DIGGING POLYSTYRENE
Following the frustration about the polystyrene forms refusing to leave the fibre- glass moulds, I sought advice from various quarters about the best way to get them out. The most popular suggestion was to use petrol to dissolve it (not very green, but then neither is polystyrene. Roll on greener options.) But this was really not viable, given that I need the forms themselves to create the mosaics. Without them I would be working blind. So in the end I opted to dig out sections of the “poly pies”, rather like slices of a cake, enabling removal of the remaining pieces. Children were given this task, which was a source of much amusement and fun. Thank goodness! It was still a strenuous job in its entirety; just the kind of unforeseen problem that is most unwelcome, but the road to finding a solution is creative in itself.
LAMBING
It’s lambing season. Everyone is very preoccupied with the lambing, visiting their flocks four, five times a day to check all the new arrivals and assist any ewes in distress. I went back to Nesting, where I was staying last time, to visit my previous landlord & lady (the Bradleys) and their gulmoket and katmoket Shetland sheep – one is brown with a cream belly and the other is cream with a brown belly. Very cute indeed. I also visited Vaila, a teacher from the school, who is nursing a three-day old lamb. It was tiny and shivering hard in the cold un-spring-like May air. It turns out Vaila is the owner of all the Shetland ponies I photographed many a time when driving along to Gletness last time. Having never been to Shetland before, I have never been able to appreciate how perfectly adapted these miniature ponies are for this harsh, windswept, landscape.
BACK AGAIN
It’s great to be back. I have arrived to a riot of yellow everywhere. Daffodils carpet the countryside in the wildest, most beautifully rustic way, sprouting along every verge, uninhibited. I have settled in Voe in the old doctor’s house, one of the grandest houses overlooking Olna Firth. It was built to entice a doctor here and Martin, its current owner, informs me that he is only the second person ever to live there who is not a doctor. The old surgery has been converted into a chalet but is well remembered by all as a formerly important service in the North Mainland.
My daily journey to the school now takes five minutes walking through the most stunning scenery past the voe, the kirk and the shop.
