My Week In Pictures -Fitting Two Weeks Into One.

It’s been another incredibly busy week and someone asked me recently how I fit it all in. I know what you’re all thinking. ‘I bet she has feral kids, beans on toast every night and a trashed house’ and to be honest you’re not far wrong. I long for life to slow down and was only saying to someone this week that since moving to Orkney I’m busier than I’ve ever been. I was slightly envious of my friend who commutes between mainland Orkney and North Ronaldsay as she had an enforced day off thanks to fog grounding the plane. I don’t envy having to travel in that tiny plane all the time but a ‘sorry I can’t come to work because the plane didn’t leave the runway’ is the best excuse ever.

It was equally foggy on the mainland and on my way to work I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the sheep huddled along the edge of the wall to take shelter.

Things improved through the week and we enjoyed some brighter skylines making commuting to other islands enjoyable.

and Orkney Beef was working on a boat this week instead of dry land. His favourite place to be and he helps me out bringing photos like this.

I also had a very lovely few hours yesterday with The Mothership as we went to a craft day which happens through the winter months. It’s called Making Space and the idea is that you create time to deal with one of those 150 unfinished craft projects lying around at home.

In my case it’s finally getting around to piecing together these six million granny squares I thought would be a good idea to crochet once upon a yonks ago. I’ve grown to hate them but I guess it’ll be worth it in the end. Whenever the end comes….

One day this will be probably in about 100 years.

My writing opportunities are increasing which is wonderful. It’s great experience for me and I was asked to write for a website called Swim Secure about why I’m swimming for dementia in September and October. If you’de like to read it I’ll put a link at the bottom of the page.

This week I did something I’ve never done before. I went to a graduation ceremony for myself. I’ve never been academic and came away from school with only a handful of qualifications and a huge sense of not being good enough. When people asked me what I was studying for graduation I would always reply ‘Oh just an SVQ3 for work it’s not much’ So I stupidly minimised the effort I’ve put in to getting this qualification despite having a full time job, a family and a whole bunch of other stuff going on in my life. I arrived to the graduation ceremony way too early because I’m so disorganised I didn’t read the one piece of paper I was required to read properly, telling me what time to arrive. Being so early gave me plenty of time to tell myself what a chronic loser I am and how useless I am, because the entire cathedral full of people had managed to get the time right except for me. It was a difficult wait because I couldn’t switch my thoughts off. I was close to tears as I sat there alone. Later as I went to collect my qualification I saw my friend who’s the custodian of the cathedral, and she was standing smiling at me and holding her phone up. So I smiled back, pulled the OK sign and returned to my seat. By the time I had sat down, she had already uploaded it to my Facebook and Twitter accounts and everything changed. Because what I saw smiling back at me was a woman who has graduated from the university of life with a first class honours degree in awesomeness. A woman who has survived all the many knocks and blows life has thrown at her and got back up again every single time. A woman who has sat until the wee small hours talking to suicidal people as a samaritan. A woman who can make people laugh, and make them think and encourage and motivate people and help and empathise and show love over and over. I LOVE this pic because it represents a woman who is absolutely enough despite what the gremlins in her head frequently tell her. A woman who can wear pink shoes and pull the hoop 👌in full view of everyone with such panache and confidence that right there and then she thought she could take on the world. So thank you Fran for capturing her. I absolutely love her.

The setting was St Magnus Cathedral and a stunning place to be. I should visit more often because the beauty and architecture is just incredible.

Even a dog graduated.

And finally – I wanted to reassure you the kids are not actually feral. They are both doing great and since they both left home they feature far less frequently on the blog. Miss Lashes is working in London and gets to travel with her job and lives a very millennial lifestyle. Tech Support is in his second year of study in sound production and just LOVES to talk about music. Like I say, I miss them until it hurts but I’m so proud of the adults they have grown to be.