Stromness Dragon

This is based on a true story. I am going to write it as a short story in several parts, but if I get a good feeling about it, I might expand it and see where it goes!

When her mother died, Olivia felt nothing but relief. She had played the part of the youngest daughter diligently, and followed her parents’ Victorian notions of duty by staying at home to look after them in their old age. Her sisters had both had jobs, if not careers, and both had married and now lived too far away to be of any use.

Her mother’s death left Olivia financially independent (her reward for giving up her youth, she supposed) and she was at liberty to pursue whatever dream had not been stifled by the claustrophobia of the sickroom. Lying on her wooden bed and hearing the springs creak beneath her, Olivia’s first thought was ‘away’. Away to where, though? She had never travelled and had little notion to see the world. If she had a companion perhaps, or a husband, then a journey of exploration might have been undertaken, but Olivia could not envisage herself mounting camels, or taking a train across continents. She could not see the point of holidays.

What leisure time Olivia had enjoyed during her parents’ years of sickness and dotage had been spent in educating herself. She had forced herself through her father’s leather-bound Classics (mostly untouched and some with pages still uncut), and to stretch her mind through the long nights of nursing, had taught herself German in order to study the works of the great German philosophers. Her sisters, in their rare visits, had accused her of being humourless. They’d be bloody humourless, she’d thought, scraping the burnt toast, if they’d had to wipe the ancient backsides.

Olivia’s glance drifted around her book-stuffed room and she allowed her mind to slip. Heidegger and Kierkegaard sat alongside Milton and Keats. A collection of dog-eared Bibles paid testament to Olivia’s religious habit. And it was a habit, she supposed, borne out of years of her father’s stern voice and the silent, dusty Sundays. From her prone position, she stretched out her hand and slid her bedside Bible onto her chest and opened it at random, just in case it could offer her any words of wisdom. It didn’t. It offered her a page of begats, doing no more than reminding her of her loveless state of spinsterhood.

Her first task was to clear out her parents’ belongings and clean the house from top to bottom. The scrubbing of the sickroom floor provided a monotonous rhythm to Olivia’s thoughts: ‘What shall I do? What shall I do? What shall I do?’ she muttered under her breath. It never occurred to Olivia to do nothing: it was simply not in her nature. She heaped woollen coats and flattened leather brogues onto the cart of the rag-and-bone man and locked her father’s Great War medals in her wooden box. As she swept out her mother’s wardrobe, she found a pile of old school exercise books, inscribed with her fastidious hand. Untying the string she was faced with faded ink lines of Latin and Greek and the reminder that she had once shown an aptitude for scholarship. Her hand paused in the turning of the pages.

A week later a brown envelope arrived bearing pamphlets and booklets. A fortnight after that, a letter, bearing a florid embossed crest, informed Olivia that if the financial arrangements were found to be in order, her place at the Faculty of Theology in Paderborn, Westphalia, would be secured.

The most visited place in Orkney is not the Ring of Brodgar or Skara Brae or the magnificent St Magnus Cathedral. It is a tiny chapel dating from the Second World War, built out of tin and cardboard. It is estimated that around 85,000 people a year cross the concrete threshold of the little church and peer into the unlit interior. It is a very special place indeed.

Barely a few weeks into the war, German U-Boat 47, captained by Gunther Prien, entered Scapa Flow, the home base of the British fleet. Prien fired on the Royal Oak, flagship of the fleet, and she sank in fewer than 15 minutes – from a complement of 1200 men and boys, 833 lost their lives.

As well as being a terrible tragedy, the sinking of the Royal Oak on 14 October 1939 demonstrated that Scapa Flow was far from impregnable. The blockships, booms and nets were insufficient defence against enemy attack. First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, devised a plan whereby the eastern approaches to Scapa Flow would be blocked permanently by concrete barriers. This phenomenal engineering project took 4 years to complete, and the result was four great causeways; now known as the Churchill Barriers, they link Orkney Mainland and the South Isles of Lamb Holm, Glimps Holm, Burray and South Ronaldsay.

Building the barriers was a massive undertaking and the work was done by construction company Balfour Beatty. To begin with the work force was British, but it became clear very quickly that many more men were needed, so Churchill proposed using Prisoner of War labour. Whilst the Geneva Convention prevents prisoners from being put to war work, there is no law against them undertaking civilian labour – and the construction of four ‘causeways’ was deemed to be a civilian project and nothing to do with military strategy.

Thus it was that over 1000 Italian POWs, captured in North Africa, were brought to the tiny islands of Orkney, installed in purpose-built prison camps, and put to work casting huge concrete blocks. The Italians, far from home, living in concrete huts on an uninhabited island and working long arduous days, set about making the best of their situation. They organised plays and concert parties, and planted the ground around the huts with flowers and vegetables; but their spiritual needs were not being met, and a request for a place to worship was addressed by the provision of two corrugated iron Nissen huts. They were cold and bare and joyless.

One of the prisoners, Domenico Chiocchetti, painted the Madonna and Child above the altar, based on a Renaissance altarpiece. Palumbi forged a beautiful rood screen out of scrap iron, and Buttapasta fashioned an altar from concrete. The other prisoners were soon caught up in the creative endeavour, and their imagination knew no bounds! They painted astonishing trompe l’oeil designs on the walls, to make them look like tiles and carved stone, when in fact they are nothing more than plasterboard and scrounged paint. The lamps are made from bully beef tins and the shaft of the font is a truck spring encased in concrete. The whole place is created from scrap – even the bell in the belfry was made of cardboard for the first official photograph.

There is much more to say about this remarkable place, and stories abound about the people, the ingenuity, the return of Chiochetti in the 1960s, the subsequent friendship between Orkney and a small town in northern Italy called Moena. But there is one particular story that I want to share.

Two years ago, in my capacity as occasional tour guide, I took a coachful of English visitors to the Italian Chapel. We had spent the day together and visited many places, including the Ring of Brodgar, Skara Brae and the Cathedral. The chapel was the last stop on the itinerary before we headed for the ferry. I had told them the story of the Royal Oak, the building of the barriers and the Italian POWs. We then pulled up at the chapel. They looked, we spoke, and folk took photos and left donations. As the group began to trickle back to the coach, one lady stayed behind to tell me a story.

The lady came from Lincolnshire, and had married young. Her husband had died in his 60s and her children were grown up and had moved away, so she had thrown herself into village activities, joining clubs and societies and making many friends. Amongst them was an old Italian gentleman who had a farm only a few miles from where she lived. They became very close and he told her that he had come to Britain as a prisoner during the war, and had worked on the mighty Churchill Barriers in Orkney. He also told her about a little chapel that he had helped to decorate. The gentleman spoke often about Orkney, and as their relationship deepened and they fell in love, the old couple decided to take a holiday there to visit the chapel.

The pair looked at brochures and made plans, and even managed to get hold of a TV film about the chapel, so the lady could get an idea of what it looked like. Six months before the trip, the old Italian gentleman died, so he never got to see the chapel again. But the lady, heartbroken as she was, decided that she would go to Orkney herself. She booked a place on a group coach holiday visiting the islands, and now here she was, standing in the chapel in front of me, telling this story. She looked around her and said ‘He’s here. He’s all around me, I can feel him,’ and the tears started to pour down her cheeks. Everybody else had left the chapel and we stood with our arms around each other and cried. After a few minutes we pulled ourselves together, and headed back to the coach with very red eyes! She told me too that she had not intended to tell me the story, but that she was moved by what I had said about the Italians and wanted to share her little part in the tale. I am very glad she did.

Last year a book was published called The Italian Chapel – it is a fictionalised version of the Italians’ story written by Philip Paris, who became interested in the chapel after visiting Orkney on his honeymoon. Philip did a huge amount of research for the book, contacting many of the surviving POWs, and he has plans to publish a non-fiction book later this year. We have corresponded regularly, and I told him the tale of the lady on the coach. At the time, it did not seem appropriate to ask her name, or demand more details – I just felt so privileged to be there with her. Philip has asked my permission to use the story, and he has started the process of trying to find her, placing adverts and articles in Lincolnshire newspapers. He has said, and I am sure he is right, that there must be hundreds of stories such as mine out there, and we will never know them all.

But this story will live on, because I tell it to every group that I take to the Italian Chapel; and I’ve now told it to you.

Tags: Churchill Barriers, Italian Chapel, Orkney

Edinburgh’s Royal Mile is amazing – a medieval street built on a crag-and-tail ridge of volcanic rock, with the castle and the head and the Palace of Holyroodhouse at the tail. Running off the spine are dozens of closes – narrow, steep, cobbled alleyways where many a secret lurks.

In the Old Town today (comprising the Royal Mile, Cowgate and Grassmarket), there are approximately 6,000 residents. In 1850 there were 60,000. The medieval buildings were tall and narrow, sometimes reaching twenty storeys high. At the top of the close, the bit that faced onto the Royal Mile, there might be six or seven storeys; but the roofs of the buildings were level, which meant by the time you got down to the bottom of the close, the tenements were towering above you. Raw sewage was thrown from the windows (with the cry of ‘Gardyloo!’) and would run down the close to the pool of stinking filth below, the Nor’ Loch, now Princes Street Gardens.

In 1861 the closes of the High Street were disease-ridden, overcrowded and neglected – all the wealthy inhabitants had made the move across to the swanky Georgian New Town, where they had their own front door and streets wide enough to turn a coach and four without unhitching the horses. The poor remained in the medieval Old Town and conditions were insanitary and congested.

Half way down the High Street, a local baker had his premises: a shop and bakery on the ground floor, and his house the level above. Attempting to increase the size of his ovens, he set about knocking down several walls. Unfortunately the walls were load-bearing, and were essential for the stability of the building – a stone-built tenement some 12 storeys high. It is testament to the medieval builders’ skills that the structure stayed up as long as it did, but within 48 hours the building began to submit to gravity. The residents of the surrounding streets were awoken in the small hours by a deep rumbling and an ear-splitting crack as the tenement buckled under its own weight and came crashing to the ground. Folk from all the houses round about rushed out with lamps and shovels and tried to pull away the rubble to see if there were any survivors.

Before the night was over, 35 bodies had been pulled from the wreckage. It became increasingly clear that no-one could possibly have survived such a devastating event. The rescuers wiped their faces, blew out their lamps as dawn broke, and prepared to head for home and get ready for their normal day. Just as they were turning away, someone caught a faint sound……a voice, very faint, buried deep beneath the rubble. They shouted back, and heard it again, a distant but definite human voice. With renewed vigour and hope, the High Street residents rolled up their sleeves and started to dig for all they were worth. Ton after ton of rubble was dragged away, and the voice of young Joseph McIvor could be heard loud and clear. The 14 year old boy did not actually live in the building – he had been visiting an uncle, who sadly perished in the collapse. Joseph began to encourage his rescuers, and they in turn shouted to him to raise his spirits – in response to the diggers’ shouts, he yelled back ‘Heave awa’ lads! I’m no deid yet!’

Joseph McIvor was the only survivor of the tragedy. His father was so thankful to God for sparing his son, and so grateful to his rescuers, that when the new Paisley Close was built on the site of the old houses, he had a special door lintel carved, showing his son and the words he had shouted from under the rubble. So that the words would be understood by all, they were slightly modified, so the close bears the legend ‘Heave awa chaps, I’m no dead yet!’

In the light of this terrible event, the City Council took it upon themselves for the first time to draw up some form of building controls, and it also prompted them to address the issue of overcrowding in Edinburgh’s Old Town. Now visitors from all over the world stand and admire Joseph McIvor; I hope none of them have the cheek to criticise modern Health and Safety laws!

Tags: Edinburgh, Heave awa, Old Town, tenement

Johnny Cash is the reason I am in Orkney.

It’s a bold statement, I know, and at first glance there is little or no connection between the two.

Johnny died in September 2003; amongst the many obituaries printed in the newspapers, there was one in The Guardian by a young woman whose name, alas, I have forgotten. Unlike the usual obituary style, looking back over a person’s lifetime, she wrote an account of a meeting she had with Johnny, and how it changed her life.

She was interviewing Johnny for a newspaper; he was old and clearly unwell, and whilst not discourteous, he was quite gruff and a bit impatient with her questions about his new album. After an awkward 20 minutes or so, Johnny asked the interviewer if she liked his music, and she confessed a lifelong love of the 1971 album Man in Black: it was her father’s favourite record. He smiled, picked up his guitar, and sang most of the album for her. Abandoning the formal interview format, and beginning to enjoy each other’s company, Johnny asked the journalist if she enjoyed her work. Ashamed, she confessed that whilst she had a job most people would give their right arm for, actually she was very disillusioned with journalism, and that her real heartfelt ambition was to write fiction, possibly a novel.

Johnny Cash stared at her for several long seconds before asking her, in uncompromising Johnny Cash style, what the hell she thought she was doing. If you want it, he told her, you have to go get it. You get one shot at this life, and every minute spent not pursuing your dream is a minute wasted. The resulting article was not only a fitting tribute to Johnny, it was a journalist bidding farewell to her profession; she had handed in her notice and was going to write her novel.

In September 2003 I had come to an impasse myself. We had lived in Edinburgh for 13 years, and the last two years had been difficult for a number of reasons. I wanted to leave my job, but I was terrified of the consequences of abandoning full-time salaried work, with the attendant benefits of holiday pay, pension contributions and all the rest. We had this mad scheme about moving to Orkney, but it seemed a real leap in the dark and we didn’t know if we were brave enough.

I cut out the article about Johnny Cash and stuck it on my wall, in a place where I could see it every day. I looked at the photo of a man who lived life in the raw, and rarely compromised on anything that mattered. In November 2003 I handed in my notice, and in February 2004 we moved to Orkney, a decision that I have not regretted for one single second.

There were many other people who gave us advice, encouragement and inspiration, and I am grateful to all of them. But when folk ask me why I came to the islands, a little voice in my head answers ‘because Johnny Cash told me to.’

Tags: Johnny Cash, Orkney

In the town where I grew up there was a flea market. It was held every Saturday in a concrete courtyard behind the High Street shops, and it was where I spent most of my money between the ages of 10 and 18.

I collected things. My collections at one time included stamps, candles, tea tins and polished stones, but the collection I have maintained for most of my life has been that of old bottles and jars. Cod bottles with marbles, ink bottles, brown glazed cream jugs, 2-toned cider flagons and the occasional stone hot water ‘pig’. In my one-hour lunch break from my teenage Saturday job (in an achingly classy furniture and gift shop) I would buy a bag of chips and head for the market, browsing at a leisurely pace, the hot vinegary chips keeping my hands warm. The stallholders all knew me, and the man with the bottle stall would sometimes keep things by for me. I had very little money, so each purchase was made after an age of deliberation: sometimes it took me weeks to decide which lemonade bottle to buy.

There was a stall next to the bottle table which was crammed with vintage collectibles – stuff like old OXO tins, deck chairs and glass beads. I browsed there too, and occasionally bought something cheap like a small box that had once held Parma Violets.

One Saturday I followed my usual routine – chips shop, flea market, bottle stall. But my purposeful steps were halted suddenly by the junk stall. There, dangling from a wooden hanger, was the most amazing piece of clothing I had ever seen. It was a boxy jacket made of very dark blue, almost black, thin corded material. At its cuffs and geometric angular collar was a thin rim of dark red ribbon, and round every edge was a rope of gold braid. Down the double-breasted front marched a line of tarnished brass buttons. The lining was black satin and the smell of decades hit my nostrils as I tried it on. It was a perfect fit, albeit a bit long in the arms.

The man on the stall told me that it was the jacket of a cinema commissionaire, the uniformed presence who opened doors, presided over the foyer, helped ladies on with their coats and occasionally introduced the films, no doubt featuring Hollywood legends like Clarke Gable and Hedy Lamarr. The jacket evoked movie glamour; it had a quasi-military air and more than a hint of Sergeant Pepper about it. I wanted it so much my stomach hurt. The stallholder wanted £40.00 for it.

It was a huge amount of money for me at the time. My Saturday job paid £8.00 a week and that had to cover my clothes, my books, my going out, my Saturday chips, everything. The stallholder and I came to a deal. He dropped the price to £38.00 and he allowed me to pay in instalments. It was nearly 5 months before I paid the last of the money and got to slip the musty satin over my shoulders once more. I paraded around the market and let the stallholders see me – they all knew how long I had waited for that moment. They applauded and admired, and I felt like I was on top of the world.

I wore the jacket regularly for years. My favourite outfit at 18 was a pair of tight cream jeans, knee length leather boots, black t-shirt and the commissionaire’s jacket. People knew me by it. Several women and a couple of men tried to buy it from me. When one of my university boyfriends first saw me, I was wearing it: he turned to a mutual friend and said ‘Who the hell is that?’

Years later I made a disastrous attempt to turn over the thick ropes of braid. The gold was tarnished on the outside and shiny underneath and I wanted to reverse it to get the bright gold uppermost. I unpicked the sleeves at the shoulders to reveal wads of woollen padding that looked like furniture stuffing. My braid-reversal did not really work.

I still have the jacket in a box somewhere. I doubt whether I will ever mend it or wear it again; indeed, I was lightly toying with the idea of selling it on eBay. But now……now I’m not so sure.

Tags: flea market, Vintage clothes

Walking into the room, the first thing I saw was a torso lying on a table. Next to it was a head, sporting a tweed cap at a jaunty angle. On, next to and underneath the table were boxes, and suitcases bursting with knickers, feathers and demob suits. E, to whom these garments belong, told me that this represented a tiny part of her vast clothes collection, and that she had just grabbed things randomly off their hangers for tonight’s talk.

On a wild and windy Thursday night in November, an intrepid group of folk met in a local community centre to see and hear about E’s amazing collection of vintage clothing. She has been accumulating clothes for about 35 years and she started in a small way with her father’s petticoats, which were on their way to being torn up for cleaning rags. These lacy white garments were standard, if special, wear for both boys and girls, of course. I have a photo in the family archive of my grandfather as a baby, swathed in frills like a little doll!

E displayed for us a bewildering array of undergarments of yesteryear, from cotton bloomers (roomy affairs held together with ties and buttons) to fierce-looking corsets reinforced with whalebone. The men were amply served by woollen semmits and long drawers, but it was clear as the parade of pants continued that our scanties had become progressively more scanty with the passing years. By the time we were shown the lycra thong, E had made a convincing case for global warming! Of course, until relatively modern times, houses had no central heating so multiple layers of underclothing were essential.

Moving to the outerwear, we were shown silk skirts and dresses from the Victorian and Edwardian eras featuring fully-lined skirts, plus delicate lace blouses and velvet waistcoats. I was privileged to model a beautiful black velvet coat, sparkling with beads and sequins, probably a mourning garment with a bit of bling. Black became very fashionable as the colour of mourning after Queen Victoria wore it following the death of her beloved consort Prince Albert. E also has a fine collection of headgear for gentlemen and ladies – lace, crepe and men’s caps from long-defunct Kirkwall outfitters. The starched white shirts and stiff collars were, she said, ‘not from yesterday, but maybe the day before’.

A mixed response greeted the accessories, particularly those of the fur and feather variety - black crow’s feathers may seem a little morbid in today’s world of spangly fascinators. The height of fashion once demanded dangling furs – stoles and collars and muffs featuring feet, tails and occasionally heads. One audience member shuddered at the ‘dry, dead things’ whilst I brought forth a long-buried memory of my grandmother giving me a patchy old stoat fur, complete with face and glass eyes. I called it Pickles.

My favourite garment of the evening was a stunning full-length, figure-hugging red velvet evening gown. It fastened at the back with tiny velvet-covered buttons and brought to mind Bette Davis. If I lost a few pounds I think I could just about squeeze into it……

The question that E gets asked the most is ‘where do you get them?’ And her answer is ‘they just come to me’. Often, she says, they turn up on the doorstep, crumpled and in black plastic bags, sometimes from the other side of the world (such as the clutch bag and gloves from America). She has become known as the lady who collects old clothes, and will love them and care for them and very generously give her time by showing them to groups such as ours. Many of her large extended family send her things; examples include a tiny beaded purse owned by her great-aunt, and a pair of 1950s black high-heeled peep-toed shoes which were owned by her second cousin’s wife!

To vary the evening’s entertainment, E produced a brain-teaser: a list of popular toys from each decade of the twentieth century. Could we work out which toy belonged to which decade? Amongst them were kewpie dolls, Pokemon, Barbie, Rubik’s cube, and the coolest of them all, the Corgi James Bond Aston Martin car, in gold. We had a small confession from an audience member – he had actually owned one of these models, lucky boy!

Alongside the gorgeous gowns that would not have disgraced Ginger Rogers, Wallis Simpson or Jackie Onassis, there were more down-to-earth and homely items like handbags and pinnies. E even had poetry to demonstrate their evocative power – here is Ruth Fainlight’s poem ‘Handbag’.

My mother’s old leather handbag,

crowded with letters she carried

all through the war. The smell

of my mother’s handbag: mints

and lipstick and Coty powder.

The look of those letters, softened

and worn at the edges, opened,

read, and refolded so often.

Letters from my father. Odour

of leather and powder, which ever

since then has meant womanliness,

and love, and anguish, and war.

Wartime images surfaced again as we exclaimed over the flying goggles and a real box of Coty powder, then E brought us a bit more up-to-date with some fabulous 1970s Laura Ashley creations which would have suited Karen Carpenter perfectly! There was even a puffball dress from the 1980s – a look which flattered nobody and which I am dismayed to see is making a comeback. No fashion parade would be complete without the piece de resistance, a bridal gown – a vision of nylon, netting and pink roses – which provoked a rush of wedding-day reminiscences.

The wind howled outside and the rain battered, but we had been taken back in time as a century or more was presented to us in sights, smells, textures, memories and emotions. I was swept away by the clothes and by E’s stories of how she got them, and her assertion once again that the clothes ‘just came’ to her. I suddenly remembered that buried deep in a box of junk, I had a pair of sheer stockings from the 1960s made by Elbeo, still in their cellophane wrapping. I can’t think of a better person to give them to.

Many thanks to E for an unforgettable evening.

Tags: bloomers, clothing, Coty, Laura Ashley, velvet, Vintage

I’ve been at work all day and we’ve got guests for dinner, so I have about 20 minutes to batter something out before cleaning the bathroom and dusting the piano. This writing something a day lark is quite enjoyable, and I generally start thinking about what I’m going write as soon as I wake up (although not today I confess - this is a really last-minute thing). So far I have stuck to my New Year’s Resolution, and not only that, but the readers of Island Blogging have been feeling the ‘benefit’. However, to paraphrase Mr Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, I have probably delighted you long enough. I thought that after January I would spare you the daily post, although I still intend to write every day. That way, I stick to my resolution, and you get a chance to take a breath. Here’s today’s offering.

As part of my job in my old Edinburgh life, I spent a bit of time helping TV and film folk to poke around in haunted underground places. They would be making programmes or scouting for locations that were suitably creepy and I was the media liaison person, at the ready with extension cables, candles, historical comment and breathless recounting of ghostly encounters. During the years I did this, I met several people who might be termed ‘famous’; for the most part they were fun, lovely and genuinely interested. Take a bow Adam Hart-Davis, Yvette Fielding and Graeme Garden (I met a Goody! I met a Goody!). The ones who were obnoxious and up themselves…..well, I shall remain diplomatically tight-lipped. Except maybe after a couple of gins.

Anyway. One of the nicest afternoon’s work I ever did was spent in the company of Pam Ayres. Readers of a certain age will remember the cheeky lass appearing on the 1970s show Opportunity Knocks in a flowery frock, reciting her funny, touching, and occasionally downright risqué poetry whilst looking sideways and smirking at the camera. Imagine comic verse crossed with cream teas. Pam is to be found these days on the tour circuit, and also gracing the radio airwaves regularly. For a while she did a programme on R2 called Pam Ayres’ Open Road in which she travelled around Britain ‘visitin’ interestin’ places and talkin’ to interestin’ people’, and that’s how I met her. She was just lovely – very funny and warm and seemed to have this trick of making everybody feel like they had been her best friend for years. I feel a sudden urge to follow her on Twitter.

My other memorable celeb encounter was with Clarissa Dickson Wright. She was presenting a special Halloween edition of the BBC TV programme Holiday and was filming in our underground places. Clarissa is a larger-than-life character who first came to widespread prominence with the cookery show Two Fat Ladies. She has been bankrupt, an alcoholic, a barrister, a campaigner for the countryside, a bookshop owner, a newspaper columnist and I don’t know what else. This is a lady who would never be without a story to tell. This was confirmed by the film crew (with whom she flirted outrageously), who said that in the week they had been with her, she had kept them hugely entertained and had never told the same story twice. In that great imaginary dinner party we all have in our heads, Clarissa is first on my list, despite the fact that I dislike many of her politics.

In the time we were filming she found out very quickly that I had an interest in the First World War, and related how her father had fought in the trenches for two years before joining the Royal Flying Corps ‘to get out of the mud’. By 1916 the average life expectancy for a fighter pilot had risen from 3 days to 9 days. He was also shocked to discover that the RFC did not issue their pilots with parachutes, as it was thought this might cause them to ‘funk’ in a crisis. Despite this, he survived. After the war was over, he took his wife to the Western Front to show her where he had seen action; for several days they visited trench systems and bombed villages and graveyards, and he appeared calm and distant. Then, walking along a canal, he suddenly doubled over, vomiting and shaking, and pleaded to be taken home. The thing that had tipped him over the edge was the smell of a horse corpse drifting in the water.

The underground room in Edinburgh that we used as filming HQ had a lot of old furniture which served as props and backdrops for events and functions. In one corner of the room sat a huge wooden box with doors and a hole in the top. A series of ancient valves and pipes gave a clue as to its purpose – a sauna sweat box from the late 19^th century, wherein stout Victorian ladies would take the steam cure for its restorative powers. Clarissa could not resist it, squeezed her ample self in and closed the doors so just her head was poking out. To my dying day I will regret the fact that I did not have my camera to hand. That would have been some photograph!

Tags: Clarissa Dickson Wright, Pam Ayres, underground Edinburgh

This is a story regarding (to use Greg’s memorable phrase) a Dragon-in-training!

The Dragon's primary school

In the early 1970s my primary school still had a proper kitchen where the dinner ladies prepared the school meals. There were no choices or options available (except of the gravy/no gravy/custard/no custard type), and everyone, staff and pupils, ate the same thing, in the school hall with its wooden floor, raised stage and climbing bars on the walls*.

Being a good mini-Dragon, I wasn’t actually that fussy about my food and ate most of what was put in front of me. Unlike many of my peers I liked the ‘greens’, which I guess was some sort of brassica – cabbage or spinach probably, very dark green, leaves thin and finely chopped. I didn’t mind the prunes, or the stewed plums, or the tapioca/sago/semolina things with jam in the middle. There were some things I wasn’t that keen on, but I was an obedient little thing and forced them down.

Then came the day……when I refused to eat my school dinner. I was about 7 years old and it was probably my first proper act of conscious rebellion. I took my little tray and moved along the counter, proffering the thick white china plate to the ladies. They scooped and dolloped along the line until I had everything that I was supposed to have. From the beginning of the line, my dinner comprised the following: a cube of scrambled egg (it was made in those big metal tins so it assumed solid form and had to be cut out in wobbling pale yellow chunks), a large spoon of spaghetti which slithered about in a pinkish watery liquid, and two scoops of grey lumpy mashed potato, doled out with an ice cream scoop. I walked slowly to my table, my stomach alternately rising and sinking.

Our dinner ladies were truly fearsome women with power of life and death over us poor children (well, that’s what it felt like, anyway). Once the food had been dished out, they moved over to the table where they presided over an enormous metal bowl. Wielding a plastic spatula, they scraped into the bowl any food that the children didn’t eat – it went to feed pigs, apparently, a practice no longer permitted nowadays. If you went up with your plate and you hadn’t eaten enough, they would send you back to your table and tell you to eat more of it. I have a clear memory in my head of a large woman with enormous arms and a red scaly face and a hair net scowling at me.

The scrambled egg dinner sat untouched on my plate, grew cold and congealed. I was sent back four times by the dinner ladies. One by one all my schoolmates finished their food and left the hall, until I was the only person left. The caretaker came in and started clearing away the tables and chairs. I sat and stared at my dinner, blushing furiously and feeling very lonely, but determined that I would not eat it. When the school bell rang for the afternoon classes, the headmaster was brought in to deal with my stubborn attitude. He stood looking terribly stern. Then, under the glowering eye of the head dinner lady (who was sure I was going to cop it), I was escorted to the headmaster’s office, where only very naughty children were taken to be punished.

Looking back, our headmaster Mr Sullivan was rather Dickensian. He was rotund and wore half-moon glasses on a chain, I’m sure there was a waistcoat, but I am probably imagining the fob watch on a chain. He was a gruff character with no real empathy for children and I was quite worried as he propelled me towards his office, where he made me stand next to his old-fashioned pedestal desk. He sat heavily and peered at me.

‘Wouldn’t eat your dinner, eh?’ he said.

‘No, Mr Sullivan’ I replied.

‘And why not?’ he asked.

‘Because it was horrible.’ I was pulling no punches.

There was a long pause and I thought I was in serious trouble.

‘I wouldn’t have eaten it either,’ he said, and bending down to the bottom drawer of his desk, he pulled out a chocolate mini-roll.

‘Eat that,’ he said, ‘then get to your classroom’.

The Dragon-in-training had prevailed. I had stuck to my guns and I was thoroughly vindicated, plus I had got a chocolate mini-roll into the bargain! There is a moral in this story somewhere – can you guess what it is, dear IBers?

*The primary school is being knocked down this year, except for the old Victorian block (pictured - thanks to Todd) which has been given listed status to protect it.

Tags: rebellion, School dinners

What is your favourite silence? Here are some of mine…..

• The silence after I have switched off the alarm – but only if I don’t actually have to get up.

• You’ve got the long glass, filled it with ice, poured in the gin and added the wedge of lime. The top is off the tonic and you are just about to pour it in. That’s a good silence.

• The silence after the last note played by the West Mainland Strathspey and Reel Society in the annual concert – a split second of suspended animation before the rapturous applause!

• The silence after the howling wind drops.

• The silence at the Menin Gate, Ypres, after the Last Post. This memorial arch commemorates the ‘missing’ of the Ypres Salient – those who have no known grave. There are 36,000 names on it. Members of the local fire brigade come out every night, stop the traffic through the arch, and sound the Last Post, whether there is anybody there to hear it or not. A moment of silence follows before they put down the bugles and walk away.

• When guitar practice has finished.

• I loved sitting in an exam and getting a question I could answer. After a little thrill of recognition, I would plot my essay point by point in the room full of silent students.

• Sleeping children.

• The words on the gravestone of George Mackay Brown – Carve the runes, then be content with silence.

What are your favourite silences?

Tags: George Mackay Brown, gin, Menin Gate, Silence

Last spring I put out the call – I’m in the market for kittens.

We’d lost one of our big cats, Jess, a few weeks before – she had a long and happy life which involved the minimum of activity and the maximum of fuss and cat food – and she was buried in the garden with a small cairn raised in her honour. The other two cats were at a bit of a loss and there was a certain amount of aimless wandering, but the feline population of the house clearly needed a new focus.

Orkney has a lot of feral cats. Some are outdoor barn cats who patrol farmsteads very effectively, and as long as they are well managed, everyone benefits from their presence. But sometimes the feral population gets out of control, resulting in hundreds of kittens who have little chance at growing to healthy adults.

The Friends of Orkney Ferals (FOF) is a local charity that helps feral cats and kittens by trapping, neutering, and re-homing. If they can trap the adult cats they are spayed or neutered, and if they find nests of newborn kittens they remove them, feed and socialise them and find loving homes.

Following my initial enquiry, we were told that they had just got in a litter of 5 tiny kittens, found shivering in a huddle near Boardhouse Loch. FOF had taken them in and were bottle-feeding the little scraps of fur. Over the phone, they explained that there were two boys (tabby and white), and three girls (one grey and two tabby), and that they were all quite poorly with cat flu. Feral colonies are not healthy, and as well as endemic cat flu, the mothers often pass on FIV (Feline AIDS) to their kittens. We decided that if they all survived, we would take the two girl tabbies. All five kittens struggled through the next few days, with the FOF volunteers bottle-feeding them regularly through the night. Then we heard the sad news that the wee boys had simply been too weak and had not made it.

The grey kitten, we were told, had already been allotted a new home (although she was too young to go there yet). The two tabbies were ours and when they were about three weeks old we got to see them for the first time. They were brought through in their well-padded cage and we got our first cuddles – the kittens’ eyes were still blue, and you can see how teeny they were! Because they knew we were going to take the kittens eventually, we gave them their names.

TS Elliot has a lot to say about the naming of cats, and if you have them yourself, you may know the hours of thought and brainstorming that go into this most important task. Kitten 1 was to be called Myrtle. Why? We have good pals who live in a house called Myrtledene, and they had a gorgeous tabby called Myrtle who was sadly run over at a young age. She was a very cool cat and we liked the name so we named a kitten after her.

Kitten 2 was to be Beryl. As a long time Beano/Dandy/DC Thomson fan, I liked the idea of naming a cat after a cartoon character. Minnie the Minx was my role model as a child (all that catapult-climbing-trees-tomboy stuff), with Beryl the Peril a close second. We did actually have a kitten called Minnie (lost to a busy road), and we liked the name so much we named our cool black Sphinx-like feline Minxie (missing, alas). So, we had to have a Beryl. In a wee tangent, I have a great friend whose father is the cartoonist Andrew Christine – in his long and varied career he did at one time draw Beryl the Peril, thus earning my lifelong respect.

The grey kitten was given a FOF name. They called her Mouse, because, well, she looked like a mouse.

Myrtle had cat flu very badly, and very nearly didn’t make it. Late one evening, the FOF folk sat around their table trying to work out how to break it to us, but against all expectation she made it through the night and was started to grow.

We visited the kittens every few days and they got more friendly and more frisky. The FOF folk have a lot of work with tiny kittens. As well as feeding them every couple of hours, they wash the kittens and clean up after their teeny tiny businesses, ahem. When the kittens were about 6 weeks old, we visited them at FOF HQ and Beryl distinguished herself by doing a big pooh on Mr Dragon. We were also enormously impressed with Mouse, who was leaping around and rubbing and purring and doing her very bestest to look adorable. FOF told us that the person who was going to take Mouse had pulled out, and Mouse was looking for a home too. Cue me looking beseechingly at Mr Dragon and Mr Dragon looking stern and shaking his head. The kittens were still on medication for cat flu, and were quite snuffly.

We went away for a week on holiday. When we came back, we went round and picked up all three kittens (Mr Dragon did not take much persuading!). Into the spare room they went, to leap about and tear the place up, and keep them away from big adult cats (looking very sulky). After a week or so it was clear that the cat flu symptoms were back with a vengeance, and we got more medication for them. Poor Beryl was very ill, and we quarantined her in the bathroom. She would lie in her little cat house not eating or drinking, eyes all sticky and unable to breathe. I spent a lot of time cleaning her up with cotton buds and syringing cat milk into her mouth, and it just broke my heart leaving her there without her sisters. I love all my cats dearly, but I confess that it was Beryl who first stole my heart, and she hasn’t given it back yet.

After a few weeks the symptoms were still there and we began to worry that the kittens had FIV. If one had it, they all would, and none would survive. When I really couldn’t put it off any longer, we made a vet’s appointment to have the blood test done, and even the FOF folk were feeling pessimistic. I was at work that day, and Mr Dragon had the unenviable task of taking them to the appointment. After an agonising morning, I was surprised to see the car pull up at work, and Mr Dragon get out. I could see the cat box in the car. He came rushing in to give me the good news – the kittens didn’t have FIV, and he thought that I would want to know immediately!

Mouse was not badly affected by the cat flu and has never shown symptoms since. The tabbies both have ‘residual snuffles’ which means they are sometimes a bit snuffly and snotty. When they sneeze, the resulting projectiles can travel quite a distance……but it’s a small price to pay for three fantastic cats.

Mouse

They are about 18 months old now. Mouse is definitely the serious cat. She keeps slightly apart from the others, and is a bit more grown up. Mouse has the kink in the end of her tail that so many Orkney cats have, so when she jumps on the bed in the night it’s easy to tell it’s her. She is, of course, very beautiful, especially in her red velvet collar, and her favourite spot is the top of the piano.

Beryl

Beryl is the most affectionate and is a real people cat. She like sitting on Mr Dragon’s shoulders, or failing that, the warmest bit in the house which sometimes means we find her leaning against the teapot. She is generally known as Peril, or Perilous.

Myrtle

Myrtle is the world’s peskiest cat, by a long shot. She is also extremely cute but I don’t trust her an inch, frankly. She has more nicknames than any of the others, chiefly Squirtles, Squirtly-Woo, Mogboon, and Resident Evil. They are all very good company and an integral part of the household, even if I do spend half my time wiping cat bogies off the walls.

If you want to contribute to Friends of Orkney Ferals or become a member, or just find out about the work they do, you can find them here. http://www.orkneyferals.co.uk/

Tags: cats, ferals, FOF, Orkney