Flying Cat - April 2007

All Hail Eostre, Dawn Goddess!
Refreshed and raring to get creative after a break from all that boob&pig knitting malarkey, I was looking for something to occupy my dainty paws, when I espied in Mr Shearer's excellent emporium in the metropolis, a strawy basket full of big bonny goosey eggs. Inspiration rose in my furry besoom as the sap rises in the trees; I brought three back home to Anorak Towers at great expense - 65p each! It's a lot to a cat at the start of voarstrangling season - and spent several hours closeted in fpu's den painting them. It's all to do with fertility&fecundity I'm told; not within my experiential spectrum, but I don't begrudge the rest of you a bit of going forth and multiplying, being fruitful and filling the earth (now that last bit I do understand) if you've nowt better to do.
When the paint had dried, me and digicam toured Rolling Acres with les trois oeufs décoratifs and did a photoshoot in the afternoon sun. And then had to wait AGES while mpu hogged the computer....it's well past my bedtime.....gurrrrrr. (Youse can do that mouse-hovering thing if you like. I'm away to my scratcher, too tired to do titles).

I'm not saying anything...but...there's an awful lot of them tiny wrigglers, and I don't know where their parents come from, or their parents parents, and so on. It's a worry. Rolling Acres is heaving with the little dark wrigglers. How is my small-but-perfectly-formed homeland going to cope with this population explosion? Who's going to feed, house and educate them all?
Then I got to thinking. Me and m'Marmalade Chum, the most Important Native Residents here, have not, it has to be said, done our bit in the breeding area here or hereabouts. The less important creatures, like the bipeds, have only produced two, which ain't excessive, so really, what it comes down to is, either we all go at it hammer and tongs and fill the place with our own offspring who will, of course, look after and cherish us in our advancing decrepitude (excuse me, I feel I must remonstrate with my amanuensis here; I am NOT advancingly decrepit!) or, we allow other creatures to move in and fill the gaps. So, having thunk awhile, I have decided to welcome them with open jaws (ahem, FC, I think that should be open arms {fpu}) kindly don't interrupt or Tws will get confused, and I'm preparing a Big Sign for me and m'Marmalade Chum to carry on our HUGE Rolling Acres Welcomes Asylum Seekers March....but we're not doing it yet, as the weather is sh*t and we're rather fairweather felines. But it'll happen soon.....Honest.

Nearly there, carry on wriggling.

We're out, carry on munching.

Alright lads, spread out a bit, no need for overcrowding.

Mmm, warm beyond beleaf...oy! what's that ruddy great shadow?

Hot black rubber, it doesn't get any better...was Anne Somers a frog?

I was only there in a supervisory capacity, you understand, but I did manage to hang on to digicam long enough to snap a few pics of Kergord, otherwise, Shetland's Peerie Mootie Forest. It was April the First. Well, what can you do...the date was not of my choosing: we (me and fpu) had flown up on our ADS cards (yes of course cats get them too, do keep up) to surprise afpu (ancient etc..) in her humble cott at the Sooth End of that very loooong skinny Mainland oop north. Anyway, that was Saturday 31st March, so Sunday needed to be elevated to more than just a desert of hangover curitivity. Que faire? as our French cheums would dire....and it could have been, but for the kindness (suddenly reminded of Blanche Dubois "I have always relied on the kindness of strangers") of bidey-in in-law Suzan pronounced Suzanne as in Leaonard Cohen, who 'phoned Lea Gardens and asked if we could visit, even though they were not yet open for the season, and got a yes from father McKenzie...what a nice man! So, the entourage of wimmin and FC, set out for t'north of Mainland and the first port of call was the truly wunnerful Bonhoga Gallery at Weisdale. The current exhibition was of silver jewellery, produced by graduates of art schools in a workshop, whose raison d'être is to allow a breathing space for said newly ex students, between ivory towerdom and the cruel arena of commerciality. Fpu was sore tempted and did succumb to a pair of earrings, the reasoning being, that lickle bro' had insisted on paying for afpu's Birthday Dinner the night before, (Gurka Kitchen, well worth a visit, and how many 80 year-olds would choose an Indian, not many, I surmise) and, therefore, spare dosh was burning a hole in her pocket. Any excuse will do! As it is a short walk up to Kergord, and the excellent Bonhoga caff, chicken noodle soup (large bowl) needed walking off, orff we jolly well went. I think it's a similar size to Binscarth. Only the trees are more stunted! Whenever fpu moans about the climate in Orkney, I shall just fix her with a hard stare and say, "Kergord." That'll put her gas at a peep! So there you are. A Flying (Cat's) Visit to Shetland. And....Lea Gardens...what can a cat say...Pure Dead Brilliant. (Also, fpu wishes me to add, awfully nice man with a Real Beard - une Barbe Véritable!) Salut!

if you go down to the woods today...

a bulging trunk

lesser celandine carpet

lovely lovely lichen

beech in a fork

baby beech

moss and lichen

lichen on moss...

rookery nook

Well, plus ça change, plus ça même chose, one might say, but in this instance, blimey o'reilly, nothing même about it, mes petites meh-mehs! The bipeds have, for some years, celebrated their conjoining in heavenly matressmoney at The Best Restaurant in The Universe, in St Margaret's Hope. This year, being a Significant Anniversary, they decided to do Something Different...an overnight stay at the North Ronaldsay Bird Observatory, (and three star guest house.) Arriving at the gravel airfield on Tuesday morning's Islander (max. bodies including pilot, ten) and after being run to the Bird Obs. and given tea&coffee, they set out to walk the alleged four miles to the Old Beacon and New Lighthouse. Possibly an Irish four miles, and much more like three, but a pleasant wander in brilliant sunshine, with plenty of fluffy white clouds arranged flittingly against the blue; made even more pleasant by the discovery that 'shop & PO' on the map included the tiniest pub ever, only a mile from home. Some time later, having been entertained by the landlady and woman of parts - animal husbandry, spinning, knitting, plus the aforementioned, and a local reprobate with a decided twinkle in his eye, the last leg was remarkably painless. Local North Ron mutton for dinner, a wander on the beach and ...... dear reader, a sensitive feline would draw a veil, and I am nothing if not a sensitive feline! The following day, before the rain, a stroll to Burrian and Bridesness, lunch and back to Kirkwall, via Sanday to drop off a family of five and pick up four peripatetic teachers. It was grey, dreich and bumpy, but nobody cared, least of all the boy who got to sit 'at the sharp end' beside the pilot and wear headphones...sporting a grin like a slice of watermelon.

The Map (designed and drawn by Ian Scott, sculptor and artist

South Bay

The Airfield at Treb Farm

War Memorial (for AL)

Inhabited house with seacoloured doors and matching vehicles

Uninhabited house...of which there are many

For our friends Oot West...a northerly fank

Seaweedeating sheep outside the dike

The Old (unrestored) Beacon at Dennis Head

...and again...

...and who is this gazing up at Dennis' marvellous erection?

tiny 50p size sheep prints - Yowe Tuesday

two shadows on the shand

South Bay Sunset

take the tram to the pier

fulmar

Mr Traill's windmill, 1907

Mr Traill's windmill, reputed to have been one of the last working windylights in Scotland
You won't see me say this often - indeed, maybe never again - but, having seen the photographs, me and m'Marmalade chum are firmly of the belief that a night in Big Cage was infinately preferable to wandering about in Orkney's wee flat greenish answer to what the 'strylians fondly call their "Great Australian Buggerall". To a cat's eyes, North Ron is a tiny soggy version of just that! An outsize planticrub...without the plants. We would like to thank the Sheil Family for their hospitality and heated beds. Bipeds! Who can fathom them!

{Early a.m. THUD THUD......THUD.....thudthudthudthud......THUD! Pause. In the Sunroom of Eternity, two furry forms, lugs at ease, drift back into snooze mode: in the Marital Chamber, two rotund forms turn over and forget to wonder why builders would start work quite so early....and so....contiguously......THUD THUD....THUD....."Wha'? Who? Eh???" mpu lumbers - sorry - leaps lithely from under the machine-embroidered percale-clad duvet, throws on his keks, slings the bins round his neck, and sets out on a Rolling Acres Rapid Recce. Builders? Vernally Confused Postie? Eager would-be cooncillor canvassing? No. *sigh* Just the itinerant MacRoodies walloping a large partan-tae on the Anorak Towers apex.}
Makarakit why don't you, you feathered fornicators! Nasty flapsy flegsy freaks! How I hates 'em. Mr and Mrs Yehoodie MacRoodie are back on the Roofridge of Confrontation - and Next Door North - and South - everywhere a cat of nice sensibilities looks, there they are. I lift up mine eyes and behold Maw and Paw MacRoodie: mad, bad and dangerous to know.
It's not just the sky that's blue these halcyon days: as I boldly go on Ridge Patrol, a brave but lonely figure (for m'Marmalade chum is not of a boldly-going disposition) hoarse obscenities defile the clear air, drowning out the lyrical lark.
"Craaa craaa craaa," they croak, "Ging awaa ging awaa ging awaa." What me? Mighty FC? I think not!
But then...."Here kittykittykittykittykits"...."C'mon pussycatums"......"Oh there's a CLEVER cattiepie"....and down I trot, along the high ways and byways of roofridgery, onto garage roof, a finial leap to Gate Post, and the fearless feline finds himself in a Big Free Hug. In the end, mis amigos, it's all that Liff's about, really. But I draw the line at hugging a hoodie....Dave.

FC fearlessly poking about in the guttering

avast there me croodies

I'm coming down because I choose to...

Tonight, fpu, I am not using the gatepost.

servants - you have to love 'em.
and finally...

this groatiebuckie earring is going to Shetland Folk Festival...if someone remembers.

wartime installations
what lies we see
behind the black curtain

there's the old man
sentinal out the box
but not falling

your country needs
wrecked lives bone shards flesh wounds
without a doubt

from shore to shining shore
feel the distance
hello america

Waitin', watchin' wonderin'..........well might you be thinking "booooring" "sooo what" "yawnsville"....but you would be wrong. Dig a pond, fill it, weed and seed it, then do the www thing and bingo! Liff, but not as we know it Jim. It's a blast! A waterweedy soap opera so finely crafted, so well-paced, so excellently cast, it could almost be the Archers. It's that exciting....
And here are some cast members.

Dear innocent, vegetarian tadpoles enjoying the April sunshine

Little knowing what lies in store for them as Jaws of The Deep creeps out of the green gloom......a damselfly larva waits to grab a prêt-à-manger wriggler.

A caddisfly larva, decked out in overlapping leaflets of canadian pondweed. Haute couture on the tadwalk.

This caddisfly babe has fashioned her western settler bonnet from neatly trimmed beech leaf....wagons ho!