Thank goodness myself and My Marmalade Chum are safely ensconced in Big Cage. The goings-on of recent times were purroving a bit discomnogurating to my plump friend, and it was time to accompany him Out Of Harm’s Way. He was taking on the look of a haunted cratur, all bug-eyed and twitchy!

Obviously I have only gone along to hold his paw and soothe his fevered broo. I am not bovvered.

There is an unconscionable amount of cleaning to do in Anorak Towers - a backward sort of place if you ask me -  and a friend is coming along on Sunday to add some elbow grease to the enfeebled efforts of a rapidly-aging female parental unit. In return, as many sticklebricks and pollywoggles as possible will be donated to said friend’s pond in Evie. This is not an act of astounding generosity but a desperate rescue attempt, as it is almost certain the ponds of Rolling Acres will be infilled and the fornicating froggies made homeless . I offered to pop out and tell them not to pack their suitcases next Spring, but there was no encouragement from bipeds.

While me’n'Marmers loll in a liff of luxurious hedonism with Auntie Janice, beads, nay rivulets of sweat will be oozing from fpu’s every pore and whisker.

We’ve put together a wee slideshow for your delectation. A memento mori of Liff As We Ken It. Mpu went up with nice Robert Foden in the FC Cessna to get some arial shots of Stromness and suchlike. Excuse the blurriness, but the window was not openable. If I’d been there, mpu would’ve been put out onto the wing, but cats were not invited. Tcha! As AnnieB would say.

Farewell To Stromness

Some time later…

You have to laff. The sticklebricks are not that easy to catch. Their trouble is, they don’t know what’s Good For Them. If they had any precognition, the silly buggers would have been fighting to get into the net instead of hiding in the watery jungle…

Toodle-pip.

]]> http://lokivolemangler.islandblogging.co.uk/2009/06/11/farewell-to-stromness/feed/ http://lokivolemangler.islandblogging.co.uk/2009/06/06/%c2%a1chaos/ http://lokivolemangler.islandblogging.co.uk/2009/06/06/%c2%a1chaos/#comments Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:39:26 +0000 Flying Cat http://lokivolemangler.islandblogging.co.uk/?p=225

Such a time we have been having. Such a time! Chaos all around us, chaos to the right of us, chaos to the left of us, volleyed and thundered the effing boxes, into the jaws of madness we galloped, and, as far as me’n'Marmers can see, there’s no way out for the glorious 39th. We’re well stuffed. Hoist by other folks’ petards. Buggerupfinis Mastah!

Firstly, there is the purrospect of being ripped untimely from our natal ‘eath, an unlooked-for cruelty but one over which we have no control.

Secondly, on returning from our latest sojourn in Big Cage (while the pu’s popped down to The Kingdom to sign the lease on a nice wee hoose in Lower Largo) we find that the kindly and cosy option of being a ‘Guest Blogger’ - with fluffy towels and ensuite facilities - on the new (relatively benign) Islandblogging Dictatorship has been taken away, to be substituted with ‘Ex Islanblogger” status. Statelessness looms. I could greet. In fact we have been. This is a deep cut indeed to be inflicted by someone who, at the moment, only ‘has a dream’ to live on an island, in which he will be forever a foreigner.

I don’t quite know how to explain, but gratitude is a very hard purrlace to inhabit in perpetuity. We are grateful to Uncle Les, no doubt about it, but we can’t help feeling hard-done-by just now. To be cast out into the blogging wilderness after all these years…we who have contributed so much…who have carefully groomed our loyal followers and treated them with every courtesy…

This is how we feel at being treated so cruelly.

Pond

To this pool of light my steps are lead

A hollow place of water mud and weed

There is no passing by, my feet are stayed

And all my heartfelt fears are eased

There. A little bit of iambic catterel in the middle of a hectic Folk Festival.

From the Opening Concert on Thursday evening, to the Lunchtime Session at the Stromness today, every act, local or visiting, has been first class. There was a time long ago when the former would not have been true, when traditional music and the creative juices in Orkney were somewhat in abeyance, but not now. This place is heaving with talent that can more than hold its own anywhere, with anyone. 

Jo Philby launched her first (long-awaited) cd this lunchtime at the Festival Club in the Stromness; living legend Margaret Bennett appeared briefly at the Singers’ Club at the Royal last night and gave ‘The Talk’ today lunchtime at the Pier Arts Centre; bands seen so far - Beoga (Ireland), Buille (”), Genticorum (Quebec), The Jani Lang Band (Hungarian/Scottish/Irish/Egyptian), Karan Casey (Ireland,formerly Solas), Karine Polwart Trio (Scotland), Bruce MacGregor, Sandy Brechin & Brian O’hEadhra (”),Sula (Scandinavia). And, for the locals, Jo, Colin Nicholson & Craig Corse, Fiona Driver & Graham Simpson, Jeana Leslie& Siobhan Miller, The Songshop Choir and Twelvth Day.

Nineteen days until the removal men come to pack all our goods and chattels (which, I wonder, are me’n'Marmers?) into their big van.

Twenty-two days until we make the Big Journey Sooth to Robinson Crusoe country in the Kingdom of Fife.

Where does the time go?

In the interests of finding out, I lent mpu a paw here Tempuss when  he was changing the battery in Kitchen Clock (formerly of the GPO), but, to tell you the truth, I am none the wiser. And I did look ever so hard.

Well might you ask. We certainly did. The news, from the point of view of me’n'Marmers, is not wholly good. We are told that our tenuous tenure in the land of our birth is hingin’ oan a shoogly nail. The reason for the recent trip Sooth of our parental units was to secure the lease on a hoose in the Kingdom of Fife. Sadly, that is not an island, and therefore, our moving there may lead to the end of my Flying Cat blog as we ken it. “Boo-hoo”, I hear you cry. Oh do remember to keep a pinch of salt handy Dear Readers. Thank you.

On being released from our Baskets of Torment, we rushed off to sort out the Scents of Rolling Acres (not to be confused with the Scents of Soaplady, consummate islandblogger) and noticed the eye-gripping acid green of rosas rugosa, canina and alba; the soft glaucous green of the Swedish whitebeams with their pale ghostly undersides; the growing giant wartiness of gunnera manicata; the unfurling tangreen croziers of ferns reaching for the clear blue sky; the lush foliage of hardy geraniums - the mournful deep purple of phaeum ‘the widow’ and the shocking pink of macrorizum, whose foliage smells so zingily peppery when crushed; the efflorescence of duckweed on Pond 2, tadpole multistorey; the graceful freshness of pheasant’s eye narcissus; the stunning scarlet of the very first oriental poppy and the bronzed feathers of fennel, like the arsefeathers of an emu.

Two frantic sundrenched days of hacking back and tidying up and three trips to the dump with full trailer loads, resulted in two rather pink people and an uncharacteristically tidy Rolling Acres. 

Flying Shed is mostly packed into fishboxes. Strimmer 2 died a week ago and was replaced today from the Scarth Centre - one Last Visit among many.

Bookcases are being denuded of books. Craft stuff is being packed into plastic boxes. A Work In Progress has its very own container, in the hope it might be continued while in Lower Largo.

Two fishboxes are filled with plants, either grown from seed or lifted and split.

We are to be drugged without so much as a by-your-leave when The Time Comes. That it should come to this.  

So far so good. The variety of stuff bipeds will fork out for knows no bounds. Vermiculite; calcified seaweed; a table with one leaf; bookcases; mugs; a fishbox full of rooted cuttings; pottery kitties; curtains; Lego; books; a piece of tweed; lamp oil and a lamp but not to the same person; a chair; pictures; plastic cutlery; muffin and loaf liners; ring binders; bits of timber and composite board; a Wormery (without worms); polystyrene beads; sundry plants in pots; a strange device for dispensing large quantities of thread to a sewing machine; pinboards; very sundry small knick-knacks…

Who knows what tomorrow will bring…

In last Saturday’s Herald I espied a small article which has caused me such deep distress, I have been unable to string enough words together to create a sensible well-balanced post (as, I’m sure you’ll agree, they always are).

I quote:-

“Advocats of the female condom are purromoting the FC2, a cheaper  more user-friendly version they hope will vastly expand its role…” And…

“The FC2…is made from synthetic rubber rather than polyurethane…”

As you can imagine, I have been in deep SHOCK ever since reading this dreadful calumny (sorry Calum) To think that anyone would harbour the idea that I, the artist FC (formerly known as FC2) could be in any way an artificial construct! Well!!! My featherlite ribs were decidedly un-tickled. I wish it to be known that I am not, nor never have been, any of the following:-

A Gentleman’s Jerkin; a Jimmy Hat; a Johnny Bag; a Love Glove; a Willie Hat; a Nodding Sock…nor any other piece of bipedal apparel.

I hope you will agree that I look nothing whatsoever like a condom, female, male or otherwise!

Yesterday, the Magnificent Travelling Teacosy of Landlady arrived in a humble jiffybag through the Catflap of Doom. Immediately me and fpu set up a photo opporchancity in the Sunroom of Eternity (on Stone Table). However, today we had a bit of a rethink, and noticed that a purrticularly impurrtant comestible item had been omitted from the frame. A lack of attention to detail by my digicam operatrix I’m sure you’ll agree, Stromness Dragon

So we did another highly purrfessional (aye right) photoshoot, this time in the Sitting Room of Indolence (on Hoy Table). An ideal place to serve up Hoy Tea…

Next on landlady’s Big List is the aforementioned Dragon, so we’ll be popping up with the TT any moment now.

There I was enjoying a private quaff, as I thought, and all the while the pussaratzi were bent (oh how true!) on entering my inner sanctum and snapping every tail&whiskertwitch, every choke&heave.

Here is the article which led an innocent wee cat from the path of teetotal righteousness:-

Drinking game is enough to make contestants sick

I truly thought I was just following the example of my elders and betters. At least, I hope they were my elders, I’m only five-and-a-half you know…

Quite why the contestants fixated on the alcoholic equivalent of a ‘nice cup of Horlicks before bed dear’ I don’t know. Purrleasant as it is, downing huge quantities of the Radio 2 of the booze world doesn’t exactly strike the macho note the contestants may have been aiming for. Northern Exposure to Irony purrhaps…

All visitors must go to the sluice room and wash their hands before entering the unit. Any cases of diarrhoea must be reported to the Senior Carer.

“I don’t want that.”

“It’s Lorne sausage, remember, square sausage - a Glasgow speciality?”

A flaccid square of lurid pink at sea on a flood tide of baked beans. Hard to credit any link with a pig.

The wee woman across the table carefully pours milk. Her pink plastic square is all at sea on  a different ocean. She polishes her cutlery vigorously on the tablecloth, rescues the drowning sausage to Sideplate Atoll; utters disconnected words.

“Who’s that?”

(April is in her own tall narrow house in her kitchen under the roof. Thud…THUD…THUD!…whisper who dares, Christopher Robin has fallen downstairs…)

“Who is that??”

A carer sails by. (Carers are always sailing by - on yet another ocean. These inland seas seldom connect.)

“Its just Mary.” Once upon a time, Mary was a Mrs Someone…or a Miss Someone…well anyway, someone. Now she is “Just Mary.”

“Mary, who are you?”…”Who are you, Mary?“…”WHO is MARY??? (Who is Mary what is she that all our swains commend her…mend her..)

“Is she having tea? Why doesn’t she answer?”

“I think she’s very deaf; she doesn’t hear you.”

(Mary hears other voices; she’s all at sea on an ebb tide.)

“I must go now April, I’ll see you next week. No need to see me to the door.” (Her own red door at the foot of two flights, in her own tall narrow house…)

“You mean I don’t have to come downstairs?” (There’s no downstairs here.)

“That’s right. See you next week.”

Along the corridor of Limbo, through the Dining Room of Purgatory. Press Button To Open. Swish. Swish. One door opens, another closes…Swish.

The visitor is free to go; to disembark down the gangway on to dry land. The current rolls inexorably on…

Swish/swish…

Don’t tell me they weren’t lured by this fine upstanding figure of a frog. How could they resist? His romantic antecedents made it a dead cert. He has since cast off his potent mix of primulas, snowdrops, croakus, lungwort and daff, in exchange for a candle, which he holds aloft day and night, to be a beacon to all amorous amphibians everywhere. Like a small but stalwart Statue of Ribbity, he stands erect in Big Window, a tiny twinkly light of hope in a murky world.

Let your starry flame glow in the depths of Night, Señor Froggy. We salute you!

Ohforgoodnessake, here’s the slide show if you want to see what the pulchritudinous fornicators are up to.  Should you feel the need, there are a great many more on my photostream…the link for which cornucopia appears in BlogRoll.

Mad March Frogs

Right. Me and marmers, I have to report, are, as I type, languishing in Big Cage. Our servants are doing a runner to Inversneckie for a couple of days. Goodness knows what for! We don’t care anyway, our Auntie Janice loves us and, in return, we amuse her by taking turns to pose on our shared scratching-post. Like the noble purreditors that we are…

I trust you not to take advantage of our absence to post ribaldry and other unsuitable stuff . This is a respectable blog.