Buildings

On one day of our Orkney holiday we visited the Italian Chapel. This was built round two Nissen huts out of cheap materials - plaster, concrete, driftwood, scrap iron - by Italian prisoners of war during World War 2. Various of them were tradesmen and one was an artist. It's amazingly lovely and touching.

This is just a trompe l'oeil window on flat plasterboard.

You can see the love, effort and faith that went into the building and decorating of the chapel, to make a reminder of their homeland.

 

And this is Skara Brae, a Neolithic village (5000 years old) that was (partly) uncovered in a storm in 1850 and subsequently excavated. There are Neolithic remains all over Orkney; this was the first we visited, but we saw quite a few more, and they share similar features. There are no trees to speak of on Orkney and so the people had no access to wood except perhaps driftwood. So they used stone, which is plentiful and which lends itself to being split into slabs (though without metal - this was still the Stone Age - it can't have been easy to do this).

 

 

Most of the houses have these "dressers" opposite the doors. Whether the people put ornamental things on them (it's so tempting to imagine that they might have put their favourite pot on the shelf, filled with some of the beautiful wild flowers that grow on Orkney) or simply used them for storage - or possibly some devotional objects - no one knows. The inhabitants also seem to have had stone beds - presumably filled with bedding made of heather or straw and covered with animal skins - and fireplaces in the middle of the rooms, and stone storage boxes and possibly stone fish tanks.

 

You do half-wonder if it's some elaborate hoax and you may see Barney Rubble driving along in his stone car... . But assuming that it's not, it's just so amazing to see how people might have lived so long ago. It makes you realise how like Neolithic people we must be... and how lucky we are in comparison.

 

 

 

This is a tomb, which bears some resemblance to the houses. We saw various tombs and they were all quite similar. The people seem to have put only bones in the tombs, on stone shelves - not whole bodies or even complete sets of bones. There's a theory that they may have moved bones in and out for some reason - maybe something to do with the stages of a journey to the afterlife, but no one knows.

 

 

The entrance to this tomb is very low, so a trolley is provided for you to lie on and push yourself backwards inside. Mr Life did this, though I, being shorter, just crawled.

 

These are the rocks just outside the tomb. I imagine they haven't changed a lot in the past 5000 years and you can see how they form natural slabs. It seems likely that the bodies were exposed on the rocks until the bones were picked clean by birds and animals.

 

 

And these are the Stones of Stenness, one of various henges (or at least bits of henges) on Orkney. Just as with Stonehenge, there are various theories about why they were erected, but no one actually knows.

 

It's all very humbling. We're here for a brief time and then we go. I'm not sure that our generation will leave anything so permanent behind.

Strolling and birthdays

 

 Before church this morning, I strolled along the beach in the sunshine.

 

 

The prom was fairly empty; most walkers were on the beach, many with frolicking dogs.

 

 

There was no wind; the sea was good-tempered.

 

 

It's all so familiar: the shells, the seaweed, the crisp sloosh of the waves. I like living in an island nation, never far from the sea.

 

 

In the distance you can see the low hills of Fife.

 

 

Meanwhile, Grandson strolled along by the Thames with Daughters 1 and 2, Brother and Sister-in-Law (her first appearance on my blog, I think).

 

It was Brother's 65th birthday on Friday (happy birthday, Brother - how can you be so old?) which reminds me of our visit to the theatre on Tuesday. It was the Edinburgh Playhouse - I've just looked it up and it has 3059 seats, the largest working theatre in Britain, according to Wikipedia. (I didn't know that.) It wasn't entirely full, but nearly. We were in the front stalls. Near the end of the interval there came the distant sound of young people singing "Happy Birthday" to one of their party. After the first few bars, many of the audience started singing with them - quietly but audibly - and at the end, there was a subdued cheer. Then the conductor of the orchestra, who had just come back in, started playing it on the keyboard. The whole 3000-ish-strong audience burst into a loud rendition, finishing with enthusiastic cheers and claps.

 

I have no idea where in the theatre or who the birthday person was, but it must have been a bit startling for him/her!

Dampness

These are your Mother's Day daffodils, Daughter 2. Aren't they lovely?
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The Weather Elves are playing one of their customary jokes on Britain - after basking in warmth and sunshine for the past couple of weeks, we're now being chilled by sharp winds which throw down hailstones the size of - well, not golf balls, though I'd love to claim that. Seed pearls, possibly. Chunky seed pearls. But anyway, none of it's doing my spring flowers much good. I've moved Daughter 2's daffs into the sheltered bit beside the front door. The cats haven't stirred from the sofa all day, as far as I've seen. I think they've gone into hibernation.
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It's odd when you doddle along for 120 years or so, under the impression that you know what you think about something, and then you're made to reassess your opinion. For example, on the radio yesterday they were talking about drought - some parts of England are about to have a hosepipe ban to restrict use of water, though Scotland isn't in great danger of having this inflicted on it (as you'd realise if you were here, looking out of the window with me.) They were discussing putting washing-up water on flowerbeds and being careful not to run the water all the time you're brushing your teeth and so on. Then someone said that he puts the cold water that comes out of the tap while he's waiting for it to get hot in a watering can and waters the garden with it.
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And everyone was jolly-gooding and then one chap said that actually it would be better to run unwanted or used water down the sink, because then it goes straight back into the system, whereas water on the flowerbeds doesn't. Which hadn't occurred to me.
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I wonder if this is really the best thing to do. The thought of drinking (in due course) someone's used washing-up water doesn't appeal much but... . Hmm.
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No doubt my brother has an opinion about this. I shall await his comment.
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Daughter 1 and Grandson were here today. He has a cold. I won't tell you precisely what happened when he sneezed but he looked most surprised. We were a bit surprised ourselves. Fancy such a small person being able to produce from his tiny nose such a stream of... yes, well. (Two streams, actually.)

A chilly seat

We were up at Mum's flat today, collecting things for her to take to hospital for her operation tomorrow. We looked in a cupboard in a spare bedroom. Among other delights we found a china bedpan. The heating's not on in the flat so this item was very cold.

I had never seen it before. Where has it been for the past 60+ years?

"I'll take it to a charity shop," I said.

"Oh no," said Mum, "I might need it after my operation."

Hmm. I don't really think so. Can you imagine being unwell in that department of your anatomy and having to sit on a very hard, cold, shiny device like this? I now realise that this is why plastic was invented.

Plant pot, anyone? Available in a charity shop in Edinburgh from tomorrow.

Wanted!

I went to the dentist in town this afternoon and afterwards walked up to George Street to meet Mr Life so that we could go home together. This poster was stuck to a letter box.

It says:

Have you seen this girl?

Then please tell her she is perfect *

[then in handwriting at the bottom]

* and that I'm sorry.

I hope it worked. I think.