Apologies for a prolonged absence. We've both had awful coughs and colds over what seems like ages but is about three weeks. I can't remember when I last had such a bad cold. It took me back to those teenage years when two or three colds a year were the norm. Getting older built in the immunity and colds have seemed few and far between over the last decade or two. As well as home comforts fresh air was needed.
I've also been reading quite a bit.
Dear Mum - Letters from Orkney to Sheffield by Susan Tyzack is a series of letters from the author's mother kept by the author's grandmother, which were written home to Sheffield from an Orkney naval base during the last year of the second world war. The book also tells of the author's own experiences of retiring to Orkney and becoming involved in the local community.
'When I'm in Orkney, I can barely imagine Africa. I love the cleanliness here. The bare spare horizontals. The smooth sweep of hill and loch, open, untrammelled by trees. The cold smell of the air. The shock of a windless day, or the hunch into a near gale, the lean of the walk into it. The hidden hare in the back garden tussocks, the trilling of a curlew. The long view. The ever-mutable arc of the enormous sky.'
Sue was a colleague of Paul's. They worked together in the biology department of the local college for a few years. She left the college to work in Tanzania and eventually moved to Orkney not far from where her mother was stationed. Recently we received the sad news via her son that she had died suddenly. She has left behind a wonderful account of both her and her mother's time in Orkney.
Meanwhile in the garden the foxes are back and paired up ready for the next seasons of Winter into Spring.
and some of the apples are finally ripe enough to take gently from the tree.
