It’s been one month since I left Orkney, and oddly, I don’t seem to think about it too much. Out of sight out of mind? Mostly when I do think about it is when it’s still light here at 10:00 p.m. or 4:00 a.m. – I had forgotten how far north all of Scotland is and had bemoaned the fact that I’d be leaving Orkney and missing out on the longest days of the year. (As far as latitudes go, it’s as if I’ve moved from Churchill south to Flin Flon. Carluke is still north of Moscow.)
I miss the friends I’d made there, of course, but I’ve been fairly busy settling in here and as I was already familiar with this house and neighbourhood, I haven’t felt any sense of ‘homesick’ for Orkney.
I’ve never been much of a Facebook person. In fact, the only reason I ever went on there was because I talked my women’s group in Milton into joining social media, so then I felt obliged to check in and promote our posts. But when I was moving to Orkney, it seemed social media was the way to find out about everything, so I joined several community pages. They were great – I found out about concerts, and beach clean-ups, and met at least two of my Orkney friends on there. (There was also the odd man with the 17-room house on Burray who wanted me to rent a ‘wing’ of the house from him, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Just realised I haven’t been on FB in quite a while, so opened it up this morning, and was hit with an absolute flood of Orkney updates – upcoming summer solstice events, updated menu from my favourite food truck, ads for the Community Fridge. A lot of people from away posting that they were moving to Orkney and looking for advice, just as I did two years ago. And then I was sad. Which is silly. So I’ve done the only sensible thing: I’ve Left group for all but one of the Orkney group sites that I was on, and for that last one, I’ve Unfollowed it so I won’t see posts unless I want to.
I have joined two Carluke/Lanark pages, which should help me become a part of my new community here.