Sunday, May 18
We are all feeling a bit dopey and lazy this morning so for a while we curl up on the sofas and knit. We’ve brought our various projects and, as if she had read our collective mind, the owner has provided us with a wicker basket by the fireplace filled with balls of yarns, needles and half-finished knitted swatches. I can’t sit still long though–much too expensive a trip to do what we do at home!–and despite the cool, grey weather we set off for Skara Brae, the 5000 year old neolithic community about ten miles north of Stromness right on the Bay of Skaill. It’s a World Heritage site and quite full of tourists on this Sunday morning but not so many as to spoil the illusion of stone-age life. The weather is perfect for transporting us back through, as people love to say, the mists of time.
The area of the excavations (begun with the discovery of stone walls in 1850 when a particularly bad storm unearthed some) is small, much smaller than I had imagined. We pace off the perimeter and figure it is no more than about a quarter acre but archaeologists think that 50 to 100 people once lived in these eight dwellings.
One of houses which once could be seen by the public is particularly complete but being judged “very fragile” has been resealed and a replica built.
The stonework is amazingly complex and beautifully fashioned. Stone slabs divide rooms, form shelves and enclose beds; the original ceilings were elegantly corbelled with a hole at the top to allow smoke to leave from the hearth. Having read several Icelandic and Scandinavian novels over the years I suspect that life did not change much from 3000 BCE until about 1900! How very dark, smokey, crowded and smelly the homes must have been!
Our tickets also let us into 17th c (and more recently) Skaill House, home of the local laird. It was the seventh laird, William Graham Watt, who on being shown the exposed ruins undertook the first excavations of Skara Brae. The furnishings are mainly Victorian.
As all roads on Mainland lead to Kirkwall, the capital, we head there next. We eat at The Reel where I can finally get my email–WiFi at the cottage does not seem to work–and Michael for some reason does not have to pay for his lunch (he argues with them but they prevail and he is about 8 pounds ahead of the game) and we go across the street to Judith Glue’s (both these places have been recommended) and I decide that Michael should treat us to cones of Orkney ice cream. Later he claims he was about to offer anyway. St Magnus Cathedral is just across the street. Jill and Lynn head over and sit on a bench while Michael and I stay and get the cones. Michael takes his and Lynn’s, I follow shortly with mine–yumm, it is good–and Jill’s. I’m sure you can guess there is a story coming….
So, I start up the steps toward the cathedral, a cone in each hand…and trip. I crash down, bang my left big toe sharply on the edge of the step, and yell out a very blasphemous phrase, especially given the location, which I will simply refer to as the J…F…C incident.This is bad enough one would think but no, I top even this. My cone has broken and I am clutching its various pieces in my left hand. Jill’s cone has lost about half its ice cream but following every mother’s three-second rule, I scoop it back onto her cone, then getting up limp over to the bench and give it to her. Jill hasn’t seen what I have done, the others have. She begins to eat it and Lynn, aghast, says “Why did you give her that cone!?” Still in shock–honestly–I respond “Because I had already licked mine.” Now we are truly in hysterics. Everyone who has witnessed this debacle politely looks elsewhere. We are totally beside ourselves; we cannot, are physically unable to stop laughing.
At last we regain some dignity and sobriety and visit the church which is truly lovely, Romanesque in style, begun in 1137 to atone for the murder of Earl Magnus. The story can be found in the Orkneyinga Saga which is a must-read for everyone visiting Orkney. (Unfortunately and inexplicably it is not in the newish Penguin collection Sagas of the Icelanders but can be found as a separate Penguin book.)
Spite & Malice again in the evening…Michael loses a game and tsk, tsk, tsk, he is one sore loser! The sides of his mouth went right down…very grim!
Michael’s Exceptionally Tasty
Crock Pot Pot Roast (on low all day long)
Potatoes peeled and quartered
Carrots ditto
Onions ditto…how much simpler can it get?
1 small rump pot roast rubbed with salt and pepper
1 small can of tomato sauce
1/2 c water
Put the vegetables in the bottom of the pot, cover with the meat, pour the tomato sauce and extra water over the top, sprinkle with oregano, basil. This oh so simple recipe is delicious and we served it was a Spanish rioja wine and a small green salad.