Flying Cat - July 2007

Things have been niggling away at my little kitty braincells for a few days now. This hodilay thing from Lewis, where it seems Tws and AnnieB have gone off on their hols concurrently, it just made me curious.....it's a cat thing. So, I thought I'd do a bit of dilettante detectoring in my spare time. A forensic trawl amongst the iPhoto archives really had me smelling something fishy: just look what I found! Obviously it required a serious amount of adding two to two and making more than four, as you do.... So Tws avers he is off to Lancashire, chuck, and AnnieB didn't say where she was going....well, just look at this...

Gaily painted beach huts at Brighton Beach (but, Brighton where?), much much further south than Lancashire. It looks the perfect spot for Tws, Herself, Boy and Little Herself to chill, man. But they couldn't take Getoffthe....

Meanwhile, sixty or seventy miles roughly along the coast at Port Albert, here's AnnieB's very own personal transport, her Britannia, her Nikki, chugging quietly and unobstrusively in to the harbour to sling her mooring ropes around some handy bollards, thinking that no-one will clock her low-quay arrival.

And, just to muddy the waters further, in a big city not too far away, a statue to a Mighty Huntress...and if it ain't Hermit to the Liff, I'm a Dutchcat! Yarra-darra-doo! Too thick to drink, too thin to plough, as someone once said.

The Ancient Female Parental Unit is gone - long live the afpu! And the Good Ship Rolling Acre floats out onto the Sea of Serenity, having passed through the many locks of Ire, Grit and Grue on the Canal of non-Confrontation. Mmmmmmmm......
Babybiped2 arrived two days before The Passing, just in time to add some much-needed zest to the stodgy Pud of Despond. Now it is almost time for him to flit away back to civilization in the Deep South and, within days, babybiped1 and the cub will arrive fresh and frisky from the joys of chavland (in the Deep Southeast). I'm happy. Extra tummytickles never go amiss. No stress on me, the afpu! Fpu didn't half make inroads into the Anorak Towers Cellar - Sherry section: honestly, a grown woman hiding in the kitchen with the sherry bottle(s). Just as well we don't have one of these retro-chic kitchen/living rooms - afpu would have spotted the miraculous Glass Whose Level Never Drops, a mysterious phenomenon, probably not unfamiliar to some of you...any of you...just one...?
During the Disruption, photographs were taken and I have selected a few...well, quite a few really...no, don't drop off...here they are:-

lupins in Rolling Acres.

green-veined white.

green-veined whites making more...

tadpole and three-spined stickleback. To scale...

male sticklebrick guarding his cave

two fat taddies

two hares

oops

m'Marmalade Chum enjoying dappled shade in his usual energetic fashion

a sign

I've looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down, but still somehow...

two males courtin one fat lady

mazey earrings for Island Threads


a misty Sunday at Kierfiold Garden

sid-the-potter's sign on the Brodgar road

bright eyes

look at all the little piggies and their piggy lives

big ears in binscarth

leaving binscarth
Before I go, I'd just like to say a Big Congratulory Purr to AnnieB on having achieved full certification in her chosen field. It fair raises the tone on ib when a blogger's hard graft leads to her being certified. I'm sure it'll help...

All this flitting around blogs and trying to catch up after the Great Disruption fair stretches a cat's intellectual capacities to the limit! Someone somewhere, maybe a Hermit on Sanday, or perhaps a barebraes on Shapinsay, commented that they hadn't managed to snap any hirsute Vikings: I remembered sending fpu, afpu and digicam through to the wee grey toon on the day that the Sea Stallion of Glendalough arrived (in the chilly slate-coloured dawn of a July morning) and, having ploughed a furrow through the iPhoto archive, I've dug up a few snaps. Having had a very cold, damp crossing with contrary wind all the way, the bold adventurers were looking a bit knackered, but, with the help of Kirkwall Sailing Club's hospitality at the Girnal, and some efficient co-ordination by the secretary of The Friends of Orkney Boat Museum, they were showered, dried out and got supplies from local shops (many Argo's carrier bags in evidence). If ancient fpu hadn't been there, female parental unit might have stayed longer listening to the lilting Danish tongue...almost as sexy as Norsk...so I'm told. Must ask Ruth...

Sea Stallion of Glendalough

some bearded vikings (not the females, obviously)

Picnic...at 11ºC! And a large crutch.

Flying the flag

a bit of wear and tear on the stempost

shiny in-harbour bow decoration
And then there was the day - 19th July - the parental units took babybiped2 and ancient female parental unit to Hoy. And it was shut. Pretty much. Don't go to Hoy a) with the tourist brochure or b) without your own food, is pretty much the advice they came back with. If ever an island needed a hefty kick up the bahookie, it's Hoy! The Hoy Hotel is shut; The Hoy Inn is shut; The Stromabank doesn't do lunches through the week and says so in the brochure, so 10/10 to them for having up-to-date information in print; The Royal Hotel, Longhope was shut, but the owner said he 'could do fish&chips if they didn't mind waiting'...not an enticing prospect...seemingly there's a new caff at Moaness, but never a sign to point the weary traveller there; bless the ladies of the Lyness Interpretation Centre Café for being open; the soup was hot and home-made, afpu luckily got the last bacon roll (at around 2pm at the height of the tourist season) and the other bipeds got rubber burgers. Which were hot. But bore as much resemblance to beef as Hoy does to a hearty welcome. Nevertheless, with an eighty-year-old person in tow, all were just grateful of a cheery welcome and hot stuff to eat.

Longhope Lifeboat Museum

Thomas McCunn - lifeboat retd. - bows and launching doors

looking along the port side

the cockpit

winch at top of slipway

door
There are things well worth visiting on the island, like the above; Rackwick; the walk out to the Old Man; the walk through the valley with the ranger; a scramble up the Culags; the Lyness Museum (if it isn't starved of funds) and, in the past, one of the two Martello Towers that guard Longhope (a convoy assembly point during the Napoleonic Wars), but Hysteric Scotland have tarted up the interior and now charge £4 a head, so it was a quick stroll around the outside and away. Not worth £15, all agreed. A beautiful island...that could take some lessons from Westray and North Ronaldsay, two name but two of the North Isles whose get-up-and-go has not got up and went.