'No Orkney weather lasts long, and you can see new weather coming a long way off. There are frequent scraps of rainbow...'
One thought has led to another on here this week, flow and inspiration of a different sort to that total immersion we were talking about on Monday, but perfect connections, and thank heavens Kathleen Jamie had tipped me the wink about the Orkney rainbows as I read Findings, because we then did Rainbow Watch at the first hint of a shower, and it actually made the rain a thing of beauty... honest.
We are still feasting off the wonderful memories of our stay back in June, and this week the Kakayer has painstakingly sat down and edited my 900 pictures down to 300 'best' ones, before setting them to music ( a beautiful and highly-recommended-by-me CD, Cora by an instrumental group called Skalder which the Tinker bought in Kirkwall) and then creating a DVD slideshow that we can watch as and when.
George Mackay Brown, the Stromness poet much admired by Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and Charles Causley, notices the rainbows too...
Orkney : The Whale Islands.
Sunset. We furled ship
In a wide sea loch.
Star- harrows
Went over our thin sleep.
Dawn. A rainbow crumbled
Over Orc, 'whale islands.'Then the skipper, 'The whales
will yield this folk
Corn and fleeces and honey.'
And the poet,
'Harp of whalebones, shake
Golden words from my mouth.'
It's hard to know when summer dawn is on Orkney given that it hasn't really got dark, but this was our very own dawn rainbow, because we all just stood and stared at in our pyjamas, so it must have been early, and how very easily we could have missed it.
Now if this, and all your encouragement, doesn't inspire me to revive that little scrap of weaving...
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