Can we fix it?

The well filled all by itself (over the course of a couple of days instead of the usual couple of hours), the toilet was unblocked (Pete the plumber/landscape artist tied a old towel to an old mop and used it as a mega-plunger).

So everything was hunky-dory? It was, until a certain nameless person put a pickaxe through the pipe that supplies water from the well to the house.

Wasn't me.

I went off to a far corner of the pigshed and swore a bit - for about five minutes. Then I had a look at the (very old and imperial) plastic pipe, rummaged around some of the spare joints and fittings (recently bought and metric) we have and decided to go to bed and worry about it in the morning.

The plumbing pixies were clearly otherwise engaged overnight, so I had to deal with it, waking with that feeling of not having done my homework. I thought about ringing Electric Eric (good man in a crisis) or the aforementioned Pete, but that seemed a bit pathetic.

The pipe is one-inch, while I had a 25mm connector. Are you thinking what I was thinking? Not much diff. Worth a try anyway.

I cut the pipe, filed the bits off and cleaned it, then tried to push the push-fit connector on. It wouldn't go. I looked at the pipe and compared it with a length of the metric. . . anyway. . . long story short. . . I managed to get the two ends of the pipe connected and we had water again. Hoo-effing-rah! I was pretty damn pleased with myself.

"So what?" I hear you cry. "So this," I reply. Two years ago when I moved to Orkney I had nothing in the way of DIY or handyman skills - I must have been out of my tiny mind - and a small problem like that would have me pogoing in the panic button. I've come a long way since.

And 'Pickaxe' Pat owes me a pint.

While I'm telling everyone how great I am, I'm chuffed to bits with the little kitchen garden I've got going at the front of the house.


It was very much an afterthought, laid out in April on previously derelict ground and hastily sown/planted with onions, carrots, cabbage, broad beans, butternut squash, beetroot and spinach beet - all of which seem to be doing just fine.

Few things in life give me as much satisfaction as a healthy-looking display of veg and this lot cheers me up every time I go out the front door.

The only problem seems to be these fellas. . .


They hang around in gangs and give the cabbages a Gruyere look. Removal by hand seems to be the only solution - I took more than a hundred off today - any other ideas would be gratefully received.

We're in the. . .

Rearrange the following words into an hilarious blog post about idyllic life on a small Scottish island.

Toilet, blocked, arm, elbow, Dettol, thorough, wash, flexible, rods, bucket, outside, dig, tank, septic, nearly, full, still, find, blockage, can't, borrow, proper, drain, rods, a, bit, mystified.

I just hope Mrs Pig "Farmer" doesn't remember the words: Pig, "Farmer", wetsuit.

Still, on the upside, the well has mysteriously refilled, despite an almost total absence of rain.

How much for the beard?

"What about twenty quid?" said Mrs Pig "Farmer".

"That's far too much. How about ten?" said her friend Toni.

"Oh no, that'd be robbery. Tell you what, let's split the difference and make it £15."

"Hold on, haven't we got this the wrong way round. I'm selling the ducks TO YOU."

"Oh, right."

Unbelieveable.

Water, water everywhere

We have a heatwave in Orkney. It's bloody lovely. Clear blue skies, hours and hours of warm, even hot, sunshine.

The real farmers are rushing around at all hours getting the hay/haylage/silage in. The pig "farmer" is keeping an eye on his "herd" of five, worrying about his cabbages, beans and carrots, weeding in between the tatties and wondering if it's too dry to be planting out leeks.

There has still been time for a little R and R, yesterday it was a trip over to the north beach with the lads and a swim - the first of the year. Sadly the water was flat so there was no chance of a surf.

This evening myself, the dogs and The Boy - who leaves tomorrow to take up a new job in Cornwall (I suspect he's trying to tell me something) - had a leisurely walk along the shore by Rapness cemetery, shoes off, toes in the warm sand, paddling in the water. . . all that stuff.

It has been idyllic, absolute confirmation that we did the right thing moving here. I really love this place.

Of course there's a down side, as I found this morning when I ran the bath. Our water comes from a well in the bottom field, brought up to the house by a pump which is controlled by a switch in the kitchen.

I lurched into the kitchen this morning, slurped a little coffee and flipped the switch. That should have been followed by about five minutes of gurgling and hoowooshing as the tank filled. I listened and there was nothing bar the sound of a gently snoring Spike. Not a gurgle nor a hoowoosh anywhere. The tank had run dry.

Bugger.

I dressed quickly and went to the bottom field where the pump was whirring happily. I called Pete the plumber who diagnosed a missing valve that meant the self-priming pump was no longer priming itself.

So it's fixable, but what isn't fixable is the alarming level in the well. We're down to the last couple of feet - at least a yard and a half lower than normal. I'm told the well has never run dry before, but also that this is the driest spring/summer Westray has known for many years.

As a result there's a bath ban in force, I'm growing a beard, the once-a-week smalls wash is now fortnightly and we're buying barrels industrial strength Lynx.

Glass of Evian anyone?

A girl named Bob

We were a hen short. There were only five pecking around Molly's feet as she got stuck into her evening meal. Bob was missing.

For a few days I kept an eye out for her and had all but given up hope when she appeared in the pig shed, very defensive and hungry enough to think boiled tatties and rhubarb were delicious.

Then she was gone, appearing again three days later, puffing her chest out and spreading her wings wide at the other hens - she obviously had something to hide. The pattern continued for some time until the other day when The Boy said: "Come and have a look at this Dad."

There was Bob with five. . . no, six. . . seven. . . hang on, nine. . . hell's teeth, ten. . . eleven, we've got a football team. . . twelve, and a sub, chicks.


The next problem was to get them out of the open air where they would be prey to gulls and, maybe, cats. Easy - The Boy got a box and we gathered up the chicks, putting them in the old stone shed recently vacated by Molly.

Then we ushered Bob around to the shed before erecting a barrier which she could hop over, but the chicks couldn't. The trouble with that was that Bob and her sister Leroy (don't ask) look almost identical and, you've guessed it, we'd got the wrong hen.

So we hurried back to where Bob was frantically searching for her chicks and, after she had attacked The Boy's feet a couple of times, swopped her over with a now very confused Leroy. Mother and chicks are doing just fine.

Ray

The small, unassuming accountant quietly unlocked the front door of his semi-detached Wolverhampton home and went inside. It was about 6am, some time in the early 70s.

"Where on Earth have you been?" asked his wife.

In a fairly befuddled state, honesty seemed the best policy, so the accountant said: "I've been out drinking with Slade."

"What? All of them? Noddy Holder, Dave Hill, Jimmy Whatshisface and the other one?"

"Absolutely. I've got these albums they brought back from America. Look."

"OK then, what do you want for breakfast?"

I may have taken a liberty or two with the story (it could have been 5.30), but it makes me smile. The accountant was my father-in-law Ray who died in Kirkwall's Balfour Hospital last week at the age of 80, having taken his battle with Parkinson's Disease to extra time and penalties.

There was a wee bit of the devil in Ray. As recently as last month, he raised one last defiant fist against his failing health, ignored a Sally-imposed ban and went on a treacherous, cliff-top walk with his eldest son Stephen to view the puffins at Westray's Castle Burrian, grinning all over his face on his return.

I first met Ray properly one Boxing Day maybe ten years ago. As a family gathering wound to a close, Sally disappeared out of the room with the words "my dad doesn't really do small talk." Left alone, we eyed each other warily before I burbled something of little consequence. I was 38 years old and I'm not sure which of us felt more awkward.

What I didn't learn from Ray himself, I quickly learned from his family. He was man of rock-solid principle and political passion, a lifelong standard bearer of the communist cause, campaigning against injustice and inequality in his own quiet way all his life. He was devoted to his wife Marion and, in hindsight, he never got over her death from Alzheimer's disease three years ago.

Partial to a pint and a glass of malt, he was keen on his music with a taste that ran from Tom Paxton to The Dubliners, Bessie Smith to Cabaret and then, more alarmingly, Dr Hook (he is the only person I've had to ask to 'turn that bloody noise down'). A big believer in audience participation, Ray wouldn't exactly sing along, but he certainly liked a good growl in time to the music.

Ray didn't believe in any kind of existence after death, but he and Marion live on through his children Stephen, Martin, Alan and Sally and an ever-growing family of some of the best people I've met.

I'm glad Ray decided to make our move to Orkney his last adventure, even if there was rather more 'last' than 'adventure', and glad that we got beyond the 'awkward' stage and got to know each other. I'll miss him. Cheerio matey.

Pintus interruptus

I was settling down for what I felt was a well-deserved pint. Perched on the bar stool, I lifted the glass to my lips when the phone behind the bar rang.

Mr Hotel Proprietor had a kind of "mmm, aha, yes, yes he's here" conversation. He put the receiver down, turned to me and said: "One of your pigs is out and heading north at speed."

"Oh testicles!" I exclaimed and hurried out, jumped in the car and set off. A mile or so down the road, Squeaky waved me down and pointed to the field where Molly the sow was wandering around in an agitated state. Our neighbour Neil had put her there while Squeaky had kept an eye out for traffic.

Molly has been a bit skittish ever since she was taken away from her piglets a few weeks ago, trotting around her pen, spreading her bedding all over the place, digging enormous holes, but this was the first time she'd got the wanderlust.

As luck would have it, I had a feed bucket in the car and, although it was empty, Molly knows the routine and trotted happily after me as soon as I started rattling it. Tailed by Mr Hotel Proprietor in his very big Jeep she followed me the half-mile up the main road to the "farm" where I discovered I had forgotten to switch the electric fence on. Duh!

A quick scoop of feed and an armful of fresh straw settled Molly back down. I plugged the fence in and returned to the abandoned pint the phrases "insurance claim" and "new gate" rattling around my head.