TThis week the hay is already being baled. There has been no rain for almost five weeks, and the earth is full of cracks where the sun has dried it out. The grass is thin and poor instead of its [...]
A late spring can bring feelings of malaise and tiredness. One of the tonics common to Orkney last century involved catching snails late at night, when they have a quiet feed, suspending them on a string in front of the [...]
Every morning when I get up early and look out at the sea from the upstairs window, I see more than two hundred seals in the bay. They turn somersaults, lie on their backs in the water, flapping a lazy [...]
The Hessdalen phenomenon of hovering and flashing balls of light is fascinating, especially as there now seems to be far more serious worldwide research into what used to be widely regarded with scepticism, and connected to the realms of UFOs [...]
The writings of T. Ratcliffe Barnett appear from time to time on our pages, through his atmospheric descriptions of travels through Scotland, visiting places like Cromarty, the birthplace of the geologist Hugh Miller. His own story is that of a [...]
There were no additives in the food eaten in the island at the turn of the century. Many families had a pig or two, and there was fresh pork to roast, fry or boil, and bones to make into porky [...]
We have had someone staying with us for a fortnight, who wanted to learn to spin, so the spinning wheels came into the kitchen again, along with the lazy kate, and the reel, and a sack of fleece, as well [...]
The merry dancers were swaying across the sky last night, to their own esoteric music, pale diffuse streamers shot with shimmering shafts of brilliant green. Sometimes in frosty weather it is easy to imagine that we can hear their thin [...]
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