91热爆

We've just (Sat 18 Oct) got back from the doctor's surgery after having our annual anti-influenza injections. So far we've had no adverse reactions but we often wonder whether these injections have any real effect - would we catch 'flu if we didn't have them?

A couple of weeks ago we went up to Olivebank, one of our two shops, and did a bit of shopping. We also collected the newspapers for ourselves and for Sue, our postmistress. I wonder why it is that all the extra bits that go in the Saturday edition of the Daily Telegraph don't usually arrive until Monday - there are no newspapers from mainland on Sunday, they arrive on Monday. It's no fault of Maurice & Sheila who run the shop, they are at the mercy of Loganair who carry newspapers out from Kirkwall; and they in turn are reliant on the early-morning newspaper flight up from Inverness or Aberdeen. The effect of this is that on Monday there is a weighty pile of newspapers to cart home and we don't get the Telegraph's radio & TV guide in time to see what's on on Sunday; we have to rely on the 91热爆 Radio 4 website. But I digress. On our way back from Olivebank to the other shop on Stronsay, Ebenezer Stores, I parked outside the post office whilst Maureen took the newspapers in to Sue, the postmistress. However, when I tried to drive off to Ebenezer Stores the gear stick (it鈥檚 an automatic) felt very sloppy and didn鈥檛 seem to be attached to anything nor did the car engage gear. Fortunately the car was outside the Post Office and therefore, quite literally, just across the road from Claremont so I left it where it was and phoned Mark, the island鈥檚 car mechanic who works from Olivebank garage. Next day Mark came along and diagnosed the problem straightaway 鈥� the cable between the gear lever and the transmission had snapped right at the end. Mark managed to get the car back to the garage at Olivebank, phoned the local Land Rover agent in Kirkwall and then phoned me with the news that a new cable and the extra bits to fit it would cost me well over 178 pounds (about 350 US dollars); I should have known that it would have been an expensive item after paying over 100 pounds for a new oil cooler (a two-foot length of copper pipe with heat-dispersing fins soldered onto it) 2 or 3 years ago. The car is now well over 12 years old and spending that much on a simple repair would be uneconomical so Mark said he would try to fix the old cable; and, being an honest chap, said that he couldn't guarantee that he would be successful nor that the repair would be long-lasting. An hour later Mark phoned with the good news that he had managed to re-attach the cable but, because the cable was now a couple of inches shorter, I would only be able to select 鈥減ark鈥�, 鈥渞everse鈥� or 鈥渄rive鈥�. As those are the only selections I ever use this was quite acceptable to me and I heaved a sigh of relief. The car has been fine ever since, or at least it had been until the windscreen wipers packed up a week ago! When the car received its annual MOT inspection in January 2008 the mechanic on mainland warned me that the next MOT would involve some major (and expensive!) repair work so when the next MOT inspection becomes due in January 2009 the car will become an 鈥渋sland car鈥�; this means I won鈥檛 have to put it in for an MOT inspection but I will only be able to use the car on Stronsay. As I only ever go to mainland 3 or 4 times a year this is no great hardship.

Sue, who has been Stronsay鈥檚 postmistress for the last five years or so, has now retired. Lisa, who lives just down the road and has worked as relief postmistress from time to time, has taken over from Sue. And our neighbour Bob Tateson, a teacher at Stronsay Junior High School, retired at half-term so Bob鈥檚 house, owned by the Education Authority, is now empty awaiting the arrival of Bob鈥檚 replacement.

Whilst browsing the Internet for photographs of Stronsay I found a , it contains a huge quantity of photographs of the UK including Orkney 鈥� there鈥檚 the usual photograph but there's which actually shows our house, its centre right, second house from the right. I even found a photograph of the Derbyshire village where I was brought up

Malcolm, our reliable handyman, moved to a new house last year. He chose the new house because it was attached to a large but rather decrepit outbuilding. He has made the outbuilding weather-proof, made it accessible from within the house and upgraded the electrics; now the decrepit outbuildings is a large, well-equipped workshop. The outbuilding housed several feral cats which Malcolm was amazed to find happily co-existing with the family of blackbirds that have their nest in the rafters inside the building; apparently the birds and the cats share a common entrance to the outbuilding via an old steel drive shaft which runs through a large hole in the wall. Malcolm has actually seen a cat watching a blackbird walk into the barn along the old drive shaft, inches from her nose. However, although the cats and blackbirds manage to tolerate each other the cats soon dispose of any mice or rats that dare to show their nose in the building.

Vicky the hairdresser paid her monthly visit to Stronsay a couple of weeks ago. As she was doing Maureen鈥檚 hair Vicky remarked that her cat had developed a habit of jumping onto her bedside table and drinking from the glass of water that was left on it overnight. The noise of the cat lapping the water woke Vicky up in the middle of the night so she thought of a clever ploy to foil the cat 鈥� she only filled the glass to the half-way mark so that the cat couldn鈥檛 reach it. However, the cat was equal to the challenge and found out that it could dip its paw into the half-full glass of water and then slurp the water from its wet paw thus making even more noise than just lapping from a full glass of water. This reminded me that our white cat, Surrey, has become very lazy just lately; when a fresh bowl of water is placed on the floor for her she lies down and waits for the ripples to cease before carefully dipping her paw into the water and then licking the water from her paw - all this still lying on the floor, how lazy can a cat get?

In last month鈥檚 blog I mentioned the Stronsay Beast - I should have mentioned which has lots of information on the history of the Stronsay Beast. There鈥檚 also a handy guest book if you want to pass on your ideas of what you think the Beast might have been.