Flying Cat - September 2008

The last Sanday Sunday of 2006. Who was to know it would be the last chance saloon for hitching a lift on the Sanday Light Railway? On a whim {so I leave you to guess whose idea it was:-} the parental units drove onto the ferry on a dull damp day at the end of August, anticipating An Awfully Big Adventure. They were not disappointed...

Sanday Central

Sanday Central signal box

signage and a Lewisian lamp post (as in CS, not Isle of)

Level Crossing

'This train is built for speed now, this train'

'Rockin' rollin' ridin' out along the bay

'Maybe it is raining where our train will ride' How true. It rained so heavily at one point on the road to Sanday Angora, the wipers were outdone and mpu had to pull over until the shower went through. So unlike this summer...

Northern Lights platform. Alight here for the Brief Encounter Tearoom...where Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard briefly encountered one another, with gloriously stiff upper lips and buttoned-up emotions, on an endless loop in the Waiting Room.

'The switchman knew by the engine's moan...'

back at Sanday Central

'This train am bound for glory, this train'

Sanday's own Casey Jones, assisted by a teenage Foden, ran both the diesel and steam units from the engine shed to the Northern Lights halt and the welcoming (and warming) pleasures of the Close Encounters Tearoom. This is where the pu's would have taken bb1 and the Cub+Pineapple the cloud leopard the following year, but alas, by then it was no more. Fortunately the restaurant at Backaskaill more than filled the gap. But no railway to delight children of any age...'There's a new world somewhere they call the promised land' and I hope Casey Jones has found it wherever he is now. Shame it wasn't Sanday...

I wouldn't thank you for the buttermilk every day of the week except Sunday, and, as a sensible feline, I try to go easy on the whisky too. I can't speak for my parental units, but one does ones best to restrain them. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions! And possibly quite a lot of Orkney's nicer urban footpaths are paved with slabs from Cruaday, home of the famous Sandwick fishbeds. The Fossil Centre on Burray is home to fishy fossils from here.


information board

a big hole in the hill

a rocky hard place

dragon's tooth marks - far too huge for a Stromness Dragon, thankfully

awaiting sculptors

finished product

giant's bookrest

Ophelia's hair

Swedish colours

all washed up

a thinker's throne (for Tws)

scanning the horizon...



Hoy in the distance. If you can't see Hoy, you're going the wrong way...

You make me feel...you make me feel...you make me feel like a natural feline. In this season of fruity mellowness there is so much to share - neatly plucked birdies; nicely gralloched rodents; accidental tatties; gargantuan tomatoes and many other delights. Out of the thoughtfulness that is so very moi, I leave out the plucking&gralloching. I know you bipeds suffer from false sensitivities and I have no wish to cause offence. This time.

My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue

an everlasting vision of the everchanging you

a wondrous world of magic in writs of blue and gold - this is where it starts to unravel. I need Muness to sort out the words...and a coat of many colours, yellow-green on every side...no...maybe it is working

a tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold

a tomato on a fivepee piece so tiny to behold


once he reached for somethin golden hanging from a tree (oh don't quibble, just use you imagination for goodness sake!)

once amid the soft silver sadness in the sky I saw a tiny fluttering of sparrows dropping by...

soon within my tapestry along the rugged road...I came upon a green daytide that ebbed as it still flowed

it grew and grew and suddenly, in days of twenty-one

there was a river all of green where once there had been none

it seemed that they had fallen into someone's wicked spell, that made a little tuber grow where none before had fell. (I thinks things are getting out of hand now. Blaming Muness and his songbook would be too easy...)

when you're down and troubled and you need a helping hand...

close your eyes and think of me (it makes you wonder just who's writing this sometimes, with images like that. I must get to the bottom of it...)

is this a lasting treasure? or just a moment's pleasure?

I would go to the ends of the earth...if you lead I will follow anywhere that you take me to. Which, for these Balsam Poplars, could be quite like the ends of the earth judging by their taproots. Book says 'do not plant within 40 metres of a dwelling'...it surely doesn't apply to the islands...well I won't be here to see it.

soon within the tapestry along the rugged road...(this is what a rather more grownup version of IT's twiglets looks like...within about three metres of dwelling...or less)

you've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face (look closely, the leetle feeshes are smiling...because I can't get at them!)

soon you're going to find you're beautiful as you feel (just got a bit of metamorphosing to do)

hey little fishes, you've got a friend! Don't you know don't you know don't you know, you've got a friend...

they'll hurt you and desert you and take your sole if you let them...but don't you let them...

the light of love is shining in your eyes *prrrrr* will you still love me tomorrow?
What sort of a question is that? Keep on opening the tins...
Now my brain hurts. All this blog grooming is getting too much for a cat. Just trying to scramble through all the detritus to reach the top of the page is a sisyphean task for a delicate wee moggy...oh well, wha daurs wins oot in the end...