Fair Isle on My Mind

Fair Isle - Wikitravel

The older I get, the more I fuss.  It's 10 days before I leave for my month on Fair Isle, and I have plenty else to be getting on with, but oh no, I fuss instead.  Will the airline that shall remain nameless that flies from Aberdeen to Sumburgh notice that my carry on laptop case is 1.5 centimetres too big in one direction?  (It's lots of centimetres smaller in the other directions - surely that counts?)  They offer me 6 kg for hand luggage and I'm taking under 4 - will they therefore forgive the pesky excess centimetre and a half?  Is my house really, as in last night's nightmare, a wooden shack with no doors and full to the brim of people?  (Population on Fair Isle is currently 55, and I'm pretty sure they were all there.)  Will the weather sock in and keep me from getting from Shetland Mainland to the Isle for weeks and weeks and weeks, until it's time to just turn around and come home?  Is it obsessive to keep checking the weather forecast for Aberdeen and Lerwick and Fair Isle on a daily basis?  (All right, several times a day.)  Is it too early to do a trial pack to see if I can get everything in under the weight limit for the 7-seater plane?

Actually, forget that question.  I've already started ...

Fair Isle Said Yes!

Forget Finnish rejection - come February 2020, I will be going to Fair Isle!  Find out about the Fair Isle Studio residency here - out and out fabulous!  It's still round about five more months but I can't wait -

West Cliffs, Fair Isle, looking southwest towards Malcolm's Head, 

at the base of which is my little blue house

(wiki commons attribution: Dave Wheeler*)

* Dave Wheeler is the Fair Isle weatherman.  To see more of his fabulous photographs of the Isle, go to his website here.

Never Still Nivver Still - Not Long Now!

   

It's been a long journey to get to this point, but Never Still Nivver Still is now on its way to the printers! Huge thanks to Anne Sinclair who translated the poem into the Fair Isle dialect, to Lucy Wheeler whose artwork graces the pages and who wrestled with the technical side of the process and won, and to Jim Mainland and the Hansel Cooperative Press for backing the book.

Back cover blurb:

The Finn who has lost her words. The Strange One who is leaving for the New World. The Warden who tends to the kelp forests in a drowned future.

Written in English and the Fair Isle dialect, Never Still Nivver Still tells the stories of three women, living in three different times. Coming, going, staying, they give voice to their part of the Isle’s own long, long story of change. For Fair Isle has never been still – fast or slow, change is the nature of this small green rock rising up out of the restless sea.

And next - the book itself! Watch this space ...

Fair Isle 3A

This week I've been over on The History Girls and An Awfully Big Blog Adventure. And at Fair Isle Primary School.  And on the front page of the Fair Isle Times (though I shouldn't boast.)  Now if we can just master the whole sunshine thing, my smile will be permanent.

   

Fair Isle 4

 

Thank you Fair Isle - it's been excellent. (9:30 pm photo of Fair Isle Studio)

Fair Isle Fair Days

This time last year, this was my home.

After weeks of relentlessly bad weather, the wind had dropped and the sun shone.

My time on Fair Isle was almost up.  I had no idea what I was heading back to.

A year later, the project I started there is nearly, nearly finished.

And this time next year?  Well, that'll be another story ...

Fair Isle Ambition

 

This week I'm back on Fair Isle and over on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure talking about ridiculous ambition.

Fair Isle 1

 

And I'm back! A lot of the flowers are past, but I've picked myself a very tiny bouquet with some wool wrapped around it to celebrate the beginning of a month in the little blue house. (Fair Isle Studio) There will be no shortage of photos of this insanely photogenic place over on my Instagram and Facebook. You have been warned!

Fair Isle Illustrators

 

A session at Fair Isle Primary on how different illustrators see the same story in different ways - and here they are, proving the point in style!

Fair Isle on My Mind

 

The view from Fair Isle Studio this day last year. In three and a bit weeks I will be there again - looking forward to it so much!

Build Back Better and Chapter 8

(well, blogs are supposed to have a photo, 

so this one of a wall on Fair Isle is here, just because I like it, 

and maybe there's a very loose connection to the idea of creative building ...?)

This week I'm over an An Awfully Big Blog Adventure talking about the 'Build Back Better' project that the National Museums of Scotland have been running.  And Chapter 8 of The Ely Plot is live here.

Waiting for Me

Advance copies of Great Minds - 2500 Years of Thinkers and Philosophy* were waiting for me as I stepped back into my post-Fair Isle life. An excellent consolation!

* publication date 14 Sept. - not long now!

Fair Isle 2

 

10:00 pm gorgeous mists.

Goodbye to Fair Isle

 

Till next time.

Fair Isle 4A

Fair Isle 3

My time here is rushing past, but every day is saturated with beauty - and weather! Which I chat about over on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure. 

Wrapping up

Over on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure, wrapping up my time on Fair Isle. Can't wait to go back!

I'm Going Back!

 

The shape of my summer has suddenly changed. An opportunity to go back to the Fair Isle Studio for a month, mid-July to mid-August, came up and I jumped on it. I'm doing my best to control my use of exclamation marks here, but I am really really excited!!!!! 

Foggy

 

It's been foggy here in Edinburgh again, so here's a fog photo from Fair Isle last year and a fog poem by Carl Sandburg from The Poem Hunter.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbour and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Collective Noun

I've had the company of a seal or two on almost every walk I've taken here in Fair Isle, but there is one place, just near the South Lighthouse, where I can count on seeing 6, 7, 8 seals, all hanging out together. I stand and watch them, and they mess about in the waves and watch me. 

Which raises the question - what is the collective noun for a bunch of seals? There are enough candidates to need a collective noun of their own: from different parts of the world we have a herd, a pod, a harem, a plump, a spring, a crash, a colony, a rookery... 

But my lot? They're clearly and utterly a bob.