Xmas 2007

Happy Xmas everyone! Mum is wearing a scarf from Gudrun which is hiding a brooch from Beth (sorry!) and I am wearing the Unst skull cap. But if you look closely at the books just to the right of the little painting on the top (rhs) shelf you may just make out Mr Pip (NZ author), The Night Gardener (a George Pelecanos thriller) and The Wild Places (Robert MacFarlane travel/places). You might also spot the yellow cover (on its side) of Tree of Smoke which I am really into. It took me half an hour to get this picture ... one of the sitters kept moving. Hope you have had/are having/will have a great day. Love Mum and Dad xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Now off to make fish cakes with anchovies, open a bottle of red wine and fire a party popper over Mum's head!

More pictures

This Yule's New Shetlander came out with both a poem of mine and a review of Victorians 60 Degrees North. I had planned to include these in the blog ... but ... when I scanned and uploaded the text it was unreadable. I also tried adding the poem directly from a file but it wouldn't do it either. So, the poem I will attach to an email (you've probably read it before anyway) and I quote the last paragraph of the (whole page) review below.

"Laughton Johnston has written a book which for me became a real 'page turner'. To tell the truth, I just hadn't expected to find the life stories of these 'Victorians 60 Degrees North' so engrossing. I've enjoyed my time inside their world. In other words, what I am saying is simply: 'Dis is a raelly interestin book, full o fascinatin stories and colourful characters - it's a bit o Shetland's history served up in style and I hoop you laek it too'."

If you would like a copy of the issue let me know and I will send you one.

My printer/copies/scanner is not scanning anymore. Luckily I bought a new scanner for my Xmas (okay, a month ago) so that I could easily copy family photographs onto a CD ... it's a slim line Canoscan LiDE 600F that can sit by the laptop on the desk and is powered through the latter too. So, of course I had to find some photos to scan. By coincidence, while looking for the Xmas decorations and/or wrapping paper (for Mum) in the cupboard at the top of the stairs I found a bag I had forgotten all about which was full of old goodies (photographs, papers, letters etc). So, here are two.

First, Mum at Real Foods! Actually there were quite a few of all the staff that Jill must have taken, but I didn't think you would want photos of Michael, Dave etc. Doesn't Mum look good! The next photo, for Jamie especially in case he thinks he is the only footballer in the family (!), is of the Benalder football team in 1958 in Singapore. The captain of the team (of course) was the 1st Mate (in the centre) and all the others, except for me, were the sailors. Our style was rather like Bolton's ... for those who do not know Bolton's style, it was pretty physical as we had no skill whatsoever but loved dressing up in our strip. To put it more bluntly, we didn't really mind just how we won the game(s). Don't ask me which position I played in. I know I tried to be wherever the ball was unless being threatened with a tackle from the opposition ... particularly after we had set the tone for tackling. You could say I was a pretty cosmopolitan player both on the pitch and on the globe!
Mum and I are now already for Xmas. We don't have a tree or crackers (nobody does a 'pensioner pac' ... 2) but we have mince pies and paper streamer bangers and frozen banoffees and fish for the fishcakes, some wine for me and cranberry juice for Mum ... she doesn't know what's coming!

December Pics

Okay, so trying to put these pictures into some kind of aesthetic order but failing miserably.
The weather has been very kind here recently, lots of quiet days, around 6-10 degrees (but warmer than London!) and some sunshine. This time of year it just creeps over the hill and tends to light the clouds from underneath (!).
Today, Mum at Wastview and I have been pottering slowly ... rescuing a geranium and bring it indoors, spotting one (maybe two) great northern divers (that would be my daemon I have decided) out in the bay from the cliff top, sawing up some old fence posts, checking the seals, looking (unsuccessfully) for otters, coppicing the old rowan tree by the door as it has been struggling of late, filling in rabbit holes in the garden with stones (which gives me a particular kind of pleasure), making coffee, and shortly, going to see if I can fix up the wireless connection to the laptop (to give me one less lead on the desk).


What happens here this time of year? Well, apart from the rather loutish ram (looks a bit like a Raging Bull who should have retired half a dozen fights ago) pursuing the sheep at a lesiurely pace, crocuses having a first nervous taste of the air, the Papa Stour ferry passing unhurriedly twice a day, rabbits digging holes in the garden, only the lobster boat seems to be purposefully busy (I feel I should wave to him like Linda to the Muckle Flugga supply boat in Jonathan's book, Linda to the Lighthouse).
Then there are our regular bird visitors ... the rock doves that come to feed on the bird seed we put out. These are the birds from which a lot of the fancy pigeons have been bred, Shetlanders call them blue doos. We also have an annual visit through the middle of the winter of 4 or 5 turnstones and a flock of curlews who come very close to my window. I tried to take a photo of them through the window and chicken netting fence (to keep rabbits at bay) but ended up with only sharply focused netting and blurry images beyond ... I'll master it yet.The other day (and yesterday evening ... when I say evening I mean about 3 o'clock) we had these wonderful shafts of sunlight piercing through the cloud (I expected a thunderous voice and Charlton Heston to appear with the tablet any moment).

As you can see, Ronas Hill (in close up) looked weird, kinda underlit. We had some northern lights too the other night, but not good enough to photograph (I will get one and post it!). And the new moon has the old moon in her arms. Actually the line from the ballad (Sir Patrick Spens) says ' I saw the new moon late yestreen / with the old moon in her arm'. I think it is better in the plural?

No, I am not going mad ... just pottering.

Daemons

Since rather quiet on the family blogs, apart that is from Maya - delightfully, I have decided to write about one of those strange coincidences that regularly occur. First though I will have another sip of this evening’s choice whisky … single Jura, not unpleasant.

I have been reading, as no doubt you all have, about the film version of His Dark Materials by Pullman ... a wee bit disappointed. The ‘daemon’ in the story fascinated me as I knew nothing about them. Simultaenously, I have been reading the much hyped The Gift by Lewis Hyde (presently Creative Writing professor in Ohio). It requires a lot of attention … not recommended reading in bed just before intended sleep! He looks at age-old myths surrounding ‘gifts’ and sees creativity as a ‘gift’ too. He is in to the idea that ‘gifts’ are for reciprocation and their value lies in their passage, back and forward between individuals and around groups. In today’s world these ‘gifts’ have been commercialised and we have capitalism; where the ‘gift’ has been given a monetary value and where it is kept it become capital. You’ll have to read the book to get nearer his truth!

However, last night, on page 54, I came on the section on the ‘gift’ of creativity … literary, artistic etc. First, it rang a few bells as it seemed to echo something I have always felt … that we must use (not a good word here in this context, sorry can’t think of a better at the moment) our own personal ‘gifts’ to the full … otherwise we are denying our intrinsic selves, never mind anyone else.

Now we come to daemons! Quote from book … ‘The task of setting free one’s gifts was a recognized labor [he’s American remember] in the ancient world. The Romans called a person’s tutelar [guardian if you have to look it up like me] spirit his genius. In Greece it was called a daemon. Ancient authors tell us that Socrates, for example, had a daemon who would speak up when he was about to do something that did not accord with his true nature. …. The daemon comes to us at birth. It carries with it the fullness of our undeveloped powers. These it offers to us as we grow and we choose whether or not to accept to labor in its service … the spirit [daemon] who brings us our gifts finds its eventual freedom only through our sacrifice [to realise the gift], and those who do not reciprocate the gifts of their daemon will leave it in bondage when they die."

It is no longer often, in fact it is pretty rare, that I come across something that makes me sit up (and fail to go to sleep later) and think ‘now there’s a view of life that I feel that’s familiar and friendly, and needs thinking about’.

Now I am wondering about the shape of my daemon. However, I do know who must have a cat as a daemon!

Need to go and fill up my glass …

Storm!

There was a forecast of bad weather for today. At 9am it was not too bad, but bad enough not to try and take the ash out the door! So I decided we would not go to Lerwick for lunch with the Gibsons as usual. A good decision! By lunchtime there was a force 10 plus storm (100 mph recorded in Orkney and a little less here) blowing from the north. My wee gate/fence between the gardens was beginning to blow up in the air so I went out to weigh it down and quickly realised that it was in fact dangerous to be out there. I could hardly stand up and had to wrestle with the gate out of the garden.

I tried to take some photos through the window but the visibility was not too good! I can see where the phrase 'wave after wave' ... of attack, comes from. Looking out now, the half mile or so that I can see, are line after line of breaking waves with their tops sheared by the wind. The skerries are covered in white foam and the wind is whistling around the house, and somewhere the poor sheep are huddling behind a wall.

Surprisingly, the extension feels rock solid. The only problem is that the wind is creating a vacuum in the loft space and sucking up the hatch. Even with it left open several inches every now and again it lifts and begins battering away. I will need to fix a brick to its upper side!

Now, at 2pm, with the Orkney schools all shut and no ferries running, the forecasters say it will decrease to a severe force 9! Luckily, the tide seems to be at the bottom of the ebb at the moment so that the big waves are not at the top of the beach. By early evening when the tide is up, if the waves are still coming in as they are there may be damage to the Little Bousta track across the beach. It was in this sort of weather that I remember taking Sorley and Beth across the beach to get the school taxi, holding their hands to make sure they didn't get blown away!! Ah ... how boring this would have been in Forneth!

Poetry

I don't know if this will work but here are 3 poems just published in the Autumn edition of Northwords.

The St Kilda poem is basically the one I put in the NTS book. Bousta to Papa was the infamous boat trip just before Jamie was born; and Nightshift Offshore I wrote when working on the rigs. Hope you can read them!

Home and Away

Have to start with the get-together ... thanks Helen.

Can't believe it is 4 weeks since you were all here. I've printed this picture so that Mum can take it with her to Wastview. It was wonderful having you all here but the departures were a bit painful! Of course, since you have been we seem to have had a run of quiet, mild weather ... even good enough for walks up the road.

We had a busy week away, seeing Sorley, Wendy and Ben for a couple of nights; Stewart and Maggie, Nigel and Moira (and Louisa and Andy and Amy and Rowena, a very grown up 6 year old John and a bright and cheeky wee Lexie [had to look that up!]). Also went and saw Jim and our old friend Jean in the Borders. Took a few days to get back to normal and not sure that we will go south again soon.

At long last Victorians 60 Degrees North came out. As it was published by the Shetland Times there were embassassingly large fliers in the paper!

This was about half a page!

We also went up to Unst last week to get a photo taken with David Edmondston (last of the ...)

Anyway it is now out (I've sent copies to Craigievar, NZ and the US, and Paris[!]). I think the ST have done a very good job with it ... layout, print, pictures and paper.

And Maggie's cover has been commented on by many.

The signing yesterday went well ... about 60 signed for folk that didn't want to come and meet the author (maybe they had met me before!) and another 20 or so in the shop ... that's a start. Learned also that A Dream of Silver was still selling well (it's all relative, I keep telling myself David). Mum enjoyed herself too beside me.

I'll be doing an interview for Radio Shetland this week and will let you know when it it to be broadcast.

Our only other excitement this week was the absence of our neighbours who should have been back from a trip to the Mainland. Other mutual friends phoned us up to ask where they were and I emailed John to ask if everything was okay. Turned out that they were enjoying themselves so much touring around Scotland in the Indian summer that they decide to stay away for another week!

Final thoughts ... thank goodness England didn't win the World Rugby Cup!