Uncategorized

I really thought after yesterday’s efforts that I would sleep like a log all night. As well as all the IKEA assembly, we had done two major walks, and on the second one, I stopped at the Garden Centre and picked up and carried home a 20L bag of soil. So when I went to bed at 10:30, I figured that, in spite of my normal insomnia, that had to be me out for the next eight hours easily.

Nope. I woke at 12:15 and that was me wide awake. After an hour of tossing, I put on an audio book (one I had listened to before, with a soothing British voice) in hopes that would lull me back to sleep. At 3:00 I got up and made a cup of hot milk. At 4:00 I got up and made a one-egg omelette wrap. Finally at 5:03, I thought I might doze off. I checked to make sure I had nothing to do today (not as ridiculous as it sounds – my social calendar is picking up), and decided to try closing the heavy outer curtains in hopes of blocking out the morning light.

All the windows in the house have regular blinds that do a good job of providing privacy and a fair job blocking light, and that’s all I’ve used so far this winter. But each bedroom also has heavy, thick, fully lined curtain. I have to think that, come June, when the sky is light from 3:30a.m. to 11:00 p.m., people here need those curtains to get a decent night’s sleep.

Well, they work – the room was pitch dark and stayed that way, and the only reason I am up now and not still asleep is a 62lb, 4-legged alarm clock.

I was very excited to receive my guest room & dining room furniture shipment from Ikea first thing this morning. Got over that feeling fast.

Fortunately I decided to start on the dining room chairs and table first (Voxlöv & Mariedamm respectively if anyone is interested), because, dear God the guest beds were horrific. I should say “guest bed was horrific” as I gave up after the first one. As usual, this is partly my fault; I did buy the cheapest bedframe they had. But I didn’t realize difficulty in assembly and price were inversely related. Had I started with the beds, the dining room would still be in the box.

Halfway through, I considered throwing the bed out into the driveway and writing family and friends and telling them they weren’t allowed to come and stay, but that seemed a tad over-dramatic. So I persevered. There was a fair amount of good, healthy Anglo-Saxon bandied about and at one point I may have shouted one word in particular at the top of my lungs. As my neighbour was walking by. Oops.

That got me thinking (I had nothing else to do as I was Ikea-key screwing in 32 fiddly little screws) – maybe I should start swearing in Québécois. I feel fairly safe in saying that next to no one here would recognize or be offended by a tab&@#ak or a cr!$$ % m@*de!

A kind fellow dog-walker texted me a list of some good beaches for Scout. One was Aikerness at the village of Evie. So we headed out this morning, but I made a wrong turn and after driving quite a ways down a single track, I ended up here at the Broch of Gurness, an Iron Age village.

I’ve been here before with my sister and nephew – I think my sister made friends with an Historic Scotland employee that day (but that’s her story to tell, not mine) – it is a fascinating settlement in breathtaking countryside. It’s over 2,000 years old, and as well as the Iron Age dwellings they uncovered, they have found Roman amphorae, Viking artefacts, Norse jewellery, and Pictish homes. It really is like walking through history, and then when I turned and headed back up the hill, the history continued as I was surrounded by farm houses and stone fences that were at least 100 and possibly 200 years old. (As an aside, that single-lane track that winds around the fields and over the hills has a speed limit of 100 km/h. Just sayin’.)

We did head on to the Sands of Evie to check them out – an absolutely lovely beach on a sunny day. I’m getting better at identifying the local birds – we saw oyster catchers, eider ducks, greylag geese, a grouse, and an extremely camera-shy grey seal. I swear he knew what a camera was and was taunting me by hiding every time I got my phone out, and bobbing up every time it went back in my pocket.

We walked for miles. The car is filthy, the dog is exhausted, and I can feel the sand in my hair – a great day!!!!!

Oh dear, getting a television license was a bad idea. (A) For reasons I have yet to figure out, they are charging me the full 12-month cost in the 5 months between now and July (note to self: call them today!).

(B) Instead of getting things done around the house, I have spent the last 2 days bingeing Around the World in 80 Days, followed by the Central England episodes of Great British Menu. And the Olympics. So, I have gritty floors, a hamper of dirty clothes, and the dog really needs a bath. But I have seen a hot air balloon, scallops with black garlic and samphire, and a lot of women’s curling (happy for GB, sad for Canada). And there are still so many shows I haven’t even found yet! As I said before, oh dear.

My first week in Scotland I ordered a Caesar salad in a pub. It came tossed with red pepper and hard boiled eggs; I haven’t ordered one since. I have seen it on menus since then – one included green beans. So today, in Tesco’s, I saw a small bottle of Caesar salad dressing and thought, “ooh, yum.”

I also wanted some rolls, so I picked up a package of Butteries. They look like hamburger rolls, perfect for a sandwich. Once I got home I looked at them more closely: they are very flat – it didn’t look like they would be easy to split. So I looked them up on the internet and it seems that butteries are more of a breakfast indulgence, eaten with jam and very rich – every description included words like ‘highly caloric’, ‘decadent’, ‘high fat content’, and ‘full of butter’. So not really what I had wanted (first person to point out that the clue was in the name gets blocked from my blog).

Instead of a sandwich, I used them to make the best croutons I have ever had. The Caesar salad was delicious.

Post Script: on another note, we’ve had another dead seal encounter. No blood or guts, just a reeks-to-high-heaven maritime pong.

In the UK, in order to have access to TV channels, you are required by law to hold an annual TV license (sort of like our cable bills, but this is government-run and funds the BBC). When I moved here I decided not to spend the money as I am not a big TV-watcher. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those “oh, I think there’s nothing worth watching on TV” types; I just already spend way too much time on YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, BritBox, etc. And I get my news by subscribing to online newspapers. I was a little disappointed when I arrived to discover that no TV license also means no access to BBC’s iPlayer (plays BBC shows after airing, sort of like CBC Gem), but, as I said, I really do watch too much online already.

I received a letter addressed to Occupant yesterday and I nearly didn’t open it, thinking it was junk mail. But I did open it his morning – turns out it was a threatening notice from something called tvlicensing.co.uk. In large, bold, red font it warned me that “you could be at risk of breaking the law.” Sounds exactly like every one of those scam phone calls from the “CRA” – I nearly tore it up. It warned me that if I hadn’t replied by a certain date in February, my address would “be passed to the Dundee Enforcement Agency”. I went online – turns out it’s legit – the government monitors each house address to see if they have a license, and if not, immediately become suspicious and get in touch.

But, I figured all I had to do was pick the option stating I didn’t need a license, as I don’t own a television. Then I started reading the fine print and it seems that even streaming a show on my computer requires a license. By that I assumed they meant live-streaming of news channels or something, so still not my problem. But no, it turns out that even the two or three times I’ve streamed a YouTube Q&A on travel or a live YouTube logic puzzle video without a license, I’ve been breaking the law.

So, I’ve got a couple of options: pay the £159 annual fee, or tell them I don’t watch live TV/streaming, and make sure to never click on one of those videos again. They did warn that if I chose the latter, they could still send someone to my home to verify my claims. You should see what it says on Wikipedia about their various forms of monitoring and enforcement: “Enquiry Officers”, “TV Detector Vans”, and “Search Warrants” are only a few of the ways they check up on us. To paraphrase Dr Johnny Fever, “These TV cops play hardball.”

I’m getting the license.

For most of my adult life I have lived within 30km of one of North America’s largest airports. Getting anywhere has always been fairly easy (if you don’t think about GTA’s rush hour traffic).

It’s not so easy when you are trying to get somewhere from an island. I’m currently trying to work out how to get from my house to Heathrow. Do I:

1. Fly Kirkwall to LHR with at least one stop-over?
2. Ferry then drive to Inverness and fly to LHR?
3. Take the overnight ferry to Aberdeen and fly to LHR?
4. Fly (or ferry & drive) to Inverness and take the Caledonian Sleeper train into central London and the Underground to LHR?

And what about staying overnight? I can’t make Kirkwall to LHR all in one day and be assured of not missing my flight. Do I:

1. Stay overnight at a B&B near Heathrow that I stayed in 22 years ago?
2. Stay in a sensible airport hotel at LHR?
3. Stay at an airport hotel in Inverness?
4. Sleep on the train or ferry?

The factors impacting my planning are: the obvious – Money; the convenience – Time; and the surprising – Weather (can’t fly or sail off an island in a storm).

Yes, yes, yes, I know – first world problems, Lainey. Well, back to planning – there must be a way to maximize convenience, minimize cost, and mitigate weather.

Obviously there are a lot of words that are different here – some of them everyone knows (wee, lass, lift); some I grew up hearing (peely-walley, crabbit, clipe); some are easy to guess (eejit, tattie, outwith); some are purely Orcadian (peedie, blide, abune); and with some it’s the same word, just with an accent (hoose, dug, auld).

Fortunately, the Orkney accent is a very easy accent to listen to and follow. It’s very soft, and somewhat musical, and apart from the elderly men Scout & I meet on our walks, I find Orcadians easy to understand. (I really think it’s just a combination of age and being from a small community that makes those gentlemen near-incomprehensible – I imagine years of smoking have made them ‘growly’, loose dentures has added a bit of a ‘slur’, spending 80+ years on a remote tiny island has them speaking in the local dialect almost exclusively, and the winter weather has their voice muffled up behind a scarf. Truly, I just grin and nod and say “uh-huh” when they address us, and say, “yes, she’s a very good dog.” They probably think I’m just daft.)

I joined a cookery club last week and during the conversation I realized I’ve started to pick up not only Scots words, but Orcadian ones as well. One lady ended many of her sentences with “d’ya ken” – sort of like the Canadian “eh”. They talked about making a peedie pot of soup, having neeps with their stovies, and going their messages before heading hame – and I followed all of that, easily. I also learned a few new words that night: they did have to translate when one lady spoke of a seafood dish with spoots and partan (razor clams and crab).

But there are some words that just sound wrong. As in PC-wrong. I have heard U.K. newsreaders use the word ‘oriental’ on air – I told someone that we don’t use that term in North America anymore and they were quite surprised. They throw the word ‘racist’ around a lot – if someone from London makes a comment about someone from Cornwall, they are ‘being racist’. Ditto comments about the Welsh, Geordies, etc. I don’t get it – it’s as if I teased my friends in Calgary and they accused me of racism?!?

My favourite is when I had a drink in The Clansman pub. I am looking at booking a couple of nights in May at Clansman hotel. When I signed up for a local discount card, it said ‘Welcome to the Clan!’. All of this looks okay in print, but saying any of it out loud feels weird to North American ears. Clearly no one else feels that way here – I’m the only one. Silly bunt.

Back home, even on rainy, snowy, or cold days, Scout got at least a morning walk (the worse the weather, the shorter the walk, granted). Well, today is probably the fourth or fifth day since arriving in Orkney where we haven’t gone for a walk due to wind. Today’s wind is about 50km/h with gusts up to 80 km/h.

Yes, I could still walk in this, and yes, she would love it. But years ago I remember hearing a comedian talking about some idiot who tied himself to a tree during a tornado, announcing he could withstand the winds. As the comedian said, “It’s not that the wind blows, it’s what the wind blows.” I remembered that during last week’s windstorm when we were at the foot of my driveway and I saw a branch snap off a tree and land on the pathway we had been about to follow. We turned around immediately.

So, indoors it is. Someone is sulking, and someone else is about to have her third cup of tea of the morning.

Years ago, when my mother was kinda starting to lose the plot, I’m ashamed to admit I wasn’t always as patient with her as I could have been. When it came to things like forgetting where she’d put something, or struggling to remember the name of an old friend, I got it; we’ve all done that. And I understood that short term memory was often the first to go and it was longer term memories that would tend to surface, and be more accurate.

But sometimes she just said the silliest things and I would get frustrated. I remember Mum & Dad driving up to my house. It was mid-winter, deep snow, and they were staying a few days. That late January afternoon, Norma looked out the window of my house at the snowdrifts and said, “Where are the flowers? Why are there no snowdrops?”. I’m afraid I was a tad impatient with her, “It’s January, Mum. The bulbs don’t come up until April.” (said with a bit of a tone, because any idiot knows that regardless of the country, flowers don’t start blooming until the spring.) She looked confused.

Well, here’s what Scotland looks like on January 31. These are just a tiny portion of the snowdrops (and crocuses) that are already blooming here on Orkney, and down in Lanarkshire.

Sorry, Mum.