Winter stayed well into April, and as I dug holes for apple trees T. S. Eliot swirled in my head: “April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with...
Category - Column
Haar
Low cloud is quite frequent in Orkney, especially in the winter. Coming from the West, it rolls in across the central part of the mainland, over Stenness and Harray, then funnels slowly through the narrow gap at Binscarth to...
Deploy the drones
We are now all familiar with how the ROV, the remotely operated vehicle as it is called, is...
The Ram on the Rock
Like a Nordic port of old, the Faroese capital of Torshavn smells evocatively of salt and tar. As...
Riches from the sea
A mile or so up the coast from the farm, a whale corpse is decomposing in a ‘geo’ (the Orcadian...
Der Mond
I’ve been getting text messages from the moon. A note pops up on my phone asking if the moon can...
Green Flash
In the light of evening the low sun began to illuminate the wall of the croft with a soft amber...
Orkney housing in the 21st century?
The John D. Mackay Memorial Lecture in the 2014 Orkney International Science Festival looked at the...
Rain
One of the exciting things about Orkney is that it is truly oceanic. We are seventy islands in the...
Frost
A sudden dip in temperature reminds us that, here in Orkney, we are closer to the Arctic than we...