maeve
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Post by maeve on Sept 27, 2016 14:54:03 GMT
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Post by meganl on Sept 27, 2016 16:51:16 GMT
Jings lass that makes me feel old I knew her (Lizzie) when she was a Peedie lass at the pony club. It is a while since I have been at the distillery It was always where we took visitors but I can no longer manage all the steps it is a wonderful visit. Nowadays I take folk to the Orkney Brewery I can park right at the door and there is only one small set of steps which take you up to a viewing platform.
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maeve
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Post by maeve on Sept 27, 2016 17:25:34 GMT
Why did I suspect you'd have known Lizzie?
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Post by meganl on Sept 28, 2016 10:30:38 GMT
weel lass nearly twenty years covering every event on the island and teaching first aid can have that effect in a wee place
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maeve
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Post by maeve on Sept 28, 2016 12:42:01 GMT
Aye- especially when it's a storyteller-folklorist.
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Post by meganl on Oct 1, 2016 18:33:35 GMT
There is an evening on Orkney, in that brief blink of Autumn, when the first fires are lit and the wind holds its breath, for tonight the frost will come. The smoke like a girl at her first dance hangs around the village unsure of where it is supposed to go. Someone is still burning peat Its tang like the sharp taste of memories as I pass the narrow road where Shoot the Otter lived, I doubt if any in the village would have heard of him now let alone remember how he got the name.
Small clouds cluster together sky sheep their fluffy edges tinged smokey purple against the blue ice sky. I play blind mans buff with the low sun as it creeps along the top of the hill hiding behind the cottages waiting to pounce as I drive past a gap.
When I first came to the island Dauvit would say "There's a frost coming tonight I can smell it in the air." and I would laugh for in the city frost had no smell only the exhaust of passing traffic. As always he was right it is that tingle of cool air on your nose that makes the mouth water like the smell of a freshly cut apple, it is the peat fire and the tangle washed up on the beach from the September gale the saltiness of the sea foam and crisp sheets cold from the line.
For all the smoke hangs low in the dip where the village nestles around it the light has a crystal clarity picking out colours with a pinpoint accuracy a camera would be hard put to catch. Even sounds have a bell like quality a crisp ring of sound that can be heard from across the loch.
Soon it will be time for the Harvest Home dance, reels and two steps with a bit of music a poem and a sketch then a break for mince and clapshot before the dancing till the wee sma hours. Teenagers, grandparents, parents and bairns dancing together or sneaking of outside for a dram from a flask hidden in a jacket, a quick draw on a cigarette since they are now forbidden in the local hall or a stolen kiss and amateur teenage fumble if you can find a spot not already claimed.
That blink of Autumn may be brief but islanders have always exploited that moment between harvest gathered and everything stopped by snow to its glorious best.
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ragdall
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Post by ragdall on Oct 2, 2016 8:36:16 GMT
I had thought they were gone for good as that was one of the files lost when my computer crashed. What a wonderful gift from the past! You'll make good use of those.
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ragdall
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Post by ragdall on Oct 2, 2016 9:24:44 GMT
The link worked well, maeve. A very interesting video. I had no idea how complicated the process is. One of my sons is very fond of single malt Scotch whiskey. They named their daughter after an island of the Inner Hebrides which produces a fine Scotch.
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maeve
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Post by maeve on Oct 2, 2016 12:50:25 GMT
Hi, rags. That's funny- when I click on that link it brings me right to this thread. Glad you could see the video.
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Post by meganl on Oct 5, 2016 14:03:03 GMT
This wondrous landscape where Magnus trod, where shelves of rock all elbows and knees cuddle close to smooth skinned sand and voluptuously rounded stones, strange bedfellows kissing the tide tween dulse and wrack.
The Shalder tiptoes the patches of sand grazing daintily on tasty bugs. It lifts its head watching the golden haired invader of its territory considering if it be friend or foe. Deciding discretion to be the better part of valour it takes refuge out at the seas edge as the sheltie nose in the air passes not deigning to notice its angry call.
White puppy waves jump at the foot of the cliff trying to get its attention, they sport and play while they wait for the big waves return. They splash in rock pools practicing their pounce for the day they will throw themselves to the topmost cliff of the island.
Today I sit here with a tub of ice-cream windows open listening to the laughing chatter of the final tourists of the season. No one will have to be rescued from the Broch today they will have plenty of time to explore the ancient remains of the monastery where the patron saint of Orkney was educated as a boy.
Often I have sat here in more troubled times and on stormy days I find it calming. On those days the waves are fierce monsters snarling and growling as they crash over the causeway throwing themselves against the island in their rage.
Yet it's their very ferocity that calmed me for the Broch of Birsay that small island so beset by wind and wave stands firm as it has since the last receding ice age revealed it.
The lighthouse at it's peak safely guiding sailors away from the treacherous rocks, for the mightiest vessal can prove a fragile thing when faced with raw nature.
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Post by sandrainsydney on Oct 6, 2016 13:42:07 GMT
beautiful images, megan
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ragdall
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Post by ragdall on Oct 8, 2016 8:18:16 GMT
Megan, you have an amazing gift for creating evocative word pictures.
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Post by meganl on Oct 9, 2016 7:50:54 GMT
Our house, low walled, small windowed as though it feared to look outside, or perhaps it was being looked in upon that it truly feared. It liked its privacy a snug little but and ben with an extra ben end added when the old folk got to frail to stay own their own. Along the same strip of building came the byre, at one time a continuation of the house, with a door so narrow that never imagine a modern cow gracing any of the stalls.
At the end of the byre was a narrow gap between it and a the next range of buildings that led round past the midden to the garden, where tatties and kale vied with onions, carrots and swedes and of course the ubiquitous rhubarb for their place on the kitchen table. Around the dry stone walls of the garden gooseberries and blackcurrants dared to poke their leaves a few inches above the parapet while the briar rose grew with gay abandon, its scent heady on a warm summer evening as it mixed with the honeysuckle.
he next range began with what had once been the farm mill not a great overshot like Tormiston or Barony but a much smaller beast more akin to the click mill still to be found near Dounby which had a small horizontal wheel. the other end of the building being the storehouse. It was said at one time there were four mills served by the burn that ran down the valley.
The third range headed back along the line of the house had been the stable and hayloft but had long since fallen into disrepair and tumbled down to be replaced by a block built shed. The sence of a private place was enhanced by a dry stone wall that seemed to grow from the far corner of the house running at an angle to try and catch the new shed. It seemed to have failed heart in the endeavour leaving us just enough room to squeeze the car through into the courtyard past the honeysuckle clad stones.
Here it was on warm summer days that I would drag out the old Servis twin tub fill it with water and plug it into the extension socket hung out the kitchen window. On windy days the machine would stay in the calmness of the small flagstone square formed by the outer kitchen and coal shed these two small rooms stuck like limpets to the side of the main building. On calm days it would be dragged our onto the packed quarry dust of the main courtyard after all on Orkney sunshine was something to be cherished.
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Post by sandrainsydney on Oct 9, 2016 10:03:53 GMT
a different world - & did anyone ever imagine kale would become a superfood!
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Post by meganl on Oct 9, 2016 16:57:48 GMT
Very true Sandra when I was young we got a skelp if we came home with blue mouths for it meant we had been gorging on the wild blaeberries (blueberries)and wouldn't be fit for our tea
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