Diary of a Deckhand

The silvery head silently emerges from the rippled water, huge black eyes follow me as I make my way along the bumpy path.  The selkie slips from view, back to its other world of fish, kelp and bubbles and I pass from the land of people to one of the things Orkney does best - silence.

Ochre rocks with their tiny puddles of pristine sand jut out into the surging water, no waves stir its surface; it is merely in a hurry to exit Scapa Flow and rejoin the Atlantic as the tide pushes and pulls the cold liquid up and down the shore.

Birds and the gentle sound of the tide are the only sounds out here, the sun making its lazy way to the west, the light fading gradually and the shadows elongate and join to one.

Wreckage from various boats lies strewn amongst the pebbles at the high tide mark, its rusting forms sculpted and polished by the winter storms which change this place utterly.

I sit alone on the shingle beach facing the west, and watch the sun slowly, inevitably, slip from the sky.  Then make my way back, racing the darkness which unfurls across the landscape like a velvet sheet.

Hoy Sound with the Hamnavoe coming in

Hamnavoe just off the Kirk Rocks

From the shore

Wreckage on the beach

Polished by the weather

A curl of seaweed

A net bag on the beach

Long forgotten brass

Wreckage being reclaimed by nature

Sunset over the Atlantic

Ok, so we probably knew sheep couldn’t count anyway,  and they probably can’t spell either.  But you would hope that they could remember the number of offspring they had produced less than 24 hours previously.  Alas, this seems not to be the case, as the sad little speckled body half covered in straw was found to be utterly lifeless.  Sat on by your mum – what a way to go. 
This left two, one which was shy and retiring, and the other whose philosophy seemed to be like those people who elbow past you at the bar when you have stood for 20 minutes for a pint.  None of this is the glass half empty or half full.  Its way is more like “that’s not my glass.  My glass was full.  And bigger.”  So off went the second lamb to be hand reared and no doubt confused in life (they tend to think they are people after a while).  The mother isn’t a bad animal; there is no malice in her actions, although there was considerable ill feeling towards me when I attempted to get some milk from her to feed her offspring.  Whoever bred flighty animals with horns needs a good talking to. 

And talking of horns, Rowans antlers have fallen off, as per nature’s cycle.  I always wonder if it hurts, and quite what it feels like to have all that weight off the top of your head.  You know the trick where you push up on a doorframe for 2 minutes and then step out, only to find your arms mysteriously rising of their own accord?  I often find myself pondering if he spends a lot of time looking up at seagulls bottoms.  It also means that the girls are back in charge.  No longer able to chase them with the large coat racks attached to his skull, Lydia the head hind is firmly in the herd driving seat. 

The season fast approaching and I flit between nervous and excited.  Nervous that it all goes to plan, that everything I needed to paint is painted, that everything that has been buggered about with is working.  And excited because it is what I came up here to do, it is, I suppose, a dream job.  Working to pay for diving, or working in the diving industry – I know which I would rather be doing, and since I said I would never teach diving, this is possibly the next best thing.

Seven days to go.

Oh yes, and we have been diving.  A lovely day was had on the Jean Elaine courtesy of Andy.  His new diver lift is brilliant, not to quick and nice and wide.  We dived the Tabarka and the Seydlitz scrap site – here are some pics from it.