I love saying that out loud.  Drumnadrochit. A few years ago a friend and I were touring the highlands and we stayed in this same inn in the village of Drumnadrochit, and had one of the more memorable evenings of our trip. Partly because it was the only night we truly ‘tied one on’ (the dead soldiers in our room the next morning were embarrassing), and that same evening we teamed up with two brilliant young women we met in the pub (they contributed significantly to same soldiers). The evening was a blast.

 When I was planning my trip down to Oban, I decided to break it halfway so I wouldn’t have to worry about driving in the dark. So Drumnadrochit seemed a good choice.  The inn is very cosy, as is the pub (and check out their logo- how cute is that?). I had booked a table ahead of time and as it turned out, they assigned me the same table BN and I had had years ago, so I asked the waiter to take my picture to send her – I’m sure he and the other patrons thought, “wow, isn’t she vain.”

Having a dog is a good thing. Last time I was here we went for a walk that was maybe 10 minutes long at most (we may have been a tad hungover. Hard to say.). But Scout needs more than that so this morning she and I really explored the village and the paths around it – what a beautiful part of the country – I wouldn’t have seen that without Scout with me.

Well, the sun just set on the shortest day of the year – and it was a lovely day too. There is a closed cairn called Maeshowe not far from here – a 5,000 year old ‘building’ (covered mound) and its interior is all lit up by the winter sun in the days surrounding the solstice.

This year they had hoped to capture that light from the setting sun in a live streaming at exactly 3:15 but the clouds got in the way – the YouTube video that Historic Environment Scotland has posted is still very interesting, nonetheless. (And they’ve provided closed-captioning to help with the Orcadian dialect 🙂 ).

I’ve been meaning to start noting down some of the differences I see between here & home (not things like driving on the other side of the road, or the fact that it rains more here – duh) but things I hadn’t known or think others might not know.  I thought I’d start with Christmas.

1. Santa Claus/Father Christmas doesn’t come from the North Pole in Canada.  Father Christmas lives & works in Lapland, in northern Scandinavia.
2. The robin (the European robin, not the North American one) is a symbol of Christmas.  Ornaments and cards are covered in them.
3. Major department stores compete to see whose TV Christmas commercials can make people cry the most.  The whole country waits each year for the new ads.
4. I’ve always wanted to try chipolatas – a little sausage that is ALWAYS served with turkey (I read about it in every Maeve Binchy or Joanna Trollope book, heard about it on every British TV show, and it’s mentioned in every UK cookery book).  I imagined something exotic and spicy and looking like a little cocktail weenie, but it turns out they’re just small pork sausages.  Very nice, but nothing revolutionary.
5. This next one may just be Orkney and other rural communities: almost everything closes for at least a week: the library, garbage collection (mine is going back in the freezer, I guess), a couple of delivery companies.
6. There is a tradition in Kirkwall called the ba’. The Ba’ is played on Christmas Day & New Year’s Day in the centre of town.  Imagine a rugby scrum, but 20 times bigger.  Over 300 men, some from Up-the-gates (Kirkwall) or Doon-the-gates (St Ola et al), try to move a ba’ (ball) from the Merkit Cross either down to the harbour or up past one of the churches.  It was announced Dec 1 that the Ba’ would happen this year.  It was promptly cancelled 11 days later. 
7. Snack foods – Tesco has come out with a series of interesting munchies: ‘Festive Crisps’ including sausage roll or, better still, turkey & stuffing flavoured puffs, and crisps flavoured like pigs in blankets or . . . . wait for it . . . . candy canes.  I’ve got proof.

I’ve started my annual Christmas movies. So far: Love Actually, Die Hard (obvs), The Last Holiday (as opposed to The Holiday – an absolutely dreadful movie IMO), and The Muppet Christmas Carol. Still to come: A Christmas Story, Elf, and White Christmas.

It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon, perfect to sit down with a cup of tea, a blanket, and the best Christmas movie ever made: the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol. But, I can’t. I don’t have a copy of it. Back home I have two (yes, TWO) A Christmas Carol DVDs, one in colour & one in BW. And yes, I know, I’m old. I own DVDs. (Heck, I own vinyl albums too.) But, do you think it occurred to me, as I was packing my DVD collection away, do you think it occurred to me to pack one of the DVDs? It’s less than 1 cm thick – it would have taken up no space at all, dammit.

I looked on iTunes, these are the results when you search A Christmas Carol. Look at them. Dozens of them, imposters, all. The Muppet one is fine, and I’m sure Bill Murray in Scrooged did a lovely job. But the only true version was made in 1951, is in black & white, and has Alistair Sim as the perfect Scrooge. It is the Reid annual tradition; Dad used to say he always liked Scrooge better before the ghosts visited him. We could quote lines from the movie along with the actors. It is the best. Period.

I’m going to go and drown my sorrows in a gin and tonic. Bah. Humbug

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Edit: Just found it for rent on Amazon Prime UK. Whew. God bless us, everyone.

I buy the local newspaper every week and am quite enjoying it. It’s been around since 1854 (beating out the Milton Champion by six years). There are the obvious sections: local & regional News, COVID, Sports, and Entertainment; the last is referred to as Gaan Oot(‘going out’). There are the sections more typical of island, rural, and farming communities: bird watching, The Marine Scene, Young Farmers, and the Cattle & Sheep Market with every animal sold listed along with its price. The classifieds are extensive compared to at home and include small business notices, personal notices, births & deaths, and (and this is very cool) if you are not a business and have something to sell (under a certain price point – I think ) then you can post it here for free. Oh, and NO FLYERS!

But my favourite segment has to be this week’s Christmas wishes. There are three full pages of people wishing friends & neighbours a very Merry Christmas – there must be 200+ notices from individuals, couples, & families. What a lovely thing to do.

I’m a morning person and am usually up well before 7 o’clock. Recently I’ve gotten into the habit of doing a lot of stuff around the house before heading out for our morning walk (unlike at home, where it was usually: up & dressed, one cup of tea, read the news, then out for a walk). I think I’ve been letting it get later and later due to the lateness of the sunrise (today’s sunrise was 9:03 a.m.).

But clearly I’ve been missing a lot and need to get back to my old habits. This was downtown Kirkwall first thing this morning. Shops were getting ready to open, the only traffic was a couple of vans making deliveries, the only people on the street were dog walkers and shop owners.

Back to waste management. Again.

My recycling was rejected this morning.

It seems ‘plastic’, had I read more closely, is only plastic bottles. Plastic bags and wrap, even if marked as recyclable, do not go in the plastics bin. Only plastic bottles. I haven’t quite figured out what I am to do with the rest of my plastic waste, but the one or two bottles I use up each month (yes, as I don’t drink juice or buy water in bottles, I don’t have much in the way of empty plastic bottles) will go into the 4′ tall recycling bin. And nothing else.

Apologies in advance if this is TMI.

I sent off my registration form for the NHS on December 9th and yesterday a package arrived from them. I assumed it was maybe an ID card like our OHIP cards, or instructions on how to get a card, or just some paperwork and information on what it is to be registered with the National Health Services. Then I saw the words ‘self-test’ and, given what’s going on at the moment, I understandably thought, “Are they sending out COVID self-tests to everyone?”

But no, it was none of those things. Instead, it was a bowel screening self-test asking me to mail in a sample. Unasked for, out of the blue, completely unexpected, just arrived from Public Health Scotland because I am between the ages of 50 and 74. I must say, this is one of the more original welcome packages I have received when joining a new organization. (Vodaphone offered my a free cup of Costa coffee.)

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the importance of catching bowel cancer early – my dad had colorectal cancer, so I know too well the need for early detection. It was just the timing, and the surprise factor, and of course the scatological impact (so to speak) that appealed. And the instructions are quite entertaining too – I particularly like question #3 on the return package – gotta wonder how often something happened before they included that.

Again, sorry if this wasn’t what you signed up for when you started following this blog. 🙂

This intersection near my house fascinates me. The first time we walked past it, I noticed a car had broken down in the intersection, the driver must have gone for help, and people were just driving around the stalled car. After this happened more than once, I realized it was designed this way. The purple arrow is the more ‘major’ Thoms Street, the red arrow shows where St Rognvald St. and the left turn lane from it to Thoms St. are, and the semi-circle that is indicated by the green arrow and encircled by a white curve painted on the road is a parking space. A parking space for two or three cars – and there’s no curb, just the white painted line. That car isn’t in traffic; it’s parked. And everyone just moves around it.

I’m so glad I was on foot the first few times I came by here; I’m not sure what I would have done had I been driving (probably freaked out that there was a car seemingly coming towards me on the wrong side of the street and veered into a wall or something).

Anyway, just another quirk in the British traffic system.

On my second trip “to Scotland” as the locals say – I can’t say I went to the mainland, as the island that Kirkwall is on is called The Mainland by Orcadians (ditto the big island in Shetland), and here they call heading off the island as going to Scotland – I bought Scout a new bed. I hadn’t seen the point in schlepping her old bed across the ocean in its own suitcase, so I waited until we got here, then stopped in a lovely pet shop in Wick and picked up this beauty at the end of October. Not cheap, I might add.

She has used it twice – both times at my encouragement. Instead, she has chosen the thin carpet on the hard floor on the concrete pad in my bedroom. It’s her favorite place in the house, regardless of where I am.

She also won’t lie on the sofa beside me as she did back home – if she does want to be with me in the living room, she prefers to sit on the floor directly in front of me (to give me the best chance to pet her). And no chance to see the TV she is blocking. It’s like she knows the exact spot to cause the most inconvenience. So the soft, fuzzy rug I bought for her to lie on on the sofa was equally wasted. Nice.

I have kept the receipt from the bed and really should call the store and see what their return policy is. But as Wick is a ferry-ride away, I see no point in rushing this. Who knows? She may suddenly change her mind. Uh-huh.