A few boarders

And in the top field , a neighbour is boarding  some sheep ( 20 of them ) for a few weeks. A least i don’t have to think about cutting the grass   ( and its a bit too wet to cut anyway)

An enlarged home

with all the rain , it got a bit muddy for the hen and chicks ,

 

so we expanded their horizons , moved the fencing , added some netting to protect from predators

 

 and they went exploring under the bushes

Dendrobranchicide

 Scapa Flow is well known as a natural harbour between the South Islands. It has be used in both World Wars.  And during both the wars there have been booms, gun emplacements and the rest .We've been to see the  2nd World War gun emplacement when we first visited  Flotta in 2010.  The museum is on Hoy , but we've not made it that far yet.  But Scapa Flow is still connected to the North Sea and Pentland Firth and  fishing boats ply their trade.  And Jollys of  Orkney is on the way home from Kirkwall, so it is convenient to call in and see what they have.
And they had  Prawns  harvested from Scapa Flow, so we got some and brought them home - pictured above.  According to Wikipedia, prawns belong to the crustacean suborder Dendrobranchiata.
And our prawns looked a  lot like the one pictured in the wikipedia article.

 
So they came from Jollys, so being poikilotherms, we kept them in the fridge until the boiling water was ready, a quick immersion for several minutes and the let the water cool a bit , retrieve the now ex-dendobranchiata .

And once shelled,very nice they were as well.

Dreich

a storm blew through last night - the wind was due to peak at about 1am. So this morning we could have a look and see what the anenometer said. the wind was coming from the   north-east so it is only sheltered a little by the stack.  So  gusting to almost 41 mph

And this morning it is really dreich .

And I took a couple of pictures to prove it.

And we have had a lot of rain over the last 18 hours or so.  Earlier in the year the pond was quite attractive

 now its  overflowing

 but the ducks are of course nowhere in sight - too stupid to  realise and prefer to waddle  around in some mud. 
 
 And the burn is very noisy - and very full.

I feel a hydro micro -generation project coming on !

A delivery

No idea what this is about - some stuff had been delivered whilst I was out .

BT is just awful

Every time I get the bill, my hearts sinks.
The best speed we have ever obtained is 1.7 Mb/s . In the evenings from about 7pm it gets so slow that it is unusable   - web pages wont load, we cant even get a speed test program to load.

And we have to put up with the guff that comes out of BT about 'up to 10 Mb /s  , which is the speed we are paying for , because they are not honest about rural connections and  offer a package of 'up to 5Mb/s'. If they did, we would still be getting only 20 % of what  they were advertising. As it is, we are getting 10-15%.

And there is absolutely no point  in contacting the help line call centre - its just more of the same by someone reading from a script whose job it is to get rid of you.

The Public  Accounts Committee   have had their say about this  , as reported by ruralmole.  Effectively BT have been given a monopoly and in this part of  rural Britain, certainly are not delivering .

BT  don't accept other peoples' speed tests so these results from 20.58 , 21.04 or 22.16 on  4th October. won't interest them.

They also say that the connection has to be a wired one. And ive not been able to find a link to their 'official' speedtest page from bt.com. But it's  this www.speedtest.btwholesale.com.  Im sure its an oversight on their part and they are actually quite keen that people are able to check what they are paying for.

So after a particularly frustrating night of useless service from BT , as soon as the speed crawled up ,  I  complained  through the web site .  There was  a pop-up inviting me to complete a user survey when i had finished on their website - so I said 'yes'. But the survey page wouldn't load - i assume the connection was too slow for them.
So the survery can wuite truthfully say ' there we no complaints........ ' . Brilliant PR i think.

 I persevered with an online complaint . The last page of the complaint  is here.
So not only can they not provide an acceptable service, not readily  give  customers the means  to check what they are getting, their user interface is as dreadful as the rest .

Good job we know that 'Submit' and 'click Send now' are likely to be the same thing.

I wonder if the complaint will even get an acknowledgement ?

Their new home

  so we had to construct the new house ( from green frog designs ) .
The hen keeper on Sanday has one that she hasn't tied it down in 3 years  and it hasnt blown away  so we are relying on this one not  blowing away either) 

and the chicks in their new home, They are small enough to squeeze through the mesh, but given a few days they  will be a bit bigger and wont be able to  so we arent doing anything about it just now.