Diary of a Deckhand - January 2008

Lambing is in full swing, with more and more small wet black wooly things emerging into the world every day. I always find myself wondering how sheep dont shrink in the rain like my wooly jumper did.

The promise of snow melted away to nothing, me being taken back to feeling 12 years old again, lying in bed trying to work out if the light filtering through the curtains has that silver plated quality of light reflected from snow. However when i peeked around the edge i was confronted with the usual green grass. I want a refund!

The good news is i am getting a new camera - an olympus C7070 to replace the small point and shoot thing i have now. I am a little nervous as one of the things i love about the small camera is that i can just bung it in my pocket and forget about it. The 7070 is much bigger, so i will lose that freedom. I guess we will see.
I also intend to post as many pictures as possible. During the summer this may be curtailed slightly as i will only have slow dialup internet access, but at the moment i have no excuse.

“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.

Or maybe that should be rambling block. Something is bunged up anyway. Maybe i need a squeeze. Or more fibre in my diet?

Maybe not a lot has been happening lately, I'm back on nightshift for one reason so becoming nocturnal obviously has a negative effect on your ability to waffle on the internet. Lambing is going well, with only one ewe left to pop before we have a little break before the next lot start. The number of cuddy lambs (ones raised by us, not their mothers for whatever reason) is blissfully low, however they are like a salvo of milk seeking missiles, whenever you open the gate to their pen you get mugged from the knees down by five small black wooly asassins hellbent on headbutting you into producing the white stuff.

I also have a new camera, well, actually its second hand, but its new to me. An Olympus C7070 that will hopefully allow me to expand my pictures. It has a great macro function on it regardless of what else it can do. I do need to get Ben at Scapa Scuba to make me a nice neoprene pouch for it when its in its not so little housing to go diving.

Suddenly I feel like a deckhand rather than a farm hand again, the smell of lamb poo and milk is replaced with diesel and that strange smell you get when an angle grinder gets really rather warm.

After a lot of deliberating we have decided to modify the galley of the boat and extend it out right to the sides and stern making it a much larger space. The galley i have is great, much bigger than many. However, sometimes i feel as if i am chained to the sink and the walls are closing in around me. There are probably pills you can take for that......or maybe alcohol. Anyhow, the process has begun to take the insides to bits and gradually move the steel walls outward several feet.

We have also decided to get something made to allow the anchor to be deployed easily. Before this modification it would have been a two person job and a pain in the bum to recover. Now it has its own little chute to plop it into the water. Now obviously this wouldnt be good in a big blow, but to be honest i dont care about the state of the whaleback if i am having to drop the hook in a big blow!











Someone much wiser than me once showed me the meaning of Tao. Before this i had looked at the sheer beauty and simplicity of the Zen. This passage, a Koan, is really rather apt at the moment.

There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.

“Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.

“Maybe,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

“Maybe,” answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

“Maybe,” said the farmer.

I have no idea what it was that drew me to macro photography. Maybe something similar that draws me to abstract art. My first camera was excellent for macro photography and i got some stunning images of diving gear one day by putting it on white paper in direct sunlight. This camera eventually went off to the big printer dock in the sky and i got the nice little compact. However its macro function was sadly lacking and it went on fleabay last week. The new camera.....whooooeee what a macro! I will share with you some of my latest efforts, plus my abstract painting (its a lighthouse in the Faroe Islands if you want to know where the subject is).

Well the work is carrying on despite the weather, snow, hail, rain, wind and even thunder!

Here is the progress so far...

Going


Going...


Gone!


With the new roof on.


And here are a few shots of the weather....

The forecast for the end of the week is for snow, and apparently lots of it. Now the inner child of mine screams with glee, looks out her woolly underwear and wonders quite how fast you can go on a sledge pulled behind a quad bike. The inner babysitter then gives it a slap (oh hang on, are you allowed to do that anymore, probably not) and tells it no to be so silly, this could mean a lot of work. This impending few days of hardship are totally hidden from the sheep, lambs bounce as if made of springs around the sheds, their mothers with full mouths at the hay feeders. The sheep outside all have haylage and get oats each day, but I do feel sorry for them on the days when you realise sheep are not white, but actually a rather mucky yellow when the pure crisp white of snow engulfs the land.

The two pics below taken in the Alnwick Garden (back south).






Suddenly Orkney will become and island again. The strong winds and snow will undoubtedly delay the ferry sailings and possibly even the flights. A strange feeling of being alone, making sure we have prepared because if the snow is really bad, the farm itself will become an island of its own. Of course we are blessed with a tractor and quadbike. If the worst comes to the worst we can dig our way out (ohhh half of me says woooooooooo bring it on, the other half goes oooooooh gawd I hope not), but I suspect in these warm and wet days of global warming the tractor will stay firmly where it is now and my hopes and fears will melt just as the snow does.