Fletcher Saga

John Holloway, Stronsay’s ornithologist, will be on Radio Orkney at 7:30am (local time) tomorrow morning (Thursday) talking about a rare visitor to Stronsay. It’s a slender-billed curlew. John tells me that the species is considered to be extinct by some authorities and there is a major ‘push’ on at present to find the breeding grounds in Northern Russia -  if they do still exist!

I’ve been a member of the “Friends of Cathedral Music” for several years, this wonderful group exists to raise funds and award grants (over £1.85 million since 1956) to sustain the tradition of music in cathedrals. I’ve never been able to attend any of the FCMs regular “gatherings” but this year the FCMs Northern Gathering started in Aberdeen and finished up in Kirkwall so I was able to attend the Kirkwall events. On Wednesday afternoon 40 of us were given a tour of St Magnus cathedral in Kirkwall followed by a demonstration of the organ by Dr George McPhee, organist at Paisley Abbey for the last 48 years; his daughter is a GP in South Ronaldsay, hence his Orcadian connection. Later that day we attended a civic reception hosted by James Stockan, deputy convenor of OIC, before going to the St Magnus Centre to hear a concert by the Mayfield Singers. On Thursday I opted out of the coach tour of Orkney but rejoined everyone for a marvellous and inspiring Choral Evensong in Kirkwall cathedral after which we adjourned to dinner at the Kirkwall Hotel before making our way back to the cathedral to hear Compline sung by the Orkney Schola. A very enjoyable couple of days listening to good music and enjoying good companionship; I discovered that I’m the most northerly member of Friends of Cathedral Music and I think I’ve persuaded more than one person to come back to Orkney for a holiday next year.
As readers probably already know I’m the organist at Stronsay’s kirk. This year we formed a small choir which sang a couple of items on Easter Sunday. We had begun having practices in the church hall on Wednesdays but the kirk ran out of heading oil. It was so bitterly cold in the church hall that the following week the choir gathered at our house where Maureen’s “baronial hall” was put to good use. Thankfully the kirk was soon re-stocked with heating oil and rehearsals continued in the church hall.
We had to smile when the national press was bemoaning the price of petrol which had reached £1.35 a litre - it’s been that price on Stronsay for the last 12 months. Petrol here is now £1.58 a litre.  Highland Fuels delivered 600 litres of heating oil to our house the other week and I await the bill with some trepidation, the last delivery was 70p a litre!
Summer is on its way, the daffodils and primulas are just about finished, the cattle are back in the fields after their winter sojourn indoors and the “nursery” next to Sampsons Lane has been very busy with lambing - there seem to be quite a few twins & triplets this year.
The May 2011 edition of the Limpet, Stronsay’s monthly newsletter, is now available online at www.stronsaylimpet.co.uk

It is now more than seven years since we moved to Stronsay after I retired from the Civil Service. We had intended to spend our retirement in Scarborough (North Yorkshire) but we soon decided we wanted somewhere quieter and more peaceful. Having spent a couple of holidays in Stromness in the late 1970s (when I was working in Brora, Sutherland) we used the internet to investigate the housing situation in Orkney and took the plunge; we arranged to rent a cottage in Orphir (Orkney mainland), sold our house, put all our effects into storage in York and on 31 January 2004 headed northwards. Shortly after arriving in Orkney we found a suitable property and on 28 March 2004 we moved into Claremont. You can read about this on the old BBC Island blogging site.

Last Thursday night (3 Feb) the evening ferry was cancelled because of forecasted high winds. It was certainly a a breezy evening and night, gusts of 100 mph on Stronsay and 122 mph recorded on mainland Orkney. The “official” Met Office windspeed at Kirkwall airport was a mere 78 mph. There was some minor damage to fencing on Stronsay and a few houses were without electricity for several hours until the Scottish Hydro engineers came over on the lunch time ferry to fix the problem. One newcomer to the island said he and his wife slept in the lounge as the bedroom (mostly built from wood) was flexing and groaning quite alarmingly; what eventually persuaded them to move into the lounge was watching the panes of glass in the bedroom window actually bowing inwards. Another lady said she spent the night sitting up in bed listening to the roofing timbers groaning under the relentless pressure of the winds. Several folk mentioned that they felt their houses “shaking” under the onslaught of 100 mph winds. However, there was little or no structural damage as most houses on Stronsay are 100+ years old and built to withstand the worst of Orcadian weather. The wind did wake me up at about 3am but I soon went back to sleep.

Wow! Six months since I last posted a blog - how time flies. One of my main jobs has been creating an online version of the Stronsay Limpet.

Stronsay now has a full-time GP! Dr Roger Neville-Smith took over as principle GP for the Stronsay Surgery on Monday 9th August.

It was the County Show on Sat 14 Aug and 60 people from Stronsay travelled on the early morning ferry to Kirkwall. All the ferry timetables had been changed just for the day so that island folk could get to the County Show and get back on the same day. However, two holiday makers were unaware of the changed timetable and missed the morning ferry. Fortunately the new “fast boat” was available for charter and the holiday makers managed to get to Kirkwall in time to catch their flight home.

On Sunday 15 August the monks of Papa Stronsay invited all the inhabitants of Stronsay to a barbeque. At 6:30pm the monks’ large boat took about 50 of us over to the monastery where we were treated to a marvellous barbeque and an enormous bonfire. The monks’ small boat ferried folk back to Stronsay in small groups, I returned at about 10:30pm but it was after midnight when the small boat made its last trip from Papa Stronsay. The monks report that “Google Street View” has now reached Stronsay, the photographs should be on-line some time next year.

Next door to Claremont is Stronsay’s old Police House which OIC were offering for sale at £75,000, closing date for offers was Friday, 17 September. It’s a two storey, two-bedroomed house which still contains the original police cells but needs a fair bit of work to make it a comfortable place in which to live. I’ve no idea whether or not it has been sold and I’ve not seen anybody near the place.

Some handy links:
Stronsay’s kirk has its own website where the webmaster, Heather, has done a splendid job.
Orkney library has an excellent archive section which now has its own blog - it’s well worth reading.
Kirkwall Hotel webcam is now online.
On the British Pathe archive there’s a short film clip of the Queen’s visit to Orkney in 1960, about half way through the clip there’s a shot of the Queen entering a shop on Stronsay! Unfortunately you have to watch an advert before the clip starts.

How time seems to just zip past. It certainly doesn’t seem like 3 months since my last blog. All the county shows will be taking place next month, when they are over it will be almost winter and yet another year will have passed! During the summer we had the usual RNLI buffet lunch which raised over £1,800 but the Stronsay Regatta had to be abandoned after two attempts; the first was cancelled because there was insufficient wind and the next effort two weeks later had to be cancelled because of high winds. Pity poor Viv Erdman from Ebenezer Stores who had prepared large amounts of mince & tatties for the competitors in both events!

Sue Fairbrother (who was Stronsay’s postmistress until a couple of years ago) took her camper van over to Kirkwall last month so that the garage could fit a new spare part and thus enable her van to pass its annual MOT test. Imagine the mechanic’s surprise when he lifted the bonnet and discovered that a blackbird had built its nest on top of the battery - and there were eggs in the nest! However, the mechanic was able to leave the nest & eggs undisturbed as he fitted the new part on Sue’s van before issuing a new MOT certificate. Sue drove very carefully indeed until she arrived back home later that day. Despite the long journey involving two ferry crossings the blackbird returned to the nest once the van was parked up outside Sue’s cottage. In due course the eggs hatched, at least one of the blackbird’s brood survived and Sue was able to remove the nest and associated debris from her van. Several people have remarked that similar bird’s nests have caused vehicles to catch fire; perhaps Sue was just lucky.

We have an old potting shed at the bottom of the garden. One day I forgot to close the door and when I went down to the shed a few days later I found that a pair of swallows had built a nest in the rafters of the potting shed. I’ve left the door open and haven’t been back so as to leave the birds un-disturbed. We see the birds darting in and out so presumably they have youngsters to feed.

As a part of the Powerdown project Stronsay now has a large communal greenhouse (it’s really a very large polytunnel) with 10 plots. The greenhouse is right next to the kirk and there are already some plants sprouting whilst work is still ongoing on paths and raised beds. Everyone is looking forward to a successful autumn-winter growing season. It seems that being out of the wind makes an amazing difference  but most apparent is the speed at which things are germinating. At the moment all the plots are taken in the greenhouse and there is also a waiting list:

The price of both heating oil and petrol are as high as they have been since we moved here six years ago. Last month I topped up our tank of heating oil and was charged 55.5 pence per litre. I shall have to consider changing over to electric storage heaters if the price keeps going up like this. I filled up the car last month and found that petrol was 137 pence per litre. Shortly afterwards that the car’s exhaust system finally gave up the ghost and I had to decide whether it was worth replacing the whole exhaust (which had already been repaired umpteen times by Andy, our very efficient mechanic) or buying an old “island” car. I finally decided to get the exhaust replaced as the rest of the car is in reasonable working order although bits such as the radio and electrically-operated windows do occasionally stop working.

On Thursday 15 April all flights were cancelled because of the volcanic ash problem and since then there have been no flights into or out of Kirkwall. At the time of writing (Monday 19 April) it seems that flights may start again tomorrow but those to/from Shetland are still cancelled. The only minor inconvenience to Maureen and myself has been the lack of newspapers but Stronsay Junior High School had problems because the school teachers who usually commute daily between Kirkwall and Stronsay had to stay at home; the situation was not as bad as it could have been because the school could call upon the services of Dave & Ruth Bowen who moved up to Stronsay a couple of years ago after taking early retirement from school teaching. The flight cancellations affected the wedding of our minister, Jennifer George, to Robin Graham on Saturday. Orkney Ferries amended their timetable for Saturday 17th April so that folk from Eday could attend the wedding and get back to Eday on the same day but the cancellation of all flights into and out of Kirkwall meant that quite a few folk from Robin’s folk were unable to attend the wedding; Jennifer’s people were fortunate enough to arrive from California, USA just before the flight cancellations began. However, getting over to the USA for a planned wedding blessing may prove rather tricky. Here’s a fashion note, kindly supplied by Ruth Bowen - Jennifer wore a champagne silk dress with a jewelled lace coat and train which were replaced by a lace bolero for the evening dance; the menfolk wore thistle buttonholes and pale purple ties.

Jennifer signs the register as Robin looks on

Jennifer and Robin in Stronsay kirk

We’re still waiting for the appointment of a permanent GP to replace Dr George McKay who retired last year. We have had a series of locums since George left but interviews of candidates to fill the post were held at the end of March and we’re just waiting to be told the results. Even without a permanent GP events in March showed just how good the medical service is on Orkney. I had a small medical problem on the morning of  Sat 13 March:

Sat 13 March - Saw locum GP (walk-in surgery 0930-1030 on Stronsay)
Mon 22 March - Examination by specialist at Balfour Hospital, Kirkwall
Fri 26 March - Endoscopy (upper & lower) at Balfour Hospital’s Day Surgery Unit (report on this arrived back at GP’s surgery on 30 March)
Tue 30 March - Ultra-sound scan at Balfour Hospital
Mon 26 April - Appointment with surgeon (Dr Dohrn) at Balfour hospital to discuss outcome of investigations

MV Samira (1,700 tons) arrived in Stronsay harbour on Easter Sunday and spent a couple of days unloading umpteen huge (600kg or 1,320 lbs) bags of fertiliser for the local farmers. For the next few days there was a continual procession of tractors and trailers carrying the bags from the quayside out to the farms. We’re accustomed to Stronsay’s roads being virtually empty for most of the time so the “heavy traffic” took a bit of getting used to.

The Orkney Summer Tranvel Brochure 2010 is now available online.

Steven Heddle has created a new website which contains lots of information about Orkney, it’s well worth a visit.

Margareth Richards, one of Stronsay’s nurses, appeared on BBC Radio Scotland’s gardening programme to enquire about her mystery plant (see my previous blog). Listen to her on the BBC website at page
<www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00r3zcx>
Margareth’s bit starts at 6 mins 34 seconds into the programme and ends at 10 mins 55 seconds. It’s available to listen to until Saturday 06 Feb but it may not be available to those outside the UK.

Christmas only seems to have been a couple of weeks ago but next month it will be Easter.

The big news on Stronsay is that our minister, Rev Dr Jennifer George, has become engaged to Robin Graham from Eday. The wedding is on Sat 17 April in Stronsay’s kirk.

It hardly seems possible that on the 31st of January, 2010 it was six years since we moved from Yorkshire to Orkney. I am kept fairly busy with editing The Limpet (Stronsay’s monthly newsletter), acting as organist at Stronsay’s kirk and attending the Michael Lee’s weekly evening classes in “singing techniques”. People also seem to think that I’m knowledgable on computer matters and seek my advice but I know my limitations and pass on any tricky problems to someone more skilled than myself (thanks, Malcolm). However, the important thing is that there’s no great stress involved and we’ve quickly realised that nothing is so important that it can’t be left for another day.

Margareth, one of Stronsay’s community nurses, has sent me photographs of yet another mystery plant - I think her house is part of the Twilight Zone! It is growing in a mixed pot of foliage plants (umbrella plant and peace lilies) in a south-facing porch. Margareth thinks that it is a varigated member of the Dracaena family and according to the books she has consulted it is a foliage plant. However, the flower spike is 10″ long and appeared very suddenly. Any ideas?

Dracaena 1

Dracaena 2

I forgot to add the NHS Orkney website vacancy notices for our GP and practice nurse. Maybe you know of someone who might be interested. Closing date is Friday 18 December.

This item was to be called “Advent approaches” but it took so long to finish it that it had to be re-titled “Advent is here”! The Stronsay Singers (the evening class which meets every Monday) are practicing with Stronsay’s Silver Darlings (local music group, average age around 18) for the Christmas Tree lighting ceremony on 12 Dec. The Silver Darlings will also be playing music for the Christmas Eve service in the kirk at 11:30 pm.

Our well-loved island GP, Dr George McKay retired at the end of November after being involved with the practice since 1996.  During Stronsay’s Harvest Home dinner earlier this month councillor Graham Sinclair described how George had become completely involved with all aspects of community life, building up a successful partnership with our previous doctor, Jon Buchan, writing stories and obituaries for the local “Limpet” newspaper, his love of the outdoors, fishing for lobsters in his dinghy, chasing greylag geese at the crack of dawn, and generally fitting in comfortably with the local community. Graham, on behalf of the Stronsay residents, presented George with a decanter and six glasses, suitably engraved with the map of Stronsay, and a bottle of 25 year old Highland Park whisky.  After George leaves we will have a locum doctor until NHS Orkney finds a full-time replacement.

Mitzi, the Bowen’s 12 year old “kitten” spent a few more days with us when her owners were away in the south of Scotland.  She developed a habit of hiding so that it took Maureen quite some time searching her “pig-pen” in order to track down the latest hiding place. One favourite of Mitzi’s was Maureen’s collection of cross-stitch materials

Mitzi hiding in one of Maureen

The Black Building in Kirkwall is no more. There are several photographs on the Orkney Image Library website.

Don’t forget the Maeshowe webcam which is scheduled to start on Monday 30th November 2009.

Are there any night owls like us who listen to BBC Radio 4 between 10:45 pm and 11:30 pm? There are gems such as “Pickups” and “Vent” but there are truly appalling items such as “Rik Mayall’s Bedside Tales”; what are your favourites?

When you look in the fridge and/or larder for a late-night snack and find a distinct lack of choice try this website for some fresh ideas - and some strange ideas too!