Whit news?

It is 7.55 on a Thursday evening and the family are busy doing lots of things, there is no football until Saturday and in 5 minutes time I can sit in front of the T.V. and watch 1 hour of uniterrupted River city, followed by another blissful hour of House
does life get any better?

and only 3 full days till the summer holidays start!!!!!

Come Spetember, I will have lived on this island for 16 years. Before then I lived in a large foreign city with 9 million people and before then I lived in Scotland's largest city.
Coming up to Shetland was "something different for a year at the most" and here I am, all this time later actually starting to consider this piece of land 5 miles by 3 miles as my home.

I have had 3 trips "south" this year to the city I have always known as home. I am always excited when the plane touches down and I get a glimpse of the M8 full of traffic, and the Babcock building and the knowledge that shops, shops and more shops are not very far away.

I have just returned, luckily on Saturday, from one of these trips which not only had me staying in Glasgow, but travelling like a commuter on friday morning to Edinburgh. I say luckily as the airports both Glasgow and Edinburgh were closed on Sunday and there were no ferries to Whalsay or planes into Sumburgh on Monday, so had I not been on Saturday's plane I would have had to stay south for 2 extra days.
In the past this would have left me ecstatic, but I have to say I must be getting used to this island living because I just felt so relieved that I had come home on Saturday.

So as the old song says, it's oh so nice to go travelling, but it's oh so much nicer to come home.

This is now the third consecutive day off school.
there is washing, ironing, cooking and cleaning all screaming for my attention.
when I am at work, I am motivated to get these things done in the hour and a half window between getting out of bed, having breakfast and getting to work.
somehow when the house is busy with morning activity it seems the right thing to do, join in by emptying the dishwasher, washing machine make pack lunches etc etc. It is like a competition with oneself to see how much can be done.
Then off to work with a smug feeling of leaving everything ship shape and on a really good day, the dinner ready too.

But..............
When there is no 8.30 deadline to get out of the house and the day stretches ahead with a good possibility of another day to follow, the urgency is lost, taking with it the momentum to get through the chores. Inertia has set in, followed very quickly by procastination.

Even writing this becomes a displacement activity.

So, I am going to stop now and when I come back in 2 hours timeI will have finished all the aforementioned chores and I can reward myself with a little island browsing and see what is happening in other far flung places.

It's official, before we even reach 5.30 and listen in avidly to radio shetland, we know already that tomorrow is a No School Day.

Apparantly the forecast is so bad that to make ;ife easier all round the powers that be have closed the schools in advance.

I have to say on our little stretch of land with its close proximity to the sea, our roads are passable with care.

Tomorrow might be quite a different story however and we should ot question the decisions of those who know best.

Here's to a long lie!!!!

Looking north towards Yell from the kitchen window would suggest that there will be no school tomorrow.

Reading the forecast on the 10 weathr forecast from the fair isle would suggest there will be no school tomorrow, so now all we have to do is tune into radio sheltiland at 5.30 and hope those three words we all want to hear will be announced

"Schools closed tomorrow"

We wait with anticipation!!!!!

The day that Hurricane Katriona hit the Big Easy was also a sad and extremely windy day in Whalsay and our Trampoline was last seen going over 2 dykes (14ft and safety net) and coming to a sad end in the corner of the field much to the slight interest of the horses.

After succumbing to offspring pressure a new one was finally ordered.
It arrived withing the stated 5 working days much to our delight, but sadly the 10 day weather forecast rom Fairisle would suggest that this is not the best time to construct it.

If we are to believe what we read from
http://www.northisles-weather.co.uk/#FORECAST
we are in for snow yippeee!