I resent every single piece of clothing that I pack and end up not using, and I regret every forgotten piece of clothing that would have made my trip better. This time, it looks like the coat was surplus to requirements and a cardigan would have been a more useful choice.
I keep questioning why I am having these problems with packing (please God don’t let it be early-onset dementia) because when I packed for work all those years ago I was like a well-oiled machine. There was no list-making, no agonizing over choices, no missing items. It was because packing for work travel was easy: one suit with an extra pair of pants (trousers), three blouses, a pair of jeans and two casual tops, pjs, and two pairs of shoes: one dress, one casual – all in one color palette. Inclement weather didn’t matter as I was taking taxis; toiletries were easy because I kept a full make-up bag all ready with seconds of make-up samples and miniature bottles.

And I don’t really know why it bugs me so much – it doesn’t need to be perfect – silly me.

On the whole, I did pack fairly well for this trip – I was commenting to my sisters (via Messenger) on the Captain’s welcome evening that there were some lovely gowns and dresses, and it was nice to see so many men in formal kilts or tartan trews (trousers), but that the key take-away from the evening was that I had the nicest shoes on the boat. And really, what else matters?

On the whole, I am enjoying this cruise. Starting to suspect that 10 days might be 2 or 3 days too long when travelling solo, but this is a very nice ship with good food, pleasant crew, and thankfully, good weather.

There are a few places where I feel they fall down a bit – I’ve mentioned the nickel & diming and the hard upselling – some of the other deficiencies I’ve noticed include areas such as cabin amenities, the limited wine range, and maybe more regional foods; but I will never mention it to them, at least not to their faces.

After Lori’s and my continuous improvement incident of 2013, affectionately known as Elbe-gate, I don’t give face-to-face feedback. Back then, because we liked the cruise director so much, we very kindly pulled him aside on the second last day to tell him how much better experience the passengers would have had, if only the cruise line apprised them about certain routines and information. He graciously took all our suggestions on board and we wandered back to the bar in a haze of self-congratulatory helpfulness. The next morning, as we were packing, we opened the pamphlet each of us had found on our beds on Day One, but had never bothered to look at. Every piece of information we had been missing was clearly spelled out. Splendid.

I know exactly what would happen if I were to say to someone here that there should be a clock in each stateroom: “Oh did madame not look at the TV screen in the corner?” or made a suggestion to supply guests with hair conditioner or hand cream: “Ah, allow me to show madame the toiletries tray under the sink.” So, I say nothing. (BTW there really should be a clock, hand cream, shampoo & conditioner, bathrobe & slippers in each cabin. Ah well.)

The first of three bridges across the firth of Forth (firth = estuary, Forth = this river’s name) was built in the 1880’s and there is an expression in the UK, a task can be described: ‘like painting the Forth Bridge’, meaning: as soon as you’ve finished, it’s time to start all over again. It is a UNESCO world site and considered an iconic Scottish image.
This was our view as our ship headed out to sea – the red metal one farthest away was the original, the grey was built in 1964, and the bright white one in the foreground was completed in 2017.

I don’t take ocean cruises often, and only picked this one because (a) it was going to Scandinavia, and (b) it left from Edinburgh – only one flight from Kirkwall.

Due to a mix-up with my luggage (don’t ask – entirely my fault this time), I had the opportunity to sit and watch the onboarding procedure for 1,000+ elderly Scots. It was a well-oiled machine; accommodation made for wheelchairs, walkers, and canes; double-decker shuttle buses; and the chirpiest, chipperist, young staff imaginable. Their faces must have hurt from smiling.

But, everyone made it aboard safe and sound; although, as I am writing this on our first day out at sea, someone was just airlifted off on a stretcher in a helicopter. How scary that must be for them and their travel companions.

I cannot emphasize enough how much I love living 6 minutes from the airport. The parking lot (carpark) is half the size of the lot in front of the Milton Winners and is only 3 pounds/day.

The lay-out: KOI (Kirkwall International Airport) is about as big as the Winners itself, with a check-in desk, displays of the local arts, crafts, and distilleries, and a small cafeteria. Beside the café counter there is a bar counter, which, at 7:45am, was closed (obvs). Imagine my surprise when the bar opened at 8am on the dot, and 4 guys lined up for their early morning, pre-flight pint. Gotta love the Scots. (Actually, in retrospect, I shouldn’t be quite so judgemental; exactly 24 hours later I was sipping a mimosa at my breakfast table. The waiter offered, what was a girl to do?)
One hour flight, then a one hour wait for our luggage (shades of the Seine), then off to the cruise port in Rosyth (there is a 900 year old castle ruin in among the warehouses and garages at the port).

Well, perhaps ‘evicted’ is a tad dramatic. But yes, it is final – I have until the 29th of October to find new digs. When the owners hinted at this a few weeks ago I began looking in the paper and online and, exactly as last year, properties to let are few and far between. I want, if at all possible, to stay in Kirkwall, but am willing to look farther afield and am considering the Orkney towns of Stromness (pretty, pop 2,200), Finstown (only 10 min from Kirkwall, pop 440) or even Dounby (in the middle of the main island, pop <300).

Or what about Shetland? I’m watching season 7 of the TV show and it looks lovely. But it is much farther away – the ferry to Aberdeen is 7 hours. Seven. Or maybe an island in the west, or a town in the north of England? I’m trying to be open to all possibilities, but I really really want to stay here.

My CIL was here last week. I only met him for the first time last March, but he seems like a very pragmatic person, very rational. On Saturday afternoon my visitors & I were sitting around my living room discussing my options and people were encouraging me to look farther afield, saying it would be interesting to move somewhere new. But, by noon on Sunday, after having seen the town, even my sensible, matter-of-fact CIL was saying, “you have to find a way to stay here, Elaine. It’s lovely here and you’ve built a network.”

So every conversation I have now has changed. It used to be: they would comment on the dog, they would hear my accent, they would ask why I was here, and that was that. Now every conversation is basically my opening with – “do you know of anywhere I could live?”

Well, fingers crossed – I will continue to search every website, write every letting agent, and ask every islander. Something is bound to turn up.

Being a cruise destination port means a variety of impacts to a community. Radio Orkney tweeted this announcement last week. It seems that a cruise liner’s voyage was being changed/delayed in some way and they had to offload some perfectly good frozen food, here in Orkney. So the local council and the food bank arranged to give the food away to whomever needed/wanted it.

Approximately 500 people queued up for thirteen tonnes of chicken, chips, vegetables, ice cream, etc. It was quite impressive – the locals nicknamed it Chicken Galore, after the classic Scottish film Whisky Galore!, a film about barrels of whisky that wash ashore on a remote Scottish isle.

No, it’s not Spam. It’s the previously mentioned Lorne or square sausage, a uniquely Scottish breakfast food. My CIL had been jonesing for square sausage since arriving back up here in Scotland and Sunday was his last chance before heading back to England. Figuring out breakfast that morning was tricky – they were leaving late morning and the only restaurant open on a Sunday before noon was a hotel (we couldn’t be bothered), the airport cafe (one of the staff had been mean to my guests earlier in the week), and the groceries I had brought in weren’t going to be adequate (I had forgotten to pick up fresh bread at the bakery stall at the County Show, and there was no OJ – bad for my heartburn). Then my cousin had the brilliant idea – Tesco run to get Lorne sausage!

Viv is used to whipping up brekkie for a crowd (she’s a fab hostess with a big family) so she took over the kitchen. Thank goodness she did; I would have, yet again, prepared British food incorrectly if left to my own devices. As always, I like to make my guests feel right at home by letting them do the work. It was an excellent Scottish breakfast: square sausage butties with brown sauce and butteries on the side (one can never have enough buttered carbs at breakfast) with marmalade (invented in Scotland). My CIL was a happy man: he had built stone walls, had drunk Orkney gin, and had eaten a Lorne sausage – a perfect week. We piled 6 people and 10+ bags into two car-trips to the airport (it’s a 6 minute drive from my place), and off they went.

There was one sausage left so I’m having for breakfast this morning. I don’t like bread, so I’m having it with leftover potatoes. Dee-lish.

Scout had a great time with the company – she started out the evening on one couple’s bed, then headed to my cousin’s room and scratched to get in (they were already asleep), then went and peeked in bedrooms in the morning.  Everyone seemed delighted.

As people were filing out of the bathroom after their showers this morning, I started to notice bruising on all the women – what on earth was going on?  Were they in abusive relationships?  Had the sheep fought back on North Ronaldsay?  No, it seems they had attended a ceilidh on their last night on North Ronaldsay, and the dancing had been beyond vigorous, to say the least.

A ceilidh (‘kay-lee’) is a Scottish gathering or party, often in local halls or community centres, and they usually involve live music & country dancing (like square dancing but with cooler names: The Eightsome Reel, the Dashing White Sergeant, the Gay Gordons), and pretty much always involve alcohol.  Combine alcohol, dancing, and Scots, and things get physical, physical (my nod to ONJ, who died this week).

This is what my cousin’s arms looked like 36 hours after the ceilidh – those are fingerprints you can see, where her partners grasped (not clasped as they should have, but grasped and clung on to) her arms.  Her friend Maura has a bruise the shape (and size) of Australia on her left shin.  It was black.  Souvenirs of an eventful holiday.

*(Oh, and behind Viv you can see two gifts I received last night – on the left is a lovely large bottle of my favourite local gin, Kirkjuvagr Origin – a thank you from my wonderful guests; and on the right is a massive bottle of Scotland’s official soft drink, Irn Bru – a thank you from the Chinese takeaway for our order.  The latter is being donated to the local foodbank (Irn Bru is an acquired taste I have not yet acquired) and the former will be lovingly nurtured and consumed over the next several weeks.)

My cousin, my CIL (her hubby), and their four friends arrived late afternoon, after four days of serious physical labour building stone walls (see prev post), last night’s rowdy ceilidh (more on that later), and a stressful journey from North Ronaldsay to Kirkwall – the flight is only 18 minutes; it was the four hours leading up to it that were stressful.  So, first thing for the weary travellers? – wine, obvs.  Once that was done we headed over to the County Show as it was slowly wrapping up in the late afternoon.  We checked out the horses, the wool, the gin, and, interestingly – the Lorne sausage.  My CIL is Scottish, now living in the south of England, and can’t get Lorne or ‘square’ sausage back home.  It’s a pork & beef sausage in a square patty, and Scots go nuts for it.  Okaaaaay.  It was his mission for the afternoon.  After disappointment at the first few food trucks (they’d run out of Lorne sausage by noon and it was now 4 p.m.), he was becoming more and more despondent.  He finally settled for a hamburger, and the only thing that cheered him up was when we hit the gin-tasting tent (God, a gin-testing tent.  How good is life?).  While at the tent, we ran into a young man working there who had spent the last 3 days with my friends building the stone dykes, and whom I’ve known a few months from one of the tasting rooms in town.  Gotta love small town life.

We thoroughly enjoyed the show – it was very small-town, country fair, and a perfect way for them to wind down their day.

After some snacks and wine at my house (the afore-mentioned all-island, all-highland charcuterie board), we headed out to a local gin distillery that has the cutest covered patio bar out back (called Oot the Back – get it?).  On the way they met another young lady who had been with them on North Ronaldsay; we scooped her up into our little gang off to the pub. Again, small town life.

They don’t serve food in this pub – although, as an aside, every pub or bar in the UK sells little bags of nuts, or crisps, or snacks – why don’t we do that in Canada? – but at Oot the Back you can order in from one of the local takeaways and eat on the patio.  The gin cocktails were delicious. It was mostly young locals at the tables around us – I am not going to get into a round of second-wave feminism – I will simply say that was the smallest lace bra I’ve seen worn as a top out in public.  Dear God.

We headed home and ordered in Chinese food to my house for a late dinner.  I’ve mentioned this British custom before: last fall I ran into my neighbours as they were bringing in six pizzas, one for each person in the house, as opposed to the North American custom of buying one or two extra-large pizzas for all to share.  Well, last night we got out the Chinese menu, and each person ordered what he or she was going to have.  So, one person was having the crispy beef, another the chicken chow mein, etc.  It seemed we were going to share the rice, but each of the mains belonged to one individual.  It was very interesting.  On the whole, I guess it is the more sensible way to order takeaway vs our method of: get two meat, two veg, one noodle, some rice, and some chicken balls and everyone dig in.  But I’m more used to our way.  *BTW – they don’t have seem to have chicken balls here – yet another example of British superiority. Well, as long as you ignore deep-fried Mars bars and French fry sandwiches (aka chip butty).