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I packed a lot (and I do mean a lot!) of obvious things (clothing, boots, toiletries, etc), but that’s not what I’m referring to. I thought I’d list some of the things that weren’t so obvious, but I felt were ‘pack-worthy’, that is to say deserved space in the luggage.

Technology: Apart from the obvious (earbuds, cables, etc…) I did throw in my GoPro, a cell phone stand, my Rocketbook, and two flash drives with TV series, from MM, without which I would have had a very rough two weeks in October before getting wifi.

Books: I know bringing books in luggage sounds insane, but I was rather proud of myself for limiting them to: three Scottish travel books, the Reid Family Cookbook, my favourite Canadian cookbook Cellar & Silver, and my English/French & English/German pocket dictionaries.  (Quite an accomplishment for me – you should have seen the pile I had started with.)

Pictures/Photos: Sibling 1 tucked some old family photos she had had mounted into my carry-on luggage (because I needed yet another reason to cry as I was leaving) and Sibling 2 painted an amazing picture of Scout.  These items were the first things I set up in my hotel rooms, and in my house.

The Dog: Scout travelled with her blanket (which I had had her brother sleep on for the weeks leading up to our departure, my shirt (which I wore whilst working around the house then didn’t launder) and 5 lbs of food.  I packed her bowls, 5 of her favourite toys, a couple of leashes and her grooming kit.  I don’t know how much comfort the blanket & shirt brought her on her voyage, but the shirt went in the garbage and the blanket into the washer the minute she landed.

Personal: I packed a few quirky items (and for a couple of them, I’m not really sure why I chose to bring them).  But they all make me smile.  A stuffed teddy rabbit called Monsieur Lapin my parents gave me when I was in hospital (I was 33 and we’re not French).  A Maple Leaf pin from a good friend, made from the copper that once was part of the roof of the Canadian Parliament Buildings. Kampot white pepper, which I bought in Cambodia – it’s the only food I brought with me.  And a cheque book?!  I have no idea why.

1. Television.  I don’t watch a lot of TV anymore; I find Netflix, Amazon, Britbox, Acorn, and YouTube (especially YouTube) are enough for me.  But I do have more time on my hands here, and I do miss television.  I could get a TV and a license, but I think this just might be a winter thing, and once the days are longer and people start visiting, it might not be so much of an issue.
2. My Friends.  Okay, I this isn’t how it sounds.  I do miss my friends and family.  A lot.  Think about it: the only people I have seen in person since October 29^th are salesclerks, librarians, hotel staff, and a half dozen elderly day trippers in Oban.  So yes, I miss everyone.  What I mean is that due to Omicron, I’m in no worse a place here than at home – I would still be interacting with friends and family virtually back there.  COVID has taught me I can live a solitary life and has forced other people to become more skilled at virtual gatherings (I had two Zoom calls this week, both with friends who only ever used their computer as a word processor prior to 2020).  So when I say I am not missing my friends, I mean I have accepted that isolating is the new norm and technology abounds, so I am as much in touch as I would be at home.
3. My House.  I love my house.  Someone once asked if I would build a different house if I won the lottery – nope.  So I thought I’d really be missing it.  But I am enjoying the opportunity to live with different ‘things’, I’m not shovelling a driveway, and I got rid of a lot of stuff before I left.  That last point means I have the opportunity to do some major re-decorating when I return, and I spend a fair amount of time researching and thinking about potential changes. (Oh, and turns out I’m not a minimalist.)
4. Ethnic Foods. Britain is, much like the GTA, truly multicultural with all the wonderful groceries that go along with that.  I just assumed that living on a remote island meant there wouldn’t be much in the way of ethnic ingredients in the local shops.  Imagine my delight to find gochujang, and miso, and harissa.  So I am still cooking my favourite East Asian and Middle Eastern recipes.
5. My Books.  I love my home ‘library’ (the movers moved 29 boxes of books into storage); any time I was in the mood, I could wander over and either pull out a book from the unread pile or re-visit an old friend.  But, I very cleverly (she said with undue modesty) kept my Milton library membership as well as opening one here in Orkney, and both have online (and different) e-book catalogues.  So even on the most dreich day, when I want to hunker down on the couch, I can just go online and check out a book or two.  Nice.

One of my sisters suggested I do some kind of a Top Ten List for year end.  Things that Surprised Me, Mistakes I Made, etc.  But I couldn’t thing of ten items in any one category.  Instead, I can think of a few items in several categories, so, for the first week of January, I thought I’d do a series of Top Five Lists, the first being things I miss from home. (Obviously, topping this list is family & friends – I miss you all very much. But let’s not get soppy here.)

I miss:

1. Certain foods (some examples):
   • Ginger Ale is the only soft drink I like.  Here it’s hard to find (ginger beer is not the same), and only comes in large bottles. And while I do like it, I don’t drink a lot each day.  So about half the bottle goes flat which feels wasteful, so I rarely buy it.
   • Rice Vinegar.  I cook a lot with rice vinegar.  They have it here, but it is in tiny bottles and costs almost twice what it does at home.
   • Miss Vickie’s Spicy Dill Pickle Chips. ‘Nuff said.
2. Snow.  By February, I am usually pretty fed up with snow shovelling.  But other than that (and the dangers of ice lurking under the snow when we’re walking), I love the way snow looks, sounds, smells.  Here, we can expect two or three dustings of snow over the winter, and it is not likely to stick for more than a couple of days. In fact, I can tell I am going to miss having four seasons (there are three here: cold & rainy, cool & rainy, cool & pleasant).
3. My shower.  I can’t believe I’m saying that, as my shower at home is not very big, and for someone my height the showerhead is not the most convenient. But I do miss the water pressure, a lot.  (And having a bathroom that opens directly into my bedroom, not into the hall by the kitchen.)
4. My garden.  At this time of year, my thoughts usually turn to planning the spring gardening: I dig out my garden books, I start researching online, I visit Terra Nursery (mostly just for the splashes of colour & the smell of soil).  Here I keep looking out the window and thinking certain plants would look good in certain places in the yard.  Then I think, “What are you doing? You are here for only two years (or maybe only one if owners decide to sell); you are not putting in a vegetable plot.  Or annual beds.”
5. My neighbourhood. This is a very nice neighbourhood, with families, dog owners, a couple of schools, and so on.  There’s lots of foot traffic along the street. But my house is designed such that the bedrooms are facing the road, and the living room faces the back garden.  Don’t get me wrong – I see why the original owners did this.  The kitchen & the living room both have huge picture windows from which I can see the hills behind town, a few farm fields, sometimes sheep, and often the most spectacular weather displays (like today’s horizontal rain); as well as flock upon flock of birds (I am learning a lot of new types of birds).  But I miss sitting in my front window and seeing people go by, kids playing in the street, dog walkers stopping to wave at Scout and me.

Edit: I just thought of a sixth one: Appliances. I just went through to the kitchen and realised I miss: my induction stove, my roomy fridge (but not the freezer – I like this style better), my quiet washing machine & dryer (this washing machine would wake the dead), my Kitchen Aid food processor, my Le Creuset pots, my Kobenstyle pot, and my dishwasher that actually fits the dishes (the dinner plates in Scotland are bigger than the bottom rack of the dishwasher – granted, I am basing that on a sample-size of two (my uncle’s and here), so that may not be the norm).

Happy New Year!  New Year’s Eve / Day is a big deal in Scotland (it’s called Hogmanay here), and certainly when my parents were growing up it was bigger (read: more festive) than Christmas.  Different communities have different local traditions, like Orkney’s ba’, or Stonehaven’s fireball swinging (my mother’s family is from Stonehaven) which sounds very dangerous. And there are more general traditions: all debts paid up (I paid my MasterCard bill on Tuesday), housecleaning (did that yesterday, along with the dead seal cleansing), steak pie for New Year’s Day dinner (I will miss out on that, but my sisters still do that each year), singing Auld Lang Syne with arms linked, and first footing, where at midnight people visit one anothers’ houses to wish them a happy new year.  It is considered good luck if the first person to cross your threshold in the new year is a dark haired man – my fair-haired Dad used to accompany his best friend (and brunette) Duncan as he first-footed around Bellshill – they were offered a wee dram of whisky in each house.  😊

Some of this year’s Hogmanay festivities were curtailed by Omicron – I’ve mentioned the Ba’ (cancelled) and the tractor run (went ahead) here in Kirkwall.  I didn’t know if there would be any first-footing in Kirkwall, but my bedroom faces the street, so at around 11:45 I opened my window and blinds, got into bed with a book, and waited to see – sure enough at midnight I could hear some fireworks going off somewhere, and a few people walked past on their way to visit friends (at least I assume that’s what they were doing – they could just have been walking their dogs).

Anyway, I’m very excited to see what 2022 will bring – my resolutions this year are pretty simple: swear less, learn to cook at least 5 types of seafood I’ve never cooked before, and visit at least 10 of the 70+ islands that make up Orkney.

Happy New Year, and as we Scots say: lang may yer lum reek!

Woke early; tea, toast, & marmalade; lovely weather; planned out my day. First we would walk along the beach at Scapa, then a lunch of homemade onion soup and a smoked salmon sandwich, then a stroll downtown and along the harbour, then spend the afternoon with tea, cookies, and a new book.

The beach was lovely. Until . . . . the ficking dead seal. I wasn’t watching her closely, and when I turned to look, she was rolling in dead seal. Freshly dead seal. What you see there are blood, guts, and bits of seal fur. FFS.

We kept walking, I mean what was the point of turning back right away? We might as well get the rest of the walk in. I made sure not to get too close (except when I had to clip on her leash). When we got back to the parking lot, I tied her to a handle of the car and grabbed the tea towel I keep in the car to wipe her muddy paws and soaked it in the ocean. I tried scrubbing off what I could. Then I lined the trunk (boot) with her rugs from the back seat and asked her to jump in. (I should mention that, for the first 8 1/2 years of her life, she would not jump into the car; she would put her front paws on the car seat, or the car frame, and wait for the back end to be lifted in by me. Only recently has she started jumping in without help.) Needless to say, she didn’t jump this time – I had to lean down and lift her while averting my face. Sigh.

We drove home with the windows open. I got into the house first and stripped down to my t-shirt & jeans, then went out and got her and led her into the shower. God, the stench. (Again, an aside: it wasn’t as pungent a smell as skunk, not by a long shot, but it is the odour of death, which comes with its own ‘ugh’ factor.) I started out outside the shower, just reaching in, but fast realised that wasn’t going to work. So into the shower I went, jeans and all. And have I mentioned the low water pressure? When we were done, I left her in the shower stall and waited for her to shake. She wouldn’t – I really should have taught her that command – so finally I caved and let her out. She promptly shook.

I can still smell it. After I gave her a shower, I gave the shower stall a shower, then I had a shower. Then I wiped down the bathroom, I washed the leash in the bathroom sink, the towels are in the washer for the first of at least two rounds, and they will be followed by the rugs, then my clothes.

I can still smell it. Is it on her? A bit still on me? Is it in my imagination? I’ve sprayed us both down with Chanel No 5.

Three hours of my life I’ll never get back.

She was so happy as she was rolling.

I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

I know, I know, the photo is crap. But I hadn’t read last week’s newspaper yet, so I didn’t know about this, and was therefore unprepared. Scout & I were out for our evening walk when dozens of lit-up tractors and trucks rolled by, honking and tra-la-la-la-ing. They were moving at a fair clip, I only had my cell phone, and Scout was not happy about the sound & light display. Hence, the crap photo.

This is an annual fundraising event, with all proceeds going to a number of local charities. Best of all, it’s basically social distancing on wheels so it could go ahead, plague notwithstanding.

*Both Scout & I got our needles this afternoon – I’m trusting the NHS & vet didn’t confuse who got what shot.

Scout met the cutest doodle at the hotel last night. Tex and his lovely family had just travelled up from London (it takes longer to get from London to Oban than it does to get from Calgary Alberta to Regina Saskatchewan). Tex was every bit as chill and friendly as Scout and they definitely hit it off.

I’m afraid it had to be a one-night stand, as his family was heading on to one of the smaller western isles, and we were heading home. But they’ll always have Oban.

(And yes, before anyone points out that they’re not even looking at each other; they were both playing it cool in front of the paparazzi.)

I don’t get British bathrooms.  First of all, there’s the whole separate hot tap / cold tap thingy. I understand why a century ago the hot water pipes came from the boiler, separate from the cold pipes. But by the time WW II had come and gone, surely technology had advanced to a single, adjustable faucet.  I know we’d figured it out in Canada by the sixties. And yet, the Brits continue to build bathrooms with sinks with cold water freezing their right hand, while hot water scalds their left, instead of a stream of water at exactly the desired temperature.  Unfathomable.

Then there’s the shower. I like to think I’m a reasonably competent person, but UK hotel showers are beyond my capabilities.  And I know it’s not just me; two (equally competent) friends and I traveled to London years ago. After struggling for a good half hour to make the shower work – each of us took a shot at it – we finally called down to the front desk and the hotel owner came up to demonstrate how to turn it on. Between figuring out which knob adjusts the temperature, and which lever directs the appropriate showerhead (there is always at least two showerheads), and how to turn the damned thing on or off, well, it’s all very stressful. I never did figure out how to get hot water in that hotel in Stirling; that was a cold, brisk wash that day.

I did manage to master all the dials and levers here, but that in turn leads to another bone to pick: water pressure. Again, I find it incomprehensible – if flushing the toilet can generate such torrents (really torrential), why must the shower be a such a wimpy drizzle? Even the shower in my house is a weak one; after two months of well, really, rinses is the best word to describe them, I was so looking forward to a proper, hot, powerful shower here in Oban. But no, this hotel continues to maintain British plumbing standards. Unfathomable.

If I had to spend Christmas alone, and let’s face it, whether I were away or at home, it would have been a solo holiday again this year, Oban is a beautiful place to be.

My hotel overlooks the harbour and the islands and hills across the bay. It’s bright and sunny today; the colours on the hills & cliffs and in the sea are absolutely glowing. I couldn’t have picked a better place.

Scout & I walked up Pulpit Hill this morning – God, I’m getting old – I’m sure it was neither that steep nor that high, but, well, whatever. It was worth it – the views were stunning. We could see all the way to the Roman Amphitheatre on Battery Hill. I had forgotten that the Romans had made it into Scotland – my sisters reminded me of some buildings near where our parents grew up. Very interesting. Of course, it turned out this amphitheatre is a folly built by a Victorian gentleman, and no Romans were involved. Ah well.

Well my eyes are being opened by British coach tour groups. I decided that since my trip was paid for, I’d come on this coach tour and just isolate really really well. Because I drove myself, am dining at my own table for one, and there are at least 3 other tour companies here from all over the UK, I have no idea who the people are from my group. And I won’t be finding out as I am not going on the coach excursion to Inverary. It’s only 10 of us on a full sized coach, which would probably be safe but I don’t care. There are several people here who don’t wear a mask in the hotel or are sloppy about it. Omicron, people, Omicron.

Oban is v pretty – am going to walk around here all day. My hotel room is tiny, which is fine; I knew that would be the case. But I also know almost half our group cancelled and neither the tour company nor the hotel took the opportunity to upgrade me to one of those now-empty but still paid-for rooms. I could have asked but it hadn’t occurred to me until I had unpacked everything and (a) my room is only one flight up and (b) has a great view, and who knows what I’d end up in instead.

One of my neighbours in Milton keeps going on about how awful British cuisine is, but up until now every meal I’ve had out here in Scotland has been delicious. Last night’s hotel dinner (smoked mackerel, then cod in a parsley sauce was quite good – uninspired, but good – I get the feeling the coach-tour clientele prefer the familiar for their meals).

But then came breakfast. Oh dear. There is a young family of tourists staying here (I’m assuming tourists from their accents) – I wanted so badly to tell them at breakfast that not all UK food is like this. The potato scones were like shoe leather and the Lorne sausage was like a rock. My knife literally (and I use the word ‘literally’ correctly here) – my knife literally couldn’t cut through either. The toast was fine and you really can’t screw up canned baked beans so I won’t starve. But I could almost hear my neighbour’s voice whispering, “See, I was right.”

I am almost certainly the youngest person here – clearly this is a holiday option for the elderly. A gentleman from Newcastle explained that what I’m seeing is more of a Corona-coach tour – fewer organized events, people distancing, a lot more alone time, etc.. So I really can’t tell if this something I would do again. Scout is the belle of the ball – everyone’s fave.