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!

The baby's lullaby

I spoke to May Fraser this morning ... Thomas Fraser's daughter who is heard crying on the Lullaby Yodel track. The crying is so well balanced on the track it sounds as if it was dubbed afterwards. I asked her this and she said no, just 'something I got right'. It was recorded when they were staying with a friend and he had nowhere else to record. She told me that they are still finding new recordings of his and hope another CD will be out next year! May works in the Peerie Shop and is a singer herself. She was delighted to hear that the Johnston / Durham / Armstrong family were keen fans.

Right now, we have a big hole in the track where Archie is putting in a cattle grid. Once that is done (in a couple of days) and I get a fence up there will be no more getting out of the car to open the gate in a cold, wet wind, and no more tiptoing around sheep shit. We'll be very happy and so will Cass the Post! I'm hoping some 'visitors' will soon help put up the fence!

Yesterday I collected a bagful of rowan berries from a neighbour's garden ... the owner's uncle had uprooted the tree when it was a sapling from a holm in a loch, so it is a native. I have given the Amenity Trust most of the berries but kept some for myself to try and germinate for the Bousta Forest.

Dykes and Dreams

We have had enough good days since Sorley left to get on with the terrace and walling. Now finished the corner of the wall and link to house (apart from a gate), built up the face of the terrace and sown grass (for the moment). You won't be able to see them but there is a set of (very uneven and ethnic) steps in the corner by the wall to access the grass bit. Outside the wall I have smoothed off the slope and sown grass there too. As you can see I (with Sorley's help when he was here) have been able to get rid of all the big rocks and debris. Once the grass has grown it will be fine. Going to concentrate now on the other retaining wall of the terrace which Sorley built. The rest of the garden wall is going to have to wait until I have finished the inside. In the meantime I have up a fence to keep out the sheep.

We had Rosa (of Lea Gardens at Tresta) and her partner, James (tree man) here on Sunday morning filling my head with ideas. In this climate I find it hard to visualise the results of their enthusiasm! James was here to give me advice on planting trees in the walled yard (where Sorley's 'chalet' will be) and mentioned that we might be in line for a Forestry Commission grant, so I am looking into that ... it will mean planting in the spring, which is a relief as there is so much to do!

Having crossed one Rubicon two weeks ago in getting a homehelp I am now on the shores of another ... one I have seen on the map but chosen to ignore until now that my feet are getting wet again! Rosa and James have persuaded me that if I am going to have a garden, vegetables etc., we must have a cat to keep out the rabbits! Apparently toms (neutered) are very good ... they have 7 (!), but then they have a couple of acres of garden, and hardly see the toms in the summer. So, next spring (see I am still putting it off) maybe we'll get a couple of (neutered) tom cats! Sorry Helen, maybe I should have warned you not to read that!

One of the great ideas that Rosa and James came up with is to turn one of the two ruined buildings into a plastic tunnel, simply (hardly) roofing it with polycarbonate. Maybe the other I can put a net over and grow soft fruit ... such is this vision of abundance. By then I (and my muscles ... I thought I was looking pretty muscular until I saw some close-ups of the Scottish rugby team) will probably have had enough of wall building, there won't be any stones left anyway at the rate I am going!

I knew there was a connection

Shetland's caribbean coffee!

Just a quickie while waiting for Mum's bus. Thought I would share this little joke. It's from a very special bean that likes cool, damp, windy climates. They have to be picked with pliers because of their tenacious grip otherwise they would all end up in the sea. How the Caribbean aroma is added I don't know, but it works.

On Sunday we have our gardening and woodland (another joke) friends, Rosa and James, coming over to advise on the new garden and yard ... planting of shrubs may take place this autumn but the rest will be next year. Fun to be at this stage, now I have only to finish the wall (!), which topic will be the subject of the next blog.

Yesterday was a historic one for us ... we had the house cleaned while we were out! Seems to work, now we just want someone to wash and iron the linen bed sheets every day.

By the way, the new owners of 24 Grant Street moved in this week, no more visits there. We are reminded here daily of Betty with a couple of pictures on the wall and particularly, the large Victorian settee which is even more comfortable than I remember ... I think I was on the edge of it most visits to Cullen.

Reading Matter

Yesterday I finished Acacia ... wondering what was the future? Would Corin meet some terrible end at the hands of her siblings, would her son/daughter wreak a hideous revenge or might he/she be the best of them all and because of his/her mixed descent be able to pull the world together again? Naw, David's imagination will have a different and more unexpected future awaiting. I saw a lot of references/comparisions to Tolkein and Lewis in the reviews (made some myself), but on finishing Acacia, Part 1, I am left with more of a taste of Dune.

Anyway, yesterday evening, after Mum had gone to bed, I scoured the shelves for something new to read, having now read all the (excess baggage) books I brought back from Colorado last autumn. I took just as many books from Betty's as I could reasonably carry last November, no one else seemed to want very many, so I had a look at them and lighted on On the Edge by Walter de la Mare (short stories published by Faber and Faber in 1930!), partly because it has some nice woodcuts. I almost did not get past the first sentence of Recluse, the first story ... "Which of the world's wiseacres, I wonder, was responsible for the aphorism that 'the best things in life are to be found at its edges'?" (which on reflection covers the antics of several generations and branches of this family). But I persevered and was soon wishing that it was a winter's night, it was dark, the curtains drawn and the stove was blazing. One extract that I would like to share concerns the repast the lost storyteller shares with the recluse in the latter's almost empty house he stumbles upon late in the evening (the housekeeper having gone home and his lifetime secretary having died a week or two previously) in some byway of rural England around 1905.

"Mr Bloom [the recluse] glanced over his shoulder into the corridor behind us. 'He has been a great loss,' he added. 'I miss him. On the other hand,' he added more cheerfully, 'we mustn't allow our personal feelings to interfere with the enjoyment of what I am afraid even at best is a lamentably modest little meal.'
Again Mr Bloom was showing himself incapable of facing facts. It was by no means a modest little meal. Our cold buillon was followed by a pair of spring chickens, the white sauce on their delicate breats adorned in a chaste design with fragments of cucumber, truffle and mushrooms - hapless birds that seemed to have been fattened on cowslips and honeysuckle buds. There was an asparagus salad, so cold to the tongue as to suggest ice; and neighbouring it were old silver dishes of meringues and an amber-coloured wine jelly, thickly clotted with cream. After the sherry champagne was our only wine; and it was solely owing to my abstemiousness that we failed to finish the second bottle."

At this point (around 11pm) I had to rush off to the kitchen and make myself a cheese and pickle roll and pour a glass of milk. I finished that story before sleep and look forward to the next shortly!

He had another lovely line where Mr Bloom points out the portrait of his sister on the wall ... "I glanced up at Miss Bloom; but she was looking in the other direction ..." That's a gem.

Actually, there is a bit of the David in that description and I would not be surprised to see a Mr Bloom, though which province he would hail from I'm not sure, appear in Acacia 2.

Walter de la Mare was a favourite poet of primary teachers in the 40s but I had never seen this Edgar Allan Poe side of him ... great fun ... needs a glass of whisky and some cold leftovers as an accompaniement.

Visit from Cragievar

I am re-reading Acacia, having read part of the ms, and enjoying it even more than the first time. In fact I am having difficulty putting it down ... definitely up there with Lord of the Rings. So, sitting late last night in our new room reading and getting up every now and again to watch the sunset, I was taken by the light on Ronas Hill ... I thought 'the Outer Isles at sunset or Vumu at sunrise'?

Sorley, Wendy and Ben were here for ten days, just leaving a couple of days ago ... oh, and Ella of course, a fine wee dog who, thankfully ignored the sheep and gratefully, caught a wee rabbit in the garden. A second one disappeared and later in the day Ella bcame very excited around the fridge in the porch ... yes, it was in behind and in the works. Managed to get it out. For those of a tender, rabbit-loving nature, I won't say what I did with them ... but they had been eating my precious lupins! Discovered I'm a real Mr MacGregor.

Ben seemed to enjoy himself and did a bit of cycling practise ...

strange, but lovely, to see him cycling where Sorley cycled 30 years ago at the same age!

We also went swimming at the Walls pool where Mum and I go weekly (weakly) in the winter ... Ben under the water, Mum out early.

Sorley also gave me a lot of help with the 'quarry', turning it into a paved yard. Here he's building the retaining wall againt the bank. We managed too to shift some very large stones and bury them in the bank on the north side of the house. And while Wendy was in the house I was able to get on with the wall.

Just before he left, Ben printed out a note which I have sealed in a bottle and buried in the wall.

The (music) cabinet under the TV houses all the hardware for the TV including the projector. Sorley did a fantastic job connecting everything. Now we can watch films on the screen from video, DVD or the TV ... and, more importantly, Match of the Day!!

As you can see, the new room is very comfortable ...

It was great for us to eat (and drink!) with some company and to have someone else cook too. Most nights we ate out in the porch, but on cooler nights we ate in the kitchen.

I think it was this evening that Mum came home from the Walls centre with two pieces of Pavlova she had made. So we had a competition for who would get them. The question was (going back to an interview with David that I had listened to) ... what, who, or where, was Gilgamesh? Ben won (by a good guess). Mum was second by default as while the competition was going on she had been quietly eating the second piece anyway!!

It was a great ten days and we finished off by discussing with Richard where we might erect a cabin/chalet ... exciting times lie ahead.

Visitors and Furnishings continued ...

It didn't take long for Andy to get his kayak in the water and paddle out of Bousta Geo. I was hoping he would tow some logs back for me from my driftwood beach but the weather was not good enough, and surprisingly, there were other things he and Louisa wanted to do.
When they all got back, the day of the carpet (which went down like clockwork in an hour and a half) I cooked tart and tangy beans (actually cooked a week before and unfrozen for the occasion) and the (Vivian) rhubarb and butterscotch (though some bits of the the rhubarb proved a little unyielding) which we had in the porch and then retired to officially open the extension. Louisa actually had some wine (which Andy regarded with raised eyebrows ... takes this baby thing very seriously) and Peter joined me in a dram. Just after they left we got the furniture from Betty's (less the desk which is still under repair and restoration after being damaged).
Yesterday (after moving books and videos) I set up the hi-fi equipment on the new bookshelves and here is Mum enjoying a Jamie compilation as I exit left for a bath! Somehow we are going to have to 'wash' the settee too to remove the smell of cigarette smoke! I have also just sent away for old (new)castors for the back, one of which is missing. We plan to put the TV on top of the music cabinet (which I think was another wedding present to my parents from Betty's father) and the DVD/Video machinery etc inside, along with the 'projector' which Sorley is going to install for us when he comes in a fortnight. We are waiting for a BBC freeview box to come next week and then Mum and I will move our evenings permanently into the extension ... can't wait, the old room feels so small and dark now. The new room is great, feels spacious and warm and has good sound qualities! Mum will now be able to watch me cooking from her rocker (where she at the moment waiting for me to tell her it is time for Lerwick)!

While everyone was here I had the ms of the book to do the index (clearly the Shetland Times have never done a book with an index before), 18 pages and 10 days to do it. This morning I will take it back to them and pray that now everything can go ahead and I don't need to think about it anymore!

The next task is to get a carpet down in the upstairs (double-)bedroom. Andy helped me get it upstairs, now all we have to do is empty the room (into where!?) and get the carpet down ... that's tomorrow's task whether the sun is shing or not.

Mum is clutching her hat (Gudrun, you may have noticed I have taken over the one you made for her ... maybe I'll ask Maya to make me a cardigan to go with it!) and gloves so it is clearly time to go.