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I`m not Orcadian, I`m Scots. I`m lucky enough to have lived here a fair few years now, in such a bonny place where the folks, for the most part, are kind and friendly, and the scenery is unique and very special.
Sometimes, I admit, I get homesick for Scotland (and can now hear Orcadians do the "well bu**er off back there then!") but I`ll remind them that lots of Orcadians move home, sometimes to the other end of the earth, and they write often about how homesick for Orkney they get..so why shouldn`t I miss the place I was birthed in?
Got very few complaints about living here and of those, the biggest is the inclement weather which I can do nothing about so aside from having the occasional pleep aboot it, well, it`s putten up with. ;-) (um..is putten an actual word?)
I do think it takes a particular mindset and character to live on the Isles. I`ve been on some of the Western Isles and they are softer across there, kinder, often with trees and hills and bonny looking just like the highlands.
And `softer`, by the way, like Ireland, which they`re also closer to, in that gentler way.
Here, further North, it`s a beautiful but harsh landscape...fields and dunes and bare rock scoured by grit-carrying winds and shaped sharp and jagged by the sea constantly hammering at the door.
Sometimes the elements batter at us so fiercely, as if the very wind held a long remembered grudge, that all you want to do is find a tiny space, hunker down, and hope for the best...
This morning, after getting up at four, I went outside in a bit of a stiff wind (understatement for, I nearly got blown on me backside going round the corner of the house again...)
and watched the sky, which was then black, and saw the remnants of pale streamers of light shift and dance there, almost imperceptibe now but still there.
And later, as the sun rose, I went out again, to rescue one of the cats who had foolishly tried to stalk one of the geese, and had been chased into the rose hedge and was cowering there, feared to come out in the face of an angry, wings-outstretched, hissing harridan..hopefully the cat will have learned her lesson..but I doubt it.
So after I picked her out the rose hedge, gaining sharp thorns in hands and arms meantime, I turned to look behind me and saw the bonniest sight I have seen for a goodly while.
The sky was on fire. Trails of feathered and plump clouds strewn above the skyscape, all awash with liquid gold and fiery oranges, warm crimsons and just the whole thing looking for all the world like some pyromaniac had decided to light a match up there...
I had the strange notion that if the wind hadn`t been blowing, and it had been calm and quiet, I might have heard that sky crackle and spark like a real fire.
It made me pause, after putting down the struggling cat which shot off into the house away from the still angry goose.
It made me think, well, there aren`t, here, the hills and trees of Scotland..no rivers and glens where the wildcat stalks or the deer graze.
There, in those places, I have limited vision, for there are always trees or bushes, hills or farms and crofts to look at every way you turn, and in the thickness of it, always something to catch your attention, from tiny things like field mice or a lone proud thistle, to the larger master painting of hill and glen and stag and hind running the moors.
But here, there is nothing in the way of seeing. Every way I turn, there is the land or the sea, stretching so far I can see nothing else. I have to look closer to see the tiny things, the mouse in the stone dyke, raising a ....clutch...?...of babies...or the heron hiding in the reeds by the pond, fishing quietly, stiff and still against the winds.
But the larger painting of it?
Oh, that`s vast indeed....seascapes always changing with each day`s moody weather, never dull, never still.
Light shifting over the scant land making shadowy hollows of gentle dips in the earth, making small `hills` of the highest points where the light bathes it all in warmth.
Most of all though, the skyscape above me never grows old. I once sent a picture of a sunrise to a friend in England. He said, "Well, we have the same sky here you know" and thought it nothing special.
But he was wrong.
Orkney skies are marvellous, beautiful, enthralling things.
And I never tire of watching them. The sunrise has gone now, the fire has died down and the colour if it all is pearl and dove grey, with a few tiny scattered patchwork pieces of baby pink. Another `soft` sky. What we lack in the lushness of further south, here, we make up for in distance and space, and beautiful wildness.
But for a while I stood under a fire and felt the heat of it echo in my soul like a song.

The cat, however, is distinctly unimpressed and is glaring at the geese now from a nearby wall, cleverly out of reach. I`m sure she plots revenge....