BBQ at Skaill
Posted: Sunday, 22 April 2007 |
Well, this is us and some mates having a barbeque on Skaill beach last Saturday night - lovely sunset as you can see. This was before the weather turned wintry and there were white showers falling from the sky!
I am having a rather nice time sitting here drinking the red clover wine whilst the man downloads tunes from Limewire and Youtube. So far tonight we have enjoyed Sally Oldfield's Mirrors, a very strange video of Yes in Bruges getting chased by a nun, Rush playing Spirit of Radio at a benefit gig last year, and a bit of DJ Shadow. Nothing if not eclectic.
There's a furniture auction on Thursday - one of my favourite days out. Boxes and boxes of fabulous bruck, a slap-up feed in the caff and the omnipresent smell of coo poo. To top it all we have the comedy show provided by the mart lads whose job it is to cart the stuff in and out and hold it up for viewing. If you've never been, I can highly recommend it. Of course, we are accumulating it faster than we can offload it, so gradually bit by bit every room in the house is filling up with assets due to be sold on a well-known internet auction site (WKIAS). I try to list about 30-40 things a week but I'm still drowning. Maybe need to press the shed into service.
Enjoyed a nice tour round the Stones of Stenness with one of the lovely World Heritage Site Rangers. Met a child today called Thorfinn and had a good chat about the Futhark runic alphabet. He said he'd done a project at school! Cool hid!
I am having a rather nice time sitting here drinking the red clover wine whilst the man downloads tunes from Limewire and Youtube. So far tonight we have enjoyed Sally Oldfield's Mirrors, a very strange video of Yes in Bruges getting chased by a nun, Rush playing Spirit of Radio at a benefit gig last year, and a bit of DJ Shadow. Nothing if not eclectic.
There's a furniture auction on Thursday - one of my favourite days out. Boxes and boxes of fabulous bruck, a slap-up feed in the caff and the omnipresent smell of coo poo. To top it all we have the comedy show provided by the mart lads whose job it is to cart the stuff in and out and hold it up for viewing. If you've never been, I can highly recommend it. Of course, we are accumulating it faster than we can offload it, so gradually bit by bit every room in the house is filling up with assets due to be sold on a well-known internet auction site (WKIAS). I try to list about 30-40 things a week but I'm still drowning. Maybe need to press the shed into service.
Enjoyed a nice tour round the Stones of Stenness with one of the lovely World Heritage Site Rangers. Met a child today called Thorfinn and had a good chat about the Futhark runic alphabet. He said he'd done a project at school! Cool hid!
Comments
I remember the old mart in Junction Road, it was even better. Just before I moved into my first student dive i made my first mart purchase - a set of bathroom scales, bought for the princely sum of 拢2!! The buzz of bidding was great! And the mince rolls were brilliant.
Ruthodanort from Unst
They were pretty good at Stromness Mart too...
Flying Cat from digging deep in bipedal brains
Beautiful picture! I miss the sea. Seems like the weather is off and on everywhere. Here, too, it swings from Winter to Spring every few days. What kind of "things" do you specialize in?
macQ from NMtoo, USA
macQ, we sell books and 'vintage collectables', AKA load of old tat, but one man's meat and all that. It's amazing what people collect. Once sold a 1950s car magazine to someone at the German embassy in Adis Abbaba. Sadly I never knew the glories of the old, or indeed the Stromness mart, so you have the advantage of me there, as they say in Georgette Heyer novels. I love the excitement of getting four boxes of bruck for a pound, then trying to fit it all in the car.
Stromness Dragon from Eating a Groundwaters bran quarter
Yup, Stromness mart did great mince rolls too. I bought a load o old dining chairs there about 13 years ago, I think. They were riddled wi woodworm, but nothin a good dose o that anti-woodwormy stuff didno sort oot. Anyway, as I was skint at the time the chairs were a good buy. For a while at least!
Ruthodanort from Unst
macQ from NMtoo: weather --- swings from Winter to Spring every few days? The past week it has been changing EVERY day at the (western) foot of the Sandias. Hailed Sunday, hot Monday, snowed today. Any more of this and I shall be crying in my salsa. It's almost May, for Pete's (no, not Domenici's) sake.
mjc from NM,USA
Is the guy second from the right barbecuing a guinea pig? Is so what did it taste like?
calumannabel from San Lorenzo Restaurant Fivepenny
I have a whole cellar of wormy furniture, huge tables, a dressers, kists, lord knows how many naturally 'distressed' unmatching chairs. I love em all but I need a house to put them in. One day... Still trying to give away our car, by the way. It would make, as they say, a good isles car. Please, somebody, take it! Good engine, very few miles for its age, MOT runs out 8 May.
Stromness Dragon from In the cellar
If he's barbecueing a guinea pig it must be a Roman re-enactment barbie...
Flying Cat from Basking in a sunbeam
Great picture that! It looks really relaxing with that seriously nice sun setting there. A good advert for barbeques. An excellent advert for Orkney!
Mountainman from Tobermory
mjc - looks like they're letting us have spring again for a few days! Don't know how good the weathermen are these days in Scotland but over here in our state we don't usually have much for them to report but this winter has been a doosie and spring is iffy too so our weathermen have been very happy!
macQ from NMtoo, USA
calumannabel, not entirely what he's cooking but I think it's a bit of steak. At the farm behind us there was a coo with a definite limp. Last year, in the name of research, we BBQd and ate a limpet just to see what like it was - salty rubber I can report. Course, we did BBQ it an awfully long time, just to make absolutely sure. I mean, if we'd shown it the heat for a second or two and got in some shallots and white wine, who knows. Could have been a totally different kettle of fish, so to speak. I'm quite happy collecting mussels off Waulkmill, so why not limpets from Skaill?
Stromness Dragon from The spirit of adventure
Limpets. I have been reliably informed by various native shetlanders that there was once was a tradition of chewing (presumably live) limpets, then spitting them onto the sea, where the bits and pieces would attract fish, which the limpet chewer would then catch. This is known as (and I apologise to you for the spelling, cos I dunna keen the right wye) anyway, it is known as 'shoo sprooting'. They practice it at a festival in the north o shetland called 'The Big Bannock' and it's held in summer. Tho to be honest, I heard a rumour that last year the contestants were let off lightly with something other than raw limpets. Maybe it's a sport we could introduce at one of the Fank sideshows?
Ruthodanort from Unst
But what would "the catch" be?
mjc from NM,USA
Life in Stromness, writing stuff, staring out of the window, history, growing veg at the allotment.
RSS Feed