Spare Time!
I grew up with boats. Our family summers were spent in a remote cottage on a Highland sealoch. This boat was my playpen – put me in there with a book, my mother said, and I was perfectly happy.
At seventeen I got a Graduate sailing dinghy, and capsized all over the Firth of Forth.
Now I have the original of Cass’s Khalida – my own Karima S.
I take her out as much as I can through the summer.
Winter is drama time, either pantomime at Christmas (I’m behind the false beard)...
...or our March County Drama Festival. This play was my sailing play, Triangles – my friend Izzy, in white, played the boat.
As Andromache, in Women of Troy, by Euripides, saying goodbye to her son, who is about to be killed by the Greeks.
This was our silliest play ever. I’m the aeroplane, with sound effects. Nyeeeaaaah ... acka acka acka, bang!
I’ve only been learning a couple of years, but I enjoy it hugely.
My audience has its lunch, then stays on to listen and cheep along.
My other learning is Norwegian, online – I managed not too badly in my last visit to Bergen, and sometimes even did a whole conversation without the Norwegian person I was speaking to breaking into perfect English. It’s very like Shetland dialect.
I read English at University, and am working my way through the classics as well as enjoying modern fiction.
I was one of the musicians at St Margaret’s Church, Shetland, for many years. The guitar still gets brought out for our annual parish picnic and Mass on a former Catholic site. Here we’re in the ruins of St Mary’s, Bressay.
Our garden hosted the first Shetland Mass in lockdown, once two households were allowed to get together outdoors.
We take Christmas seriously, with a special shopping expedition into Lerwick – and a break at Cass’s favourite café, the Peerie Shop.
Christmas lunch – duck, followed by home made Christmas pudding.
Lockdown fun – one of my contributions to a FB page called ‘Put your bins out in a Ballgown.’
No account of life at the Manse would be complete without our animals. This is Magnus, our senior boy, and therefore Top Cat, posing imposingly on his peat stack.
Because her mother spoiled her when she was a small, fat kitten, Génie expected to be Top Cat on the death of the former Top Cat. She’s an OCD timekeeper: brush at 06.30, immediately after the alarm clock; breakfast at 08.00; dinner at 1800; dreamies at 20.30 precisely, and people herded towards bed from 21.30 onwards.
She also likes to keep an eye on my word count from the top of the study bookcase.
This is the real queen of the household, Génie’s mother and her mistress’s special cat, Miss Matty. She didn’t even bother to join in the vying for First Bowl; she knew she’d still get fish from her mistress’s own plate. It’s the gentle paw laid on my knee, the expression that trusts I’ll share, that does it every time...
We used to have two ponies, and when the older one died everyone said, ‘Milla will get used to being on her own.’ Even with daily walks and brushing, she didn’t, so now she lives in a herd near Scalloway. We visit her every time we go to Lerwick, and take her saved-up apple cores and melon skins. It’s very strange being without a pony! – we do miss her.