morning.

Answer in the Comments.

Note: Apologies for the radio silence but it has been an odd couple of weeks.  I have been keeping notes; I just haven’t got around to adding them to the blog. To help me keep track I will be back-dating the posts, so the previous few and next several posts will catch me up to date.

My sister commented that many recent posts have been food-related (no surprise there). Well folks, over the next few weeks I sense that my blog will have (but not be limited to) three key themes: food, UK travel, and the cold. And today, it’s the cold.

My cottage is long and narrow: first the utility room, then the kitchen & dining area, then the open sitting room, then my bedroom, then the front sitting room. The kitchen and the open sitting room (I call it the sunroom because of the large bay window) are the only two rooms with forced-air heating. They’re also the two rooms I spend most of my time in and they’re both big rooms, so the heating works hard. I have the thermostat set to 25C in each room but they never get warmer than 18C (I bought a thermometer to track my pain) and the kitchen usually doesn’t even get that warm. I have a couple of space heaters (the locals keep asking me what I mean by that term – they call them room heaters, or electric heaters, or radiant heaters), which I use intermittently to boost the temperature in the sunroom and my bedroom.

The latter is an important point: there is no heat in my bedroom. Nope, none. It can drop to 12C throughout the day; I turn on the little space heater at around 8 p.m. to give the room three hours to heat up before bed, but I won’t sleep with one of those things on, so it’s back down to 12C by the time I get up.

There’s no heat in the bathroom; I leave the towel rail heater on in the daytime to bring the temperature up to about 17C. But I don’t put a towel on the railing – oh no, that would defeat the whole point of using the rail to warm the room.

My landlord and several other acquaintances who are familiar with the house ask me why I don’t just use the small, lower-ceilinged front room all the time and keep its door closed? It too does not have forced-air heating, but the little electric heater would heat it up in no time, and make it very snug. Well, yes, but it’s dark and pokey with small windows and a leather sofa. (I don’t know why, but I have something against leather sofas. Don’t ask, it beats me.) And while moving in there would be warmer when I’m sitting reading, the rest of the house would still be an igloo. Cooking, cleaning, moving around, showering, laundry, all done in the cold.

I may have mentioned the temperature once too often to my landlord. He had arranged for insulation to be installed, but his contractor has been hospitalized with a serious illness, which is hardly his fault. And it’s been a cold autumn this year (again, not the landlord’s fault). And heating prices are through the roof in the UK (definitely not his fault). So, I will stop complaining to him – although, every time we chat, he does ask – and if he asks, I’m gonna tell him – he really needs to stop asking, “So, is the house still cold?” Of course it’s still cold – what’s changed since our last conversation?

Anyhoo – enough of a rant for today. This was just to set the stage for future posts about new morning routines, UK heating costs, slow cookers, and a whole new in-home, hygge-centred wardrobe.

Uncle Ian died last night. His daughter was by his side, and he’d had a good life of ninety years, most recently followed by a difficult two months with esophageal cancer. He and I only really got to know one another in the last few years, but he has been a big part of my adventure here in Scotland.

It was to his house that I plunked myself, my dog, five suitcases, and a whack o’ travelling-during-COVID problems 14 months ago. And he seemed delighted to have us. He was particularly fond of Scout, and loved taking her on long walks through the woods around Braidwood. The three of us did a road trip to the south of England last March, and he was great company, telling me all about his travels on a motorcycle all over Scotland and England when he was a young man first starting out. He also raved about my driving on that trip to anyone who would listen, so of course I adored him. Interestingly, he greeted my every visit with a 6 oz tumblerful of gin, regardless of the time of day – if it was before three in the afternoon (once was 10:30 a.m.), I would demur and set the glass in the fridge. After three o’clock I would carefully tip 4 oz back into the bottle and then sit and have a wee drink (or two) with him in the kitchen. *Edit: I should be clear: the gin was for me. He’d heard I like gin so was always well stocked. It’s not like he was sitting around all day pounding back mugs full of mother’s ruin. White wine was his tipple.

I am definitely going to miss that smiling face (he so looked like Dad), the stories about the old days (particularly the ones about my Grandma – she was something else), the way he spoiled Scout, and the way he called me ‘pet’.

Note: Apologies for the radio silence but it has been an odd couple of weeks.  I have been keeping notes; I just haven’t got around to adding them to the blog. To help me keep track I will be back-dating the posts, so the previous few and next several posts will catch me up to date.

I was fifteen years old before I had ever tried Kraft Dinner, on Denman Island in British Columbia when I spent a summer there with Rosemary Burd and her family.  We did have mac & cheese a lot when I was growing up, but it was my Mum’s delicious homemade macaroni with old cheddar cheese. I think probably the first time Norma would have tasted Kraft Dinner would have been after the birth of her grandkids – KD & Cheerios: a working mother’s best friends (after wine).  I can’t deny it, I do like the fake orange stuff, although nowhere near as much as the real thing.

Somehow, the topic of KD came up earlier this week with my cousin – I think it was because a Florida woman (it’s always a ‘Florida woman’ or ‘Florida man’, isn’t it?) is suing Kraft because (wait for it) . . . their packaging states ‘ready in 3 ½ minutes’ which does not take into account the time it takes to open the pouches, add the water, and stir. Hence her lawsuit, which has made it into the British press (God, I love litigious loonies).  Anyhoo, back to my point . . . .  Viv was curious about KD and then somehow we got talking about Lipton Onion chip dip, and then on to Miracle Whip (Cdn) vs Salad Cream (UK).

My Orkney-to-Canada-to-Orkney friend Shirley told me about this website, Super Singh’s Canadian Things.  A Brit(?) Canadian(?) in England has an online shop of all things Canadian, which he will ship anywhere within the U.K. He carries: graham crackers, A&W root beer, Vachon cakes, Kellogg’s and Kraft, to name but a few. 

I have just placed an order to be sent directly to my cousin’s house in Kent.  This Christmas I will introduce her family to the wonders of Kraft Dinner, the joys of Onion Soup Mix & Sour Cream, and the absolute pinnacle of yumminess, Smart Food White Cheddar popcorn.

Let the good times roll . . . .

Note: Apologies for the radio silence but it has been an odd couple of weeks.  I have been keeping notes; I just haven’t got around to adding them to the blog. To help me keep track I will be back-dating the posts, so the previous few and next several posts will catch me up to date.

Decades ago (God, I’m getting old) I was staying at my friend’s house in Georgetown. It had been a clean up after the kids, sit around gabbing, complete some projects around the house, kind of a weekend. My friend realized she needed something from the store. But she looked like crap (we both did, I’m not being nasty here). It’s a small town (smaller back then) and she is a school teacher, so she was bound to run into someone she knew. I said, let me go, who am I going to run into here in Georgetown? So I went. Did I mention I looked like crap? No make up, baggy jeans and T-shirt, messy hair, heading into Loblaws. Wouldn’t you know it; I ran into a co-worker who lived there. And of course, it was a young, good-looking, well turned-out, male co-worker to boot. Granted, he was there with his husband, so it’s not like I had romantic designs on him, but still, you always want to look nice in front of a good-looking man. Or at least I do.

So yesterday my cousin & I visited the drop-in centre for seniors dealing with dementia here in Carluke. My aunt and uncle had been going since her diagnosis several years ago and more recently Viv had been accompanying Uncle Ian there. What an impressive set-up! It’s run by the local minister, with great volunteers, delicious food, and different entertainment each week. This week it was a sing-along and while I didn’t know the words to Three Wee Craws or The Jeely Piece song, we also had some Simon & Garfunkel and Neil Diamond (more on Neil later). A lovely visit.

This morning I had to run some errands. Did I mention that we’ve been making quite a dent in the local wine supply? Last night was the pinnacle: three bottle between us. Hmmm. I was halfway to the local Tesco when I realized: I hadn’t put on any make-up before leaving the house this morning. Not only that, I hadn’t even washed my face. Worse, I hadn’t removed yesterday’s make-up. How delightful. But, I rationalized, it wasn’t like I knew anyone in Carluke, right? (You can see where this is going). Walked into the Tesco and first person I ran into was one of yesterday’s volunteers. Well, splendid. Why does this always happen to me? A population of 14,000 and I run into the only person I know.

Note: Apologies for the radio silence but it has been an odd couple of weeks.  I have been keeping notes; I just haven’t got around to adding them to the blog. To help me keep track I will be back-dating the posts, so the previous few and next several posts will catch me up to date.

As always, this road trip introduced me to, or reminded of, differences between driving in Canada and the UK.

Roundabouts: My Dad was not a particularly demonstrative man (did I mention he was Scottish?).  Years ago, the day before I was leaving with my sister for a road trip around Scotland, I was surprised when he phoned me (he never phoned in those days; that was Mum’s job).  He said, “I’m just calling to say one thing.” Aw, I thought, he’s calling to say he loves me.  Awww.  He went on, “just remember, always yield to the driver on the right.”  Then he said good-bye and hung up.  Okay, so not the most touching phone call I’ve received, but you know what?  The BEST advice I have ever had.  Pulling up to a roundabout as a newbie driver in Scotland?  Just remember to yield to the cars coming from the right, and that you have right of way over all those on your left. Thanks Dad!

The UK does roundabouts much better than Canada (obviously, as they have been using them for a lot longer).  Canadians almost never indicate at roundabouts, which is so annoying.  Here, most people do.  But there are complexities: think of a roundabout like a clockface, and you are approaching from 6 o’clock – and driving clockwise, of course. You indicate Left if either: you are taking the first exit (which could be as far around as 12 o’clock), or any exit between 6 and 12 on the left.  You indicate Right if your exit is after 12 o’clock, but must then remember, once you are on the roundabout, to indicate Left just before coming to your exit.  Now, if your exit is anywhere between 11 & 2, people often Don’t indicate at all, at least not until they are in the roundabout & about to hit their exit, in which case they should then indicate Left. As any of my visitors over the past year could tell you: once I am off-island, I will have at least one stressful, shoulda indicated there, shoulda turned here, ‘sorry to everyone else’ hiccup at a roundabout.  But they are still a much more efficient way to move traffic.

Reverse Lights:  They only use one.  They have two reverse lights fitted on their cars, but only have a live bulb in one.  How peculiar.  I helpfully pointed out the burned-out bulbs on my neighbour’s and cousin’s cars and they both said thank you, but then did nothing about it.  This is also true for my car – when I took it in for its MOT (annual check-up), I told the mechanic I needed a new bulb, and he said, “No luv, you’re fine.  It’s still got one working.”  Again, how peculiar.

Police: I was driving through Carluke the other day and I heard a siren, then saw a police car heading towards me in the oncoming lane.  So I pulled over to the left and waited as they wended their way past me and the parked cars.  As they passed me, the officer driving the car gave me a nod and a thank-you wave.  He waved!  Seriously.  How polite is that?  I guess it’s just ingrained into every British driver that, given the narrow roads and the roadside parking, you just automatically acknowledge the cars letting you by.  It made my morning.

My Confidence: Obviously, as per my last post, I am still not the most confident of drivers over here.  But I’m feeling so much better than before.  My cousin’s daughter (also my cousin by definition, I suppose), was flying into Edinburgh to come to stay in Carluke to support her Mum.  I offered to drive to the airport (about 50 minutes away cross-country) to pick her up.  Viv asked if I was sure.  I said, “Oh yes, I’d be happy to.”  Now, a year ago I would have said exactly the same thing because my mother raised us to be polite and helpful, but, I would have been lying about the ‘happy to’ part.  But this time I meant it.  It was a lovely day, the hills and countryside are beautiful, and I was more than happy to make the drive.  Progress.

Note: Apologies for the radio silence but it has been an odd couple of weeks.  I have been keeping notes; I just haven’t got around to adding them to the blog. To help me keep track I will be back-dating the posts, so the next several posts will catch me up to date.

The reason for the lack of posts: a couple of weeks ago my cousin texted me to say that my uncle Ian was really not doing well and she was up from England staying at his place while he was in hospital.  I asked if she wanted company, and she said yes, her daughter was just heading back home to Kent and company would be great.  Well, unlike when my parents were aging and ailing and I could easily boot home to my sister’s in London (Ontario), living on an island precludes the whole “I’ll throw a couple of things in a bag and see you in two hours” process.  I shifted into overdrive and booked the ferry trips  (got a spot on the 9am for the next day), filled the tank with gas (no petrol stations between Thurso and Brora), made lunch for the road with the last of the perishable food in the fridge, and did three sets of packing: one bag for the dog, one bag for a 5-day driving-plus-visit trip, and one bag in case there was to be a funeral and I couldn’t get home for proper clothes ☹ (that one stayed in the back of my car whilst in Carluke, unmentioned by me to my cousin).  Cancelled a couple of social commitments (yes, I now have a social life) and first thing the next morning we headed off.

It was an absolutely beautiful day.  The sea was calm and the view spectacular (see below).  What a great day for a drive, I thought.  Oops, hang on there – the things you don’t think about.  This was a southbound drive, in the north of Scotland, less than a month before the winter solstice.  The sun hangs very low in the sky this time of year, which meant it was in my eyes from 9am until 4pm.  Splendid.  So glad I left my sunglasses at home; I’d hate for them to fade in the sunlight.  Relief came just as I was about an hour from Carluke, or so I thought.  The sun set, but then the skies opened up, and now I was driving in a rainstorm, in the dark, in Scotland.  Argh!!!!

I’ve said before I have a pretty good sense of direction and I know the route well, including that last leg from Stirling to Glasgow to Carluke: M9 south, M80 west, M74 south, then a bunch of country roads, to Ian’s house.  But I’m not an idiot, so ‘sense of direction’ notwithstanding, I had both my TomTom and Waze giving me directions for the last hour.  All of a sudden (or so it felt to me), both Sat Navs told me to leave the M80 westbound and get on the M8 eastbound.  Really?  Well, that’s what they said.  Next thing I know, in the dark, in the rain, I can see signs telling me I am going east to Edinburgh.  WTF? Even my spidey-sense is saying this feels wrong.  But what am I to do?  I am doing 100kmh on a multi-lane highway (my fellow travellers were all doing at least 113kmh, the actual speed limit), so I just keep going.  And going.  The Sat Nav is still insisting on sending me back to Edinburgh.  Finally, just as panic was setting in, it tells me to take an exit into a town I’ve never heard of.  Then it sends me miles through the countryside, before finally landing in a town I actually knew, and then to Carluke to Ian’s.  Bless my cousin Viv, she had wine chilling in the fridge, so after a calming cup of tea, we moved on to the more restorative Pinot Grigio. (Let us not belabour the fact that on that first night we drank one bottle of wine, the next night two, and the night after that we polished off three bottles between us.  Best left forgotten.) 

Back to the car trip – I survived, but I do not want to experience that level of stress again any time soon. 

I mentioned meeting a lady who spent most of her adult life in the GTA before moving back to Orkney a few years ago. We had a great chat comparing notes on everything from the 401, to banking, to customer service, to foods we miss from home (Canada).

Shirley made an interesting observation regarding that last point: salad dressing in British supermarkets. There is none. Well, not none, but in comparison to the selections back home, the salad dressing section of the local Tesco is somewhat lacking (seriously, one three foot wide shelf, with maybe four or five different choices at best). Shirley makes her son bring a few bottles of Kraft dressing that she can’t get here every time he visits. She also misses Renée’s jars of Caesar dressing, but as those are fresh, her son can’t bring them in his suitcase. We both agree that yes, homemade dressing is both easy and good, but also . . . sometimes you just want some gloopy Kraft Thousand Island or some Newman’s Own Greek with Feta. (In fact, growing up, we used to make fun of my Mum for having at least five different bottles of dressing in the refrigerator door at all times.)

Talking about this with Shirley made me think about something the head of the Community Fridge said recently: she commented on the fact that the Fridge is given lots of ‘nearing-best-before-date’ lettuce from the Co-op that is left sitting on the shelves, and it’s the last thing people pick up at the Fridge – and she said that’s true all across the UK when it comes to food waste. Shirley and I agreed, if they stocked more and varied dressings, maybe Brits would eat more salad.

So, it seems that as well as cardboard coffee cups (see previous post), there are other things you can burn in a microwave. I had leeks pan-grilling on the stove, so it took me a minute or two to realize the burnt smell was coming from inside the microwave. I had thought, “Potatoes bake well in a microwave; they’re root vegetables. Surely that’s transferable to other root vegetables.”

And I’m sure it is. But, a useful piece of information for the future: if you do not take off the long, thin, wispy root end at the bottom of a beet, it will burn. If you put three untrimmed beets in the microwave for longer than four minutes, all three of the wispy roots will burn. As in there will be flames. Little ones, granted, but flames nonetheless.

So, instead of a roasted beet salad with my homemade orange and garlic mayonnaise, and grilled leeks with a hot-smoked salmon garnish for lunch today, I will be having a bowl of ramen.

And I will finish cooking the beets for tonight’s dinner once I am done sulking.