unfriendly insects

Not all the locals are welcoming at the end of the summer. And its not just here  - its problem around Scotland  according to the Telegraph.
There are quite a few midge and other sundry insect around when the wind drops.
And they want to try out the newcomers

so N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide has been added to the cupboard 

George the Explorer

So not content with finding shelter under the elders, and having 3 large fields to roam around ,he has now been exploring at the front and the back of the house. He started out on the patio

and then took them round the front of the house and up to the front door, before being shooed back to the field  

  

Thank you Screwfix

i need some bits and pieces for some DIY and I cant locate some of my regular tools and left most of the paints, varnishes, fillers, tubesofstuff all behind.  There isnt  DIY shed on Orkney - there are the 'proper'  stores that do Agricultural equipment, fencing supplies, plumbing things and the rest, principally for the  professionals  farmer, fencers, builders etc. They do a smaller selections of the DIY-type stuff. 
There almost certainly are  stores that will do what i want, but i havent foud them yet .

So I went online.
Wickes are straightforward about  it ( you have to hunt  bit, but the information
is there) , and they won't deliver to KW postcodes .

But Homebase only tell you once you've tried to checkout.

and B&Q are the worst of the lot.
This is on the front page of the website

but come the checkout they say they don't deliver here.

Best of the lot is Screwfix  

 So it took a day longer , but the postie brought the box , with the stuff i ordered in it.
Guess who  I'll be buying from next time ? 

George looking after his girls

We've got 6 light sussex chickens  - 1 cockerel and 5 hens. They've got used to where the hen house is , go in to roost at night  and  the hens lay their eggs in the correct place. We've also got George, the cockerel, who keeps them all in order. Called George after another George , who made his entrance at about the same time as we acquired our George .

a very conscientious cockerel, who shepherds his harem around the fields , keeping an eye on them, making sure they all get a share of  corn and other delicacies.

   We've been told by visitors that he also crows at about 4 am, but as that doesn't wake us, he is allowed to do that.  

Anyway its been a bit  windy here for the last couple of days. Today its gusting to about 30-35 mph with short squally showers. 

 And we found that George has taken  his girls to some undergrowth , where they all sheltered whilst the worst of the weather blew through.

Bring a few things.......

"There are a few things I'd like you to bring......".


So after packing and repacking the car and the trailer I  just   got everything in . This included having bags and boxes stacked on the passenger seat.

and the trailer was just as full



I'd initially wanted to do this trip from Aberdeen -a five hour drive and then a 5 hour ferry, rather than drive up to Scrabster, a 8-9 hour drive and then a 90 minute ferry) but the road north of Inverness is a single carriageway and some climbing round the sides of the hills. Very scenic but a pain of you are stuck behind something really slow , and I didnt want people stuck behind me. The climb I remember is the one that comes after Helsmdale. we have stopped there for lunch  on a previous trip - a very pleasant small village, with Poppys-Too cafe that we tried out (recommended) .   The car does struggle a little on big hills with the trailer.
So the bit I was concerned about is the climb out of Helmsdale ,  here .

But the bit i was concerned about was  OK.  There is a hairpin at Berriedale Braes, a bit further along the A9.

So with a first gear crawl round the hairpin ( Google maps link  here ) all was well and and we were on our way.There is also a youtube video of the Berriedale stretch of the A9 here

The rest of the trip was uneventful - a dash across Caithness  , past Halkirk and I made the lunchtime ferry with 5 mins to spare.

But I think I would still have preferred to go from Aberdeen.

BT - the lessons so far,

So I've eventually got a phone call from someone at BT
And an explanation of what should have happened. No real explanation about why  I was given such a run-around  and why the electronic switch (because thats all it was) couldn't have been sorted out earlier.

Things I have learned about BT so far.

• The Call Centre is hopeless. Their remit is to  say whatever is necessary to get the customer to go away.
• BT would appear to be a megalith that is too big to be efficient, at least for domestic customers  
• They are too keen on getting you to spend more money on new things rather than providing the service you a are paying for.
• Rural customers get a really bad deal.

When my parents first  got a telephone - must be 50 years ago - there were free phone calls after 6pm, so phone calls before then were restricted . And there were different rates for different times of the day.
the technology has improved enormously - packet switching , no telephonists connecting you , better cabling. So why , other than to take advantage of the customers , are they charging me a ridiculous amount for a few electrons to whiz along a cable ? No doubt some of my  money is going towards this (but to give him his due , he responded  more promptly than anyone else in BT to anything so far.

And now the phone deal that came with the BB probably isn't right , so I need to try and sort that out.
I can look forward to spending hours of my life that I will never get back again, listening to some drivel about 'up to 32 MB' when I know I will get nowhere near that speed  

Sadly I'm tied in to this shambolic megacorp for 12 months.

BT - Eager anticipation

well, the deafening silence has continued since the phone call and follow-up emails of 17th and 22nd July. So at 9 pm on Sunday night I sent them another reminder, asking for at least an acknowledgement.
But this time i copied the BT CEO into the email .

And i got a response that looks like it has come from the man himself !

Really impressed .

But we shall see if the rest of the Organisation  are as interested