October ended in a dramatic fashion. As I was getting into the car after the Harvest Festival service in the kirk on Sunday 24 Oct I slipped and managed to pull a muscle (or two) in my back. I managed to drive the car home but went straight to bed. Next day Maureen called the doctor out because I was in such pain. He arrived very quickly, diagnosed the problem and prescribed complete rest for a few days. Just to make sure that I did rest he prescribed some painkillers which had the double effect of making me sleep a lot so that I did not move very much and numbing the pain when I did have to move. The nurse called each morning for the next week to check that I was making satisfactory progress and even asked if we required a 'home help'. We are extremely fortunate to have such dedicated medical staff on this island, thank goodness for the National Health Service. By Thursday 4 Nov I was well enough to accompany Maureen on a short shopping expedition to the Ebenezer store. I had the luxury of my first "sit-down" bath on Friday 5 Nov and am now feeling quite back to normal although I am still wary of lifting anything heavy or of moving very quickly. We have watched very little television since I twisted my back (not that we watched it very much anyway) and we have not really missed it, our values seem to have changed since we arrived on the island.

Another dramatic event on 28 Oct was the transporting of Rocky the ram from his field next to our house to his owner's new home in mainland Scotland. We shall miss seeing him chomping his way through the grass in next door's garden. We did, of course, send him a "Welcome to your new home" card.

No sooner had November arrived than we had a phone call from Rev Alison Finch, the Episcopalian vicar of Kirkwall. She has just returned to work after a long illness and wanted to arrange a visit to Stronsay for the first time and celebrate the Eucharist. With the help of a member of the Kirk Session it was soon arranged for the evening of Tuesday 9 November. Because of the ferry times she stayed overnight at our house and we had a pleasant two days of her company. Once more a member of the Kirk Session helped to arrange for Alison to visit Stronsay again and celebrate the Eucharist on the evening of Wednesday 8 Dec.

We seem to move from one drama to another. For a week or two we thought we could hear birds scurrying along the outside guttering but on the evening of 4 Nov I saw a mouse scurry through the kitchen. On talking to island residents it seems that the mice move indoors as soon as the crops have been gathered and the colder weather starts to arrive. Traps and poison appeared to have little effect so on Mon 8 Nov we looked on the notice boards in the two shops and found an advertisement offering a kitten to a good home. We phoned up the kitten's owners and assured them that the kitten would indeed have a very good home. So, on Tue 9 Nov we took delivery of one pure white kitten which Maureen has named "Surrey" after White Surrey, the horse ridden by King Richard III at the battle of Bosworth in 1485. Although Surrey is only 7 weeks old her owners had house-trained her and she is quite capable of washing herself. It is just as well really because the pure white kitten soon disappeared behind the oil-fired stove for 10 minutes and emerged as a grey kitten with black paws. However, she is now settled in her own box with a blanket and toys. We have a stock of cat litter, cat food and her insurance papers are 'in the post'. Surrey entertains us with her antics as she hurtles around the kitchen at high speed before stopping suddenly and falling fast asleep, perhaps that is why we have watched so little television. All we have to do now is hope that the mice notice that we have a cat and that they move on to somewhere else. Maureen was lamenting the advent of the mice when we heard from friends in Scarborough that the Bonfire Night fireworks there were especially noisy this year and that they began to be heard several weeks before 5 Nov. Here on Stronsay we have heard less than half-a-dozen fireworks all over the Guy Fawkes weekend.

Matilda's owners are still struggling to prevent their chickens from plunging headfirst, kamikaze-style, into the bath of water that is provided for the geese. When their fields are re-fenced in the near future they will be able to keep the geese and chickens in seperate fields and the sheep can be penned securely instead of constantly breaking out (led by Ringo and Curly, the ovine Houdinis). A few days ago Matilda's owner was repairing the hen-house when he disturbed a small mouse which shot out of the hen-house and through a group of hens in the field. The hens thought the scurrying mouse was a juicy, plump worm and several of them picked up the mouse as it passed them only to hurriedly drop it when they realised that it was not a worm after all. The mouse eventually reached the safety of the rockery where it went to ground but Jaffa, the cat, has taken up guard near the rockery and is daring the mouse to show itself. Jaffa is a cat that thinks big. The other cats bring home small mice, baby rabbits and occasionally small sparrows but Jaffa came home one day looking very proud of himself as he dragged a very large and very dead seagull.

Last updated 12 November 2004