A skelping for BoJo, a scalping for me

The big news in Orkney this week has been that I have finally had a haircut the visit of Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, who journeyed to Scotland to try to bolster support for the UK Union. After a wonderfully sunny day on Wednesday, Thursday brought low cloud and persistent drizzle, meaning that visibility was very poor (a perfect metaphor for this visit and his premiership in general, perhaps?).

If the Tory leader (or his advisors) thought that travelling to a remote Scottish island would guarantee good media coverage i.e. carefully stage-managed PR stunts, they reckoned without the strength of feeling within the archipelago for the Government's handling of the pandemic response, Brexit, selling off the NHS, lowering of food standards, Black Lives Matter and, to a lesser extent, Scottish independence.

Here's a report from one of the local online news outlets.

It is generally accepted (I think that's fair to say), that the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has done a much better job of leading her government's pandemic response compared to the UK Prime Minister. Some commentators have suggested that Boris Johnson visiting Scotland in the first place was a tacit admission of this fact.

Meanwhile, in my trivial hirsutes, these past four months have seen my hair grow to its longest ever. Yes, I know I was alive in the 60s and 70s, but the Tense bonce has never, ever, been this fleecy. Fortunately, all those pandemic-necessitated face coverings were also ideal for preventing the wool being pulled over my eyes.

Before

Hairdressers were finally allowed to re-open in Scotland on July 15th, so I have been patiently counting down the days to my latest hair appointment. Thankfully, I no longer look like an evil purple Minion (though, to some extent, this may depend upon the lighting conditions).

Also before

After

I am glad to report that I once again feel comfortable in my own skin, though I doubt that the phone calls from cosmetics firms will be jamming the switchboard at Tense Towers.

Pond update

It is six weeks since I blogged about the creation of a garden pond at Tense Towers. To be honest, there's been little progress since, for a number of reasons, but the plan is still to have a functioning water body before the end of the Summer. I should perhaps qualify that remark, as anecdotally, the end of the Orcadian Summer is associated with the second week of August, when a cold wind invariably appears, to scoff at Hawaiian shorts and pina coladas. Maybe I should aim for the Autumnal equinox?

Anyway, back in May, I left you with news that the liner and some pond plants had been ordered. The pond plants from Celtica Wildflowers, in Perthshire, duly arrived and were put into small water-filled containers to acclimatise. And there they still are, although the House Sparrows have found these containers and happily drink from them. Indeed the hole excavated for the pond has been a source of great interest for sparrows, Starlings, Rock Doves and an assortment of gulls, although now it is beginning to develop a green frisson as plants begin growing from the bare earth. 

The liner took a little longer to arrive, actually a lot longer, as apparently the whole world was using lockdown as an excuse to dig a pond. The manufacturers couldn't keep up with demand, so my liner was going to be a while. Obviously, lots of ponds should be great for wildlife, but the aquatically-minded creatures at Tense Towers would have to be patient.

Traditionally, during the Summer in Orkney, the phrase "Is there a liner in?" refers to whether there's a cruise ship berthed at Hatston quay, disgorging bus loads of tourists to the scenic honeypots of the archipelago, but that ain't happening either, for obvious reasons.

At the beginning of this week, the pond liner finally arrived, almost to the day when we discovered a problem with our sewage arrangements. We aren't on a sewage main, but have a septic tank to take care of such things. Investigations continue, but it would seem poodent to wait and see whether half the back garden has to be excavated to repair a soak away.

As they say, shit happens.

A more recent blogpost bewailed the lack of rain and the dire consequences for dragonflies and damselflies hereabouts. Predictably, since then, it's done nothing but rain, or at least we have had a series of light showers. I can't help but think that these would have been handy for filling up a nascent water body and pacifying any passing Naiads. I can but hope.

To be continued...

The north wind doth blow

I think it's fair to say that there's been a bit of a change in the weather, after I banged on about how odd it was that Orkney's meteorology had been so settled of late. However, the rain has been very welcome for wild and cultivated plants alike, the snow maybe not so much.

The first signs of change saw the wind swing around to the north, with showers scudding through the county. There was certainly less hanging around on our walks for wildlife watching or photography.

This Bluebell is tucked in on the north side of a dry stone wall, so is shaded from warmth for much of the day. And not receiving much shelter from a northerly wind.

On our most recent walk, a few Buttercup flowers were beginning to show between all the Celandines, Dandelions and Marsh Marigolds, but I thought this Dandelion clock summed up just how I feel about missing two haircuts during lockdown.

Hooded Crows are fairly wary creatures at the best of times, but this one was conveniently perched on a gravestone in the kirkyard, and didn't fly off at the first hint of a camera.

So, now, with even less reason to be outdoors, we fell back on the old Winter pastime of doing a jigsaw, but one featuring wildlife, obviously.

The northerly breeze continued to send wintry showers across the landscape. Some we missed, some we didn't. Here's one over West Mainland.

Whilst staring intently at a jigsaw puzzle, I must admit that it isn't always the case that it stares intently and unnervingly back at you.

Even if gaps in the showers have given the opportunity, our sunsets have been a bit duller, although with the added interest of looking for ephemeral shapes in the swirling clouds. Is there a crocodile hidden away in this view?

Yesterday was a typical mid May day, referred to locally as Lambing Snow, and as someone on social media commented "Only six weeks to mid-Summer!"

There wasn't a whole lot of gardening or pond creation going on, I can tell you, although the jigsaw is coming on a treat. Meanwhile, biscuit and tea consumption have gone through the roof. I was going to say 'increased exponentially', but that would suggest a need for some diagramatical representation and think we've all had enough of misinterpreted or unlabelled graphs for the time being, thank you very much.

Key largo

I will attempt to not make this post too florid.

After a week of ploughing through my Lockdown To Do list (starting at the bottom and working up), I was given an urgent job in an adjacent county for a key worker who was having trouble accessing IT at home. Those of you who were paying attention in Geography class will be aware that the phrase 'adjacent county' when applied to Orkney involves a sea journey. So it was, that early yesterday morning, the van and I hopped aboard the ferry from St Margaret's Hope in South Ronaldsay, in the company of a lorry and a pick-up towing a trailer. It was not busy. Upon reaching Gill's Bay in Caithness on the Scottish mainland, we trundled westwards on roads so quiet that I felt like waving at each passing vehicle, à la small island mode.

The job took about an hour and a half, even with the help of several curious cats, so just before lunchtime I left a satisfied customer and began to ponder how to fill the next seven hours before the ferry sailed for home. Our Lass had anticipated my predicament and had selflessly furnished me with a shopping list, with which to while away some time in a supermarket. The westerly breeze was bitingly chill as I, and a dozen or so other folk, queued outside an emporium of essentials for our turn to peruse the gaudy shelves, respectfully maintaining our two metre distances and contemplating our plummeting body temperatures.

Once in-store, I was pleasantly surprised to discover a plentiful supply of dairy-free milks. I have long suspected that I have an uneasy relationship with cows' milk and so have been on a reduced dairy intake for a year or so. Back in Orkney, presumably like many places when the panic buying started, unthinking milk drinkers were quick to snap up all the dairy-free milk produce in case the dairy stuff was ever in short supply. Believe me, lactose sensitive is not a place you want to be if there's a toilet roll shortage. It's quite graphic for all the wrong reasons. Just sayin'.

Fortunately, Our Lass's list was not a long one, and I soon found myself in another queue, this time for the checkouts. Curiously, the alcohol aisle had been chosen as the holding area for this queue, and I couldn't decide whether this was purely for the smooth routing of customers or a subtle hint as to how to cope with self-isolation and worrying about cashflow.

In an unexpected, yet magnificent, display of forethought and planning, I had brought a packed lunch, three o'clock and dinner, so nourishment wasn't going to be a problem. I found a convenient place to park up for lunch and checked emails and the like whilst watching the panorama before me.

Gulls and waders were huddled down in a sheltered spot on the rocky shore, a few pipits and wagtails pottered about the car park, corvids looked for any morsels the gulls might have missed and a pair of Oystercatchers noisily and frequently made love. Some things are independent of the temperature, obviously.

The remainder of the afternoon passed by in a slowly flowing stream of online office work, podcasts, wildlife watching and a bit of reading. Eventually, the mv Alfred hove into view and I could finally head for home. Today is wet and windy (not an IBS reference), so I am definitely not venturing far from a kettle.

Dawning realisation

This graph was included in an article on the BBC News website on Sunday 22nd March 2020. I was initially puzzled by the fact that adding the Recoveries and Deaths together didn't match the number of Current cases. Then I remembered that anyone who thinks they have symptoms of Coronavirus should self-isolate for 14 days. Looking at the graph again, it dawned upon me that the sum of the latest numbers of Recoveries and Deaths matches the Current cases from 2 weeks ago.

So, in another fortnight, the Recoveries and Deaths columns are going to do what the Current cases column is doing now i.e. triple. Am I reading that correctly?

And it doesn't look like that Current cases slope is going to be levelling off any time soon.

Crivens!

Careen afore us

Our journey back from the holiday in Inverness went without a hitch. As usual, we had allowed time to pop to a supermarket on the mainland, before catching a ferry across the Pentland Firth. Having used up all the perishables from the fridge at Tense Towers before we left, there were a few essentials to buy to see us through the rest of the weekend until Monday morning. Whilst in holiday mode, we had been vaguely aware of all the malarkey surrounding folk stockpiling goods due to COVID-19, so I wasn't quite prepared for the blatant opportunism of the supermarket chain. At the end or corner of just about every aisle were displays of loo roll and handwash. But the icing on the cake was this shelf sign, which I am positive must have a typo in it.

I had to pop up to Shetland (6 confirmed cases, all self-isolating) for work on Friday. Once the ferry had docked, I headed north from Lerwick through occasional flurries of snow and I marvelled at the icicles which had formed below the banks at either side of the road. As they say, it was proper Baltic!

The return drive to Lerwick was notable for a Red Grouse, spotted feeding at the side of the road (another first for the year).

Whilst waiting for the ferry back to Orkney (no confirmed cases at time of writing), I had a wander along the harbour front, then climbed one of the many flagstoned alleys which wind steeply up to Hillhead, then along past the building which is famous as the Police Station in the crime drama Shetland, before descending once more back to the harbour front.

 A bird box on a telegraph pole - Great Tits and megabits

There were plenty of tourists about, but I couldn't see a cruise ship anywhere, not at a berth in Lerwick, nor out in the sound between the mainland and Bressay. With a bit more time to kill, I drove to the Knab, a ness with views of Brei Wick and, sure enough, there was the ship, the Magellan, busy transferring passengers to and fro to the town in a fleet of small tenders.

Yesterday afternoon, just as Our Lass and I were contemplating a walk, we received a message from Eagle-eyed M asking much the same question, so we met up and drove down to Rose Ness at the southern tip of Holm. It was bracing to say the least, with the waves at high tide sending foam up over the clifftops. By the small modern-day lighthouse there were 5 Ringed Plovers hunkering down out of the wind, and on the return walk, M found a few wing feathers, which I pocketed for ID later.

This Shag seemed to have a penchant for extreme sport

Back at Tense Towers, over coffee and biscuits, we examined the feathers, which were mainly brown with a pale stripe on the leading edge. Probably too small for a wader, but too large for a pipit, we were a bit stumped as to who the unfortunate owner had been. The salt-laden clifftop location and rough moorland didn't seem right for Blackbird, so I began leafing through a book of bird signs (footprints, skulls, feathers etc). When I eventually found a match for colour and size, we were amazed to learn that the feathers were from a Starling. Really?! Aren't they all black and sparkly?! But the book indicated that the secondaries would begin to have a blue-greenish gloss by S3 and, would you believe it, they did.

Then we checked the base of the feathers, where the quills had been broken off. So, not moulted, not plucked by a raptor, but chewed by a mammal, which would either have been a feral cat or a non-native Stoat. Satisfied with our nature detective work, we had another cuppa to celebrate.

Today dawned was wet and grey, but by mid morning the wind had dropped to nothing. Our Lass and I had a potter around the kirk loop, spying the occasional and distant Brown Hare, before stopping by the kirk to have a really good look at the Starlings on the roof.

Well, well, well. They do have brown feathers at the leading edge of the wing!

The pools by the kirk contained Teal, Shelduck and Gadwall, and then we scanned the fields behind these for any other wildlife.

In the far distance, we could see another hare hunkered down in the long grass by a fence line. And whilst watching this, I spotted a pair of Snipe a little bit nearer in the same field.

The walk back uphill towards home was rudely interrupted by a shower of rain, driven on by northerly breeze which had suddenly sprang up. There was only one thing for it...

Lunch.

OK, I'm a windbag

Yesterday morning, an app on my phone pinged and I read the words which very much seemed to be the first line of a really good book:

"I have hailstones in my slippers."

Ah, the syzygy of heartfelt concern for a cat, a sudden hailstorm and the opening of a front door... it could only be our good friend Sian, from Life on a Small Island blog.

Now, if Orkney can be relied upon for weather (and believe me, it can), one of its more consistent features is its inconsistency, the changeability of said meteorology. We might have extremes, indeed wildly swinging extremes, but never for very long. So, it has been a little unnerving for the inhabitants of the archipelago to be subjected to weeks of the same sort of weather.

OK, you will have had your Ciaras and your Dennises (Dennii?), so far so traumatic, yet weirdly, these storms did not impact unusually upon Orkney. In UK terms, we got off lightly, with winds which barely registered above normal for these parts. However, this weekend, we have experienced gales measured, in places, well above 100mph, accompanied by thunder, lightning and hailstones. Hence Sian's icy footwear.

We had been wondering when Winter would show up, now we know.

Hail on window at Tense Towers

Obviously, weather such as this, affecting only a small proportion of the UK, doesn't have an official name. Why would a storm moniker be wasted upon such a trifling area? This reminded me of a snippet sent to me by Second Born, which is from a James Robertson book, 365 Stories:

The News Where You Are

That’s all from us. Now it’s time for the news where you are.

The news where you are comes after the news where we are. The news where we are is the news. It comes first. The news where you are is the news where you are. It comes after. We do not have the news where you are.

The news where you are may be news to you but it is not news to us.

The news may be international, national or regional. The news where we are may be international news. The news where you are is never international news. Where you are is not international. The news where you are comes after the international and national news.

The news where you are may be national news or regional news. However, national news where you are is not national news where we are. It is the news where you are.

If the news where you are is national news it is only national where you are.

The news where we are is national wherever you are.

On Saturdays, there is no news where you are after the news where we are. In fact there is no news where you are on Saturdays. Any news there is, is not where you are. It is where we are. If there is news where you are but not where we are it will wait until Sunday.

After the news where you are comes the weather.

The weather where you are is not the national weather. The weather where you are comes after the news where you are, and after the weather where you are comes the national weather. Do not confuse the national weather with the weather where you are. The weather where you are comes first but is lesser weather than the national weather.

Extreme weather is news. However, weather that is more extreme where you are than where we are is not news. Weather that is extreme where we are is news, even if extreme weather where we are is only average weather where you are.

On average, weather where you are is more extreme than weather where we are.

Tough shit.

Good night.

Which just about sums it up perfectly.

Coincidentally, at least I hope it was coincidentally, I recently revisited Duran Duran's Rio album from the early 1980s. With all the meteorological stuff buzzing about in my head, the opening lines from Hold Back The Rain rang rather true:

We're miles away from nowhere
And the wind doesn't have a name
So call it what you want to call it
Still blows down the lane

For a bit of local context, older Orcadians can still recall what would today be tabloid-termed a 'Year from Hell'. Whilst strictly more of a 13 month period in 1952 and 1953 (apologies for my pedantry), the reports are harrowing and a flavour of the time can be found in several pages on the About Orkney website, here and here.

I cannot step aboard a ferry these days, including the latest incarnation of the SS Earl Thorfinn, without thinking of the horrendous conditions experienced by the crew on their unscheduled journey to Aberdeen.

Knickers and a twist

Now that the midwinter festivities are over, life is returning to normal. I'm sure that in many places, as at Tense Towers, 'normal' is a mixture of work and domestic chores, which seriously makes a dent in any opportunities for wildlife and cake.

Wednesday saw gales across the county, so my work was indoor admin (much safer than being up a ladder) but, before commencing that particular delight, there were some domestics to attend to. Having put a load of dirty laundry in the washing machine, I moved some clean clothes from the free-standing drying rack to the airing cupboard, then took some already aired clothes to our bedroom to be put away. Everything was going along nicely as per the usual script: play Mahjong with everyone's socks and hope that there's no odd ones left over; organise my knickers so that no two consecutive days are the same colour (too much info?); and grizzle continuously whilst rummaging through the wardrobes to find sufficient coat-hangers for trousers, blouses, shirts and tops. It's quite mindful in a way (assuming no odd socks) and is a neatly-contained task with a satisfying conclusion and no risk of any strange surprises.

Usually.

For most chores at Tense Towers, Our Lass and I operate on a system based around task urgency, availability of personnel and number of snits given. In essence, if it doesn't need doing and/or no-one is around or can be bothered to do it, it doesn't get done. However, another consequence of the system is that we do tend to pitch in with most things eventually. It isn't exactly a 50/50 split and the spider protocol is constantly being re-written (I think the term for this is that the document is 'live', a fact whose irony is often lost upon the spider in question). So, there I was, with everyone's socks satisfyingly paired, in possession of sufficient coat-hangers to reduce grizzling to a minimum and with only Our Lass's knickers to put away.

Er... hang on a moment... I don't recognise this pair?! Hmmm, they aren't mine, but I'm pretty sure they're not Our Lass's either. Having checked the label, I realise I'm holding a pair of ladies knickers that aren't my wife's size, a situation which most definitely can be described as a strange surprise. I couldn't begin to remember when I last had hold of another lady's knickers. Should I phone Our Lass at work to confirm they're hers? Wait a minute, knickers are usually in sets, and this pair is very much on its own, in style and designer. Perhaps they were inadvertently picked up when we were south visiting relatives? [Carefully puts knickers down] Oh God, whose might they be? There were four generations of womanhood present for Hogmanay, and I can only rule out young V, who is all of eleven months old.

With rising panic, I try to decide whether to phone my sister-in-law instead, but running the likely conversation through my head, it doesn't seem like an option guaranteed to defuse the situation. Perhaps I should just put them away in Our Lass's knicker drawer and pretend I didn't notice? Let's face it, I'm a bloke and therefore not expected to pick up on such fine details. Hey, why am I feeling guilty? After all, I'm not the one with a new pair of knickers not bought by their partner. To be fair, we tend to purchase our own underwear, ever since the incident, a very long time ago, with the pair of knickers with four leg holes. [Blushes]

In the end, I bit the bullet and messaged Our Lass, asking about the pants puzzle and including an Embarrassed emoji. It turned out that they were a gift from said sister-in-law at New Year.

Obvs.

This tale actually followed hard on the heels of a recently-purchased bra where one of the shoulder straps has a half twist and is effectively a Moebius strip. If the thought of the words 'bra' and 'strip' in the same sentence makes you uncomfortable, please spare a thought for the wearer.

Someone else with their knickers in a twist this week has been Counter Terrorism Policing South East, who have produced a guide to inform police forces and government organisations about the threats from ideological extremism. In their infinite wisdom, the document's authors had included the environmental and climate campaign group Extinction Rebellion alongside violent and extremist organisations which are banned in the UK. The guide has now been pulled, saving Our Lass the dilemma of whether to report me to the authorities, as she would be obliged to do under the Prevent programme.

The lights are on, but...

The gravel quietly crunched as I eased the van to a standstill. It felt very pleasant to be parking up at midday on Christmas Eve, contemplating a relaxing lunch, then tidying up any loose ends in slow time during the afternoon. Unpacking the van, my euphoria (which was just getting into its stride) tripped over its own shoelace as I rummaged through a rucksack, trying to find my free-standing torch. Hmmm, several screwdrivers, a pair of cutters, an invoice book and a couple of diaries... but no torch. Dang! I double checked the other box which I had had with me in the equipment room. There's was lots in that, but nothing illuminating. Oh... bother!

I had only been a little bit smug at knocking off early on Christmas Eve, but it jolly well served me right. 

At the back of my mind, I was pondering two facts:

1. Would the office where I had been working shut at 1pm for the festive period?
2. Would it be possible to find a direct dial number for the nearest desk to the equipment room?

These questions was answered quite quickly, as dialling an 0800 number gave a complete spiel of the firm's opening hours over the Christmas and New Year, but then the pleasantly-accented voice reeled off several options of buttons to press for various departments, none of which were the 'I'm an idiot and I've lost my torch" office.

Taking pot luck, I jabbed at '2' and when it was answered, I blurted out "I don't want to book anything, but I need to speak to Cynthia (not her real name) in the next room!"

Perhaps call centre staff are used to muppets like me phoning up, but the voice on the other end of the line was completely unfazed, simply putting me on hold whilst Cynthia was located, and then I was transferred through to her.

In short order, Cynthia had unlocked the equipment room where I'd been working, switched on the light and had a quick look around.

"I can't see anything, I'm afraid," she said. This at least reassured me that I wasn't going mad, as I flippin' knew I'd checked the room before I'd left. It may only have been a man look, but a big red torch usually does not escape detection.

"OK," I said, "In that case, please could you look around the back of the smaller equipment rack, as that's the only place I can think it might be."

Sure enough, there it was, still switched on and a shining example of how much of a pillock I am. Thankfully, the firm was going to be open all afternoon, so I had time to drive the twenty miles back there and sheepishly collect my torch from a grinning receptionist.

Honestly, and a bit topically, I'm wondering whether I could even be trusted to follow a big star in the sky.

Forget everything you thought you knew

The news that scientists in the United States have taught rats to drive tiny cars is quite astounding enough, but the finding that the driving helped lower the rats' stress levels is a whole other bucket of strange.

Nicked off the internet

No longer can we describe those speeding, convoluted, back street journeys to avoid rush hour traffic jams as 'rat runs'. Well, we could, but they would have to be carried out far below the mandatory speed limit, whilst listening to gentle birdsong and inhaling the sweet aroma of neat lavender oil.

And I guess that we'll all now be trying to join the 'rat race', just as soon as these endearingly-intelligent rodents have negotiated the rights to a global single-seater championship and secured a sponsorship deal with Kalms.

Inevitably, not all of us will be able to de-stress sufficiently to maintain our progress at a whisker under the legal limit, so it is likely that rat traps will be deployed to catch the perpetrators. These will take the form of large metal rats positioned by the kerb along roads. When triggered by a speedster, the metal rat shoots out from the roadside to connect firmly with the offender's vehicle. The design prototype is called Ro-dent-i-side.

It is rumoured that the next series of The Grand Tour will feature a self-important Capybara, a nervous hamster and a Coypu which hordes Lego.

Climate struck

I have to admit that I did not manage to attend any gathering for the Global Climate Strike on Friday 20th September 2019. Nearly, but not quite. I was working in Shetland that day, and didn't finish the task in time to hotfoot it back into Lerwick for the noon meeting at the Market Cross, attended by about 100 folk.

I did, however, find time later in the afternoon to visit the Why Waste shop to purchase some less environmentally-damaging cleaning products and cosmetics.

The previous evening, before heading out to catch the night boat to Shetland, I had managed to capture another ephemeral sky moment across Scapa Flow. Later, pondering how to caption the photo, the words 'there's a hole in the sky' came to mind, which I recalled were sung by Ronnie James Dio on Run with the wolf, from Rainbow's Rising album. However, I decided to research the phrase anyway, in case there was a more apt use of it in the musical canon.

Oh boy, was there ever!

Up until this point, I knew very little about the Grateful Dead, other than they were a band that began in the mid 60s. My lyric search turned up the line 'there's a hole in the sky where the light pours in' from a song called We can run from the 1989 Built to Last album. This seemed a neat fit for my image. Then, oh jeez, then, I read the remainder of the lyrics...

We don't own this place, though we act as if we did,
It's a loan from the children of our children's kids.
The actual owners haven't even been born yet.

But we never tend the garden and rarely we pay the rent,
Some of it is broken and the rest of it is bent
Put it all on plastic and I wonder where we'll be when the bills hit.

We can run,
But we can't hide from it.
Of all possible worlds,
We only got one:
We gotta ride on it.
Whatever we've done,
We'll never get far from what we leave behind,
Baby, we can run, run, run, but we can't hide.
Oh no, we can't hide.

I'm dumpin' my trash in your back yard
Makin' certain you don't notice really isn't so hard
You're so busy with your guns and all of your excuses to use them.

Well, it's oil for the rich and babies for the poor,
We got everyone believin' that more is more,
If a reckoning comes, maybe we will know what to do then.

All these complications seem to leave no choice,
I heard the tongues of billion speak with just one voice,
Saying, "just leave all the rest to me,
I need it worse than you, you see."
And then I heard,
The sound of one child crying.

Today I went walking in the amber wind,
There's a hole in the sky where the light pours in
I remembered the days when I wasn't afraid of the sunshine.

But now it beats down on the asphalt land
Like a hammering blow from god's left hand
What little still grows cringes in the shade like a bad vine.

Songwriters: Brent Richard Mydland / John Barlow

We Can Run lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.

The echoes of these words from 1989 are still as fresh and even more urgent, thirty years later. If you have not yet done so, can I please ask that you watch the short film Protect, Restore, Fund, featuring Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot. Thank you.

Prime irk

My laptop computer is probably the hardest working device in my toolbox, just don't tell the hammer drill. The computer has to suffer the ignominies of being chucked about in vans, boats, small planes, building sites and fits of owner's pique. And it shows. The screen is a bit temperamental, the battery life is poor and... come to think of it, we're very alike!

A couple of weekends ago, I took the plunge and decided to upgrade it. As the laptop is nearly 6 years old, I had anticipated things being much more whizzy now, such is usually the way of technological progress. So I was rather surprised to see the same chipset still in use for mid-range computers, and storage capacity smaller (though more expensive). What the actual... ?

Closer inspection showed that hard disc drives are now old hat, with solid drives backing up to the Cloud being all the rage. As I can't always guarantee finding a connection to the internet whilst out and about, this wasn't a direction I was wishing to explore.

Happily, by choosing a slightly smaller screen size (from 17" down to 15.6"), I was able to find a slimmer and lighter computer (I won't be so alike with this one!). In fact, so slim that I had a momentary panic that there wouldn't be room for the port in which to plug an ethernet cable. It turns out that it is just possible to squeeze in one of these RJ45 connectors, by hinging a piece of the body of the laptop. Phew.

Having now decided upon a specific model, predictably, the cheapest one was to be found on Amazon. In my haste to place the order, I somehow triggered a free Prime trial. Gah! It took me bloomin' ages and many different webpages to cancel the subscription, although I was stuck with the free 1 month's trial. Why so prim about Prime? Well, there's not much point in building up my hopes for a next day delivery when you live in the back of beyond. And so it proved, the parcel took a week to arrive (although the new laptop bag I ordered several days later did arrive several days sooner, go figure).

Yesterday, I had allowed a whole day for tracking down a cable fault in a hotel, but I was fortunate (or skilled?) and managed to solve the problem before lunch. This meant that I had half a day free to begin sorting out the new machine. All was going swimmingly (I even managed to transfer over my Office 2013 package) until I decided to try loading Windows Updates. For some reason, although everything else was happy downloading (anti-virus, malware protection etc), and although the computer knew it needed updates, it would search for ages and then give up. After several reboots, more attempts at updating and a couple of forlorn trips through Troubleshooting, I bit the bullet and contacted Microsoft.

I could either wait 10 minutes to speak to someone, book a callback or be first in the queue for live chat. I opted for the latter and was put through to a person who didn't really deserve me (or at least my problem) in their day. For as it transpired, it wasn't an easy fix, even once I'd taken the scary decision to allow remote control from the Microsoft end. Eep! After about an hour, in which I sat and watched various windows being opened and closed, drop down menu selections being altered and DOS commands pinging about right, left and centre, my computer was restarted. This was where I realised I should've written down the ticket number on my problem! Fortunately, once rebooted, the Windows Update facility was working, so after a further 30 minutes and 24 updates, I logged back on to Microsoft to give some glowing feedback and much gratitude.

Although I was pretty sure I had never used the Cloud, within seconds of me signing in to er... um... it could've been Google... or maybe Microsoft... the new laptop was displaying the background screen from the old machine and showing me photos from late 2013 and early 2014. In cyberspace, everyone can hear you scream "Where did that come from?!"

Editor's choice

I'm afraid that I have spent the afternoon procrastinating, looking back through time to 2009, to come up with a retrospective decadal list of one blogpost per year. Some are happy, some are sad. Most contain more emotion than I anticipated revealing when I began writing them. They are mainly about wildlife (not so unexpected) and cake (ditto), but also feature a eulogy (one of several through the years) and a treatise on the duality of character of the author (we're still arguing about that one).

To keep things simple, I haven't curated them into any particular order, other than presenting them chronologically. Over the course of the ten years, some things have changed. For instance, MGLW (my good lady wife) in the early days, is now Our Lass, same long-suffering person, different appellation. But on the whole, for better or worse, I don't think my writing style has changed very much. Hmmm, that does hint at a certain lack of progress, doesn't it?

So, here they are, a brief perambulation through a decade of Imperfect and Tense:

2009 - When the prose was more sugary than the cake

2010 - An insect blogpost that nearly doesn't mention dragons

2011 - A typographically-challenging insect

2012 - "The bells... the bells!"

2013 - Moving swiftly on

2014 - Cake

2015 - "A man is not dead while his name is still spoken."

2016 - Dragons as a religion

2017 - It's a calling

2018 - Self-improvement

Several favourites didn't quite make the cut, so you have been spared the music/Land Rover extravaganza that was Disco no more, the revelatory Life of Pi, and the classic wildlife and cakefest that was Food for the soul.

I know, I know, that makes thirteen.

Milestone missed

In non-Brexit related news, I had been quietly looking forward to telling you all about my one thousandth blogpost (of which, only 900 had the word 'serendipitous' embedded within). At the moment, Imperfect and Tense is hovering at the 989 mark for published posts, although there are a couple in draft (I haven't forgotten, Barbara, honest!) and, at time of writing, this one.

Oh, but hang on a minute... tucked away in a remote backwater of the Blogger page are the additional 18 posts which were written about dragonflies under the auspices of Odometer, between 2013 and 2016. Dang, that's scuppered my maths.

And if I'm being very strict, there's also the four posts loitering over on Wordpress under the Contrarie Tydes banner (2016-2017), but as those were written to be self-supporting without photographs, and now there's adverts plastered all through the blog, I've lost the will to continue it.

So, welcome to my 1012th post!

The thing that's exercising me today

It's been a worrying 24 hours at Tense Towers, well, at least in this pair of slippers.

There I was, happily frolicking through typing an email, when the dreaded underscore appeared under a word. Not as bad as one of Theresa's red lines, clearly, but a bit of an annoyance, nevertheless.

Hmmm, thought I, I definitely remember being taught (oh so many moons ago) that the noun has a 'c' and the verb has an 's', so what's with all this spellchecker nonsense?!

Opening up another tab on the screen, I (somewhat less confidently) typed in the word as previously written and was pleased to note that, on a quick scan of the page, all of the entries were the same as my spelling.

Hah! Take that, foul spellchecker!

On deeper scrutiny, however, I realised that same spelling they may have been, but same language? Not so much. Or, pas tellement, as it were. Eep!

At around this point, I went off on a tangent when I also realised that I couldn't recall the last time I had used an actual dictionary. Jings, I used to pass hours leafing through the dictionary, in those pre-surfing the internet days. Zipping from spelling to etymology to synonym and who knows where. Happy sigh.

But, no, since moving to Orkney, fitting the bookcases into the office and populating them with all manner of books, I don't think I have bothered to lift any of the dictionaries (oh yes, more than one!) from a shelf. It's been jolly old Google all the way, folly though this may be.

Now I was worried. Am I starting to lose it (assuming I had it in the first place)? Is this one of those telltale signs of senescence? Or worse?! Double Eep!

So, what had I been taught? Was I recalling it correctly? Perhaps I was conflating two different spelling rules? I had to admit, no matter which angle I approached it from, this was beginning to sound rather like losing it.

Hang on a bit, though, I have loads of blogposts to mine for data gold (or maybe just iron pyrites). Let's see if this is a new phenomenon, or something I've always been confused about...

[Enters 'exercise' into the search box and clicks on the little magnifying glass thingy...]

This produces fifteen blogposts, distributed through the years 2009 to 2018. So far, so ordinary.

[Then, enters 'exercice' into the search box and yada yada yada...]

Now, this only produces two blogposts, one from 2011 and the other from 2016, so I've obviously got previous, as they say.

Hey, every day is a school day, and it appears that what works for licence, practice and advice, doesn't hold true for exercice. Who knew? Not me, obvs.

Yet another blatant filler post

Blogging can be a tricky old business. I've lost count of the number of times when I've turned up on this page to apologise for a prolonged absence due to a missing muse or the pressure of Life. One of the lesser side effects of such a hiatus is the consequent reduction in annual blog count, which is not a highly sought after metric, but one which I use to gauge year on year wordage and guff.

I reckon on about eight posts a month which, with a bit of gentle pressure, should yield close to a hundred for the year. Handily, the 'Previously on' sidebar shows monthly/annual output, so there's not even too much heartache in checking whether I'm on schedule, or not.

If I manage the required eight posts in December, but without this particular snippet, I would be one short of the hundred. Cue a filler post to promote the likely not-quite-there 99 to the magic 100. Sad, isn't it?

In my desperation to come up with a suitable topic for your delectation, the word 'Brexit' was typed into the Search facility of I&T, which yielded a whole raft of one post from 2017. It mentioned 'Fin' but not 'La Fin', it mentioned 'whales', but not 'Wales', so you would be correct in thinking that it was more cetacean-based than politician-biased.

Obviously, if you're reading this, that particular search will now have two results!

With a vote due in the House of Commons in a fortnight's time, regarding the acceptance of the settlement deal, or not, let's just say that the threat of an imminent harpoon still hangs over our relationship with the EU.

The only certainty is that anyone who professes to know what will happen in the coming months is most definitely fibbing. And when will that much-prized certainty arrive? Well, you'll need more than the lung capacity of a Sperm Whale to hold your breath for that long.