Wellyfest.....

Wellyfest - I may need to translate for non-UK readers - wellies is short for Wellingtons, a popular name for rubber boots.  These were needed recently in large numbers at a friend's wedding.  The lovely Mrs Orkney Flowers married her Rock God in a beautiful wood on a rainy day in October.  She's given me permission to tell you all about it!  First there was the beautiful bride - above.  Looking radiant and un-spattered in mud. Note the stunning red wellies.  Mrs Orkney Flowers is a horticulturist extraordinare and part-time Womble (she's heavily into recycling and living frugally), so not seeing earth covering her hands or in her hair is something of a novelty.  She was truly a radiant bride ......

She and "Mr Flowers" have been together for many years, but had decided to "get wed" in Birnam Wood - yes THE Birnam Wood - the one in McBeth (Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him.Wm Shakespeare, Macbeth 4.1). Anyway, I digress...... both bride and groom had happy childhood, and more recent memories of Birnam wood, hence the choice for a wedding wellie fest.

Now, I mentioned frugal living, recycling etc.  So, of course, these principals were applied to the wedding. Other clever horticulturalists had grown or acquired magnificant foilage for the bouquets and floral displays - all in Autumn colours of course.

I'd turned up on the morning of the wedding to offer assistance as a gofer (go fer this, go fer that) to the clever flower people and was handed a large bundle of banana leaves with the words "Find somewhere to wash these please Sian"....

I'd never handled banana leaves before - ooooh they have a lovely waxy feel.....  Meanwhile the bride's bouquet was made..... dried flowers, autumn leaves, with some lovely fair trade red roses for good measure.

And more floral displays of autumn colour...

And table decorations.....

Meanwhile, in the background of the photo above, you can see the Rock God's band tuning up.......

Soon it was time to head back to the hotel to get dressed in our finery, including wellington boots, grab umbrella's (it had rained all weekend) and head to the woods!  "Head for a bench" we were told.... ah we're here then....

Um... the babbling brook was more a raging river....

Once everyone was assembled.....

And woodland fairies had handed out the dried flowers for confetti....

And scrolls with the words to the wedding hymn (Let's get married by the Proclaimers - what else - accompanied by the Rock God and his Arch Angels)....

It was time for the ceremony.  Conducted by a Humanist celebrant, it was a lovely service, very Mrs & Mrs Flowers, with some humour thrown in too....

And of course all members of the family were present........

Haggis and Peedie

There was a lovely selection of footwear on display (I can reveal Mr Flowers is wearing odd socks! This is as a token of love to his new bride, who firmly believes life is too short to worry about matching socks).....

Then it was time for family photos to be taken, and umbrellas to be raised again (it had miraculously stopped during the wedding bit).  And a slight surreal moment as several canoeists arrived to paddle further down the river... not sure which was more surreal really, a wedding in wellies in a wood in the wain, sorry, rain, or canoeists appearing out of the trees to hurl themselves into the river.....

It was time to wend our way back through the wood and head off to the wedding feast.  And my, what a feast!  Nothing frugal about THAT! Much of it was from the windy isles (Orkney), home grown, or home sourced and put together by Mrs Flowers' wonderful Auntie C together with all her kitchen slaves (I kept WELL away from that - I don't do mass catering.... even if cake might be available!!).  Did I mention cake??  There was a fruit option too for those who wanted to be healthy - plenty of cake for me though!!

This was by no means a "traditional" wedding so, as the bride doesn't like cake (how did I become friends with someone who doesn't like CAKE?), there was a magnificent raspberry pavlova made by Auntie C with a vast number of Orkney eggs.....

And it was time for the dancing to begin.....

As ever at such events, men gathered at the bar to blether (chat).... A fine display of tartan there.... (nice legs too....).

 Mrs Flowers had exchanged her lovely ruby red wellies for a pair of satin slippers....

And the - er - Rock God had changed into his zebra striped lycra trousers, red cape with flames on, and strutted his stuff (no that's his real hair....heee heee....no not really....). I think the guitarist to the right is asking "Who IS this guy?".....

But soon they were - er - in the swing of things.....

 To be joined on stage by ....um..... Ozzie Osbourne????

And there I think I should draw a veil over proceedings!!!

But it was so lovely to be part of Mr & Mrs Flowers special day. It's an event that will live long in the minds of any who attended, for the fun, the originality, the laughs, the wonderful words exchanged, and the obvious love that the newlyweds have for each other.....ahhhhhh  May Mrs & Mrs Flowers (not their real name, obviously) have many many happy years together.

Sanday Seal-cam

One of the island Rangers on Sanday, one of the more Northerly of the Orkney islands, has again set up a seal cam this year. You can watch in real-time grey seals pupping on the shore.  Just remember it's real time as in UK time!  Oh and the clocks go back tonight as we finally leave "British Summer Time" behind us....sigh....


Link to Seal Cam    (and sorry to those who don't have broadband capacity to watch this!).

First Responder training....

The month of October gallops on.  I've been away South, to a wedding (more of that soon), plus it's been a difficult week. So for some distraction therapy thought I'd better get back to blogging. A couple of weeks ago we had some more First Responder Training. I've blogged about this before - see here.....and here......

While many other islands in Orkney have a resident nurse or doctor, we have no medical personnel on the island. Although we are just across the water from Stromness, what seems like a small stretch when all is going well becomes a vast ocean when it's not - particularly in stormy weather.  We are lucky to have the Stromness lifeboat ready to come to our aid with medical people, and the air ambulance too. But while waiting for professional help (which with the air ambulance can be some time) we want to be able to do what we can for any patient.  Hence becoming first responders - about a dozen of us on the island!  Consequently we have to keep our training up to date, hence the recent two-day training course.

We all had a go at doing CPR and using the bag valve mask, as well as defibrillator, oxygen and some other equipment.

Lyndon from the local Ambulance station came along to give us the training. He's great at helping increase our confidence in dealing with potential life-threatening situations.  He's a good trainer who works with humour too so that helps us all, as we tend to get a bit nervous - especially when the words "written test" is mentioned!  However we all passed so we must be doing something right....

Sadly we only get reflective jackets to wear - no blue flashing lights or "nee-naw" horns to go with our arrival......

That's us "up to date" for a while. We've had to deal with a few call-outs since we were first trained, and I think all of us are glad that we are "in this together"!

October days....

Hoy Hills at Sunrise

Well this week was busy!!  Work, first aid course, speaking to a newly found cousin as a result of the genealogy trail! And the last couple of days have been beautiful so I found time to do a bit of gardening. Sadly the garden suffered from lack of attention this summer as I was so busy.  So now trying to dig up weeds and clear borders so that we can start again next Spring.....

The days are growing shorter and sunrise is now about 7.30 so I was able to take the above photo of the Hoy Hills in a pink blush. I think it suits them!  The sleeping dragon on the left is still snoozing.....

And the town of Stromness looks so pretty in her morning colours.... the windows are catching the first rays of the sun...

The cattle are still out in the fields. At the moment there is enough grass for them and it has been quite dry. But once the ground gets wet they are taken into the byres to protect the ground.

Amazingly some flowers survived the gale last week - they must have been in the shelter of the dyke (stone wall) as others are blasted to shreds....

I love this flower, it is so delicate - Nigella I think? Battered but still blooming! Bit like myself ;-)

Not sure what these are - pyrethrum in blazing a lone flower in the background.

All the flowers and plants have a battle to survive given the garden is just yards from the shore, so salt spray and sand is blown at them, gales batter them, the hens scratch about them, and I forget to weed them! Poor things!

I love these orange flowers - not sure what they are....a poppy??.... so pretty....

And these lovely delicate red poppies...

Did I mention I live near a lighthouse?? Hoy High bright in the sun here...

I love the variety of seaweed on the shore...

And on the walk back I saw this spider which had bravely spun a web between two cow parsley stalks.  Lots of spiders about at the moment busy spinning webs.  They hide in crevices in the wind and come out once it's calm and start spinning again.....

And just to make the point that I was up at SUNRISE here's another photo (can you tell I'm not a "morning person"?!).

Relaxing with chocolate...

Well chocolate biscuits to be precise. I'd bought some for our "first responder" training course today and brought them home to "look after". Hmmm I need to put them in a smaller container tomorrow so they look more... otherwise folk will know I've eaten half of them this evening. Oops....

Above - a lovely tranquil sea - not today but a couple of days ago.  And here is HRH Princess Button snoozing while I'm rushing around chasing MY tail - or so it seems.

But I HAVE made some progress with the genealogy and made contact with some long lost relatives (can they be long lost if you didn't know they existed??).  So opportunities to ask questions, fill in gaps and swap stories. And hopefully meeting up in the not too distant future.  All good fun....

Time to do some "swotting" for day 2 of our course tomorrow......

Running to catch up.....

You know how it is.... sorry no time to blog at the moment! All OK just busy - work, tomorrow a 2 day first aid course for our first-responder training, more work. I have also started, with lots of help from a friend D, researching family history - absorbing...obsessive......

oh and we had a power cut this week. It lasted about 20 hours. It turned out to be a problem with the undersea cable that comes to Graemsay from the Orkney Mainland (near Orphir). Fortunately the engineers were able to fix it eventually, and braved heavy rain and wind to do so.  They had planned to bring a generator over but apparently our ferry, the MV Graemsay, couldn't lift it (the crane couldn't). But the engineers got power back on as soon as possible anyway.  I just went to bed early with a battery radio and a camping lantern. I have a gas hob (hotplate) so could make hot drinks and cook, and fortunately it was relatively mild so not too chilly indoors.  And I put on extra layers and in the morning baked some welsh cakes on the planc (griddle) and that warmed the kitchen up nicely!

So will be back soon - when time and energy permit!! Send CAKE ;-)