Diary of a Deckhand

“You done a winter yet?” seems to be a standard question among people who find you have decided to stay in Orkney. Answer no and they get this evil glint in their eye, a knowing look and with a certain amount of glee that “it can be bad you know?” Coming from Northumberland it wasn't that much of a shock. Back south they can do a pretty good winter too, the wind scudding in off the steely gray north sea, blowing the tops off the waves. Wading through snow to get to the car and then finding the roads unpassable on the short journey into what was then work.

Well, I did my first Orkney winter, and it was interesting. Now I am in the middle of my second and am almost relishing getting the badge of honour that accompanies not running away to southern Cornwall in the desperate search for sunlight.

The Orcadian winter seems to come from nowhere. Autumn arrives all in a hurry, the nights seemed to go from never dark, sterling silver light to the thick inky blackness that envelops the countryside from 8pm, then 7pm, and suddenly you need headlights on at 3 in the afternoon. It’s almost as if the world has forgotten about us, and it’s a rush job. Maybe that’s why we get 3 months of wind in a couple of days too. See I have a theory, that Orkney was once like New Zealand, all hilly and pointy, and possibly a good deal further south west. But then the wind blew and howled and scoured the very rocks from the earth, tore at the foundations of the islands and slid them over the seabed to where we are now. Hell, we might have even been near the Canary Islands once.

I have always said Orkney is a land of extremes. Its extreme beauty is coupled with its extreme weather. A gentle breeze usually is just a warm up for a gale that is thundering over the Atlantic towards us, a gentle shower is simply the rain drops that have won the race to splot into the window pane. Soon enough the rest of the contenders will be along and the gutter will overflow in thick ropes of water. But to counteract all these mad days there are the still days. Where there is no sound other than the birds or the waves breaking on the shore, the air motionless and the water like glass.

Hoy, the Dark Island, takes on its winter plumage and gains its covering of snow, blown into the gullies and rocky holes of its flanks, a temporary white beacon in a land of green and blue. Puddles seem to be filled with feathers, the fronds of the ice ferns spread from the edges to the middle, the grass crunches under the footfall of your wellies. Riding the quad I curse for leaving my gloves in the shed, arriving at the field my hands barely feel part of me and harsh weight of the bale, the cut of the bailer twine is hardly felt. You can see the breath of the sheep in the air as they baa for their dinner.

Also in the winter are the nights spent curled up in the duvet listening to the wind trying to find a way in and images of the boat tight on her ropes flit around my weary mind. Last year I lived on the small boat until November, eventually giving up and moving into a house share after being unable to pull my “home” into the dock and get aboard. This year the spare room on the farm is much nicer, and I don’t need to worry about being able to actually be able to haul several tonnes of boat back to the quayside (usually in the pouring rain or spray).

And so the solstice has been and passed, allegedly this means we are past the middle and from here on in, its getting better. Someone had better tell the weather though, because I really get the feeling it has a little more snow to get out of its system before its done.