Diary of a deckbitch…

A confession

They say confession is good for the soul.

I somehow suspect my soul is slightly blackened, maybe dog-eared at the edges and has one of those annoying creases you get, where no matter how much folding it back the other way will ever get rid of it.  I did once put my soul on ebay (on signing up for DIR-F, with free sense of humour with every purchase), but it was classed as damaged goods so i took it off again. 

I didnt tell my parents that i broke my arm, thus followed a frantic phone call from south telling me my dad had discovered the internet and to get the posts off here ASAP otherwise the game would be up……

I was too slow.

Mum, Dad, im really sorry, but i didnt want to worry you.  Christ, mum would be on the first ferry up here to ground me herself (yes, you grounded me last time i broke a bone….), i wouldnt be allowed out to play for fecking weeks!  You can officially bend my lug-hole about it next time i call, but then i doubt you will need any encouragement in that.

Bugger, Cyber-nagging has arrived.

January 31st, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

A rant-ette

Sometimes things annoy me, some a little, some a lot.

One of the things which has consistently annoyed me for many years is how people rely on things they “know” to be correct, and it simply is not.  For instance, all E numbers are bad.  No, actually, everything used in food has an e-number, so dont assume because something is full of e-numbers its always bad for you.  Assuming chemicals in anything is bad for you when everything in the world, no matter how “natural” it is, is made of chemicals isnt too helpful really.  Drinking water from a plastic bottle may be great for us, but how many of us recycle the bottle?

Also how people cut fat out of their diets, but not sugar, and then wonder why they dont lose weight.  Or go to McDonalds and order a huge burger, but diet coke.  No sugar in their tea, but scoff chocolate along with the steaming mug.  For so long we have been told that fat is the bad thing, when actually its sugar. 

The other thing which majorly annoys me is how cosmetic and toiletries companies use womens insecurities to make them buy their products.  All the adverts seem to scream “buy me and be perfect”.  Deep down, i know it affects me too, but to be honest, if you dont like me the way i am, tough.  All it does is make you feel even more marginalised by society.  Regardless, I’m not going to change for anyone, get over it.  And anyway, it would take far far more than a jar of gloop to make me attractive, try spending the GDP of a small country on cosmetic surgery and we might be getting close. 

The best way to look healthy, have good hair and skin, is not to rub vitamins, pro-whatsit concentrates, amino acids and all the other crap on it, but to eat healthily (and dont try to be perfect here either, the amount of hidden chemicals we consume, there really is very little point).  Hair is dead, you cant nourish it.

Aaaaaand breathe………

January 31st, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

An awfully big sea…

You know those moments when you realise that the world is actually a very large, wild place and sometimes we go places we really shouldnt be?  Well yesterday was one of them.  Without going into too much detail, we went to sea when it was rough, so rough that from the wheelhouse (which is 12 feet up), the lights on the horizon would regularly disappear as a wave went past. 

Suddenly you feel small, insignificant and totally out of your depth and comfort zone.  Sometimes this does us good, makes us appreciate our own ability to make the correct decision (which we did) even if it was a hard one to make. 

January 28th, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

Snow

We have snow at the moment, not a lot of it, its actually melting fast, but enough to make the world look different, cause problems and freeze my arse off while feeding animals.

January 23rd, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

Shut up!

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

That sound seems to penetrate my brain and make my nerves jangle.  Imagine walking down a large room with 50 people all screaming “FOOOD” at you.  Well thats what its like at feeding time.  The other thing that makes me smile is when a ewe loses her lamb in the pen she yells “laaaaaamb” and usually every other lamb in the entire shed goes “muuuuuuum”, only adding to the confusion. 

January 22nd, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

Goals for 2007

Right now 2007 is spread out before us like a blank canvas awaiting colour.  The long summer days seem to be so far away, and yet i know that all of a sudden they will be upon us and gone again in a blink of an eye.  Looking down over the flow, its white capped gray waters look forbidden, wild and untamed, the winter’s harsh grip stirring their turmoil.  And yet, the days are coming where the water takes on an azure so beautiful you cant help staring into it, where the sun reflects off the mirror surface, and for a few precious days the Orcadian air is truly still. 

I always used to see the incoming tide as the bringer of opportunity, the coming of a good time out in the water and right now the tide has just turned, the clean fresh water of the flood is bringing us a whole new year in which to do what we love.

This year will be a strange one for me.  For the first time since maybe my first year at university i have some sort of optimisim about the future, a year that i can genuinley say i am looking forward to living. 

So what is making it so good?

Well, there are several things.  The first is i have a career whcih is possibly the most fun you can have with your clothes on.   Things are developing, or rather, have developed.  More about this is a couple of weeks. 

Its funny, i can remember my first dive as if it was yesterday, and that buzz, that feeling that only another diver can understand is so damned addictive it took over my world.  So even though it took me a while to realise, there was only one logical path for me to take, and it involved jumping off a perfectly good boat every now and then. 

Last year i was finding my feet.  I had no guarantee i would enjoy what i was about to try and do, no promise i would get on with Hazel, or fit in up here in Orkney.  This year i have no questions like that, no doubts. 

I aim for this to be a good year for diving.  My confidence is back, i have sucessfully dived for a season with no problems, completed some challenging dives and seen some fantastic things.  Slowly i am getting to grips with these huge wrecks and one day i might be able to say i know a little about them.  But not yet, i wouldnt be that arrogant.  Maybe in 20 years time.

I aim to do a trimix course over the summer, get my trimix, nitrox and heliox blenders tickets and join the lifeboat.  Also i intend to do my chamber attendant ticket so i can be of the most use in any situation.

New places are calling us, and they do call us not just me.  Shetland, the nothern isles and fair isle all seem to be beckoning us onward and downward.  Places 12 months ago i wouldnt have dreamed of even hoping to visit now have really become a reality. 

So in a nutshell.

Enjoy life.  We never know when it might end, and there is no point in spending any of it unhappy.

Accept who you are and what you are good at, or not so good at and go from there.  Dont try to do something you are not designed to do.

Happiness is not the goal, it is in the chase of the goal.

Very few of us have the ability to change the entire world, but we can make small parts of it a better place.

Money is not everything.

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And that concludes todays sermon

January 21st, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

A long way from anywhere

The stormy weather south seems to have brought the country to a standstill, but as someone said up here - “the last time it blew a force 11 here a chicken coop blew over”.  I guess all things are relative, i doubt Orkney would cope too well with a huge heatwave, although we would undoubtedly enjoy it to the full.  So a bit of wind and rain and sleet and snow really dont do a lot here.  The other thing is sometimes we seem to be a long way from anywhere, especially so when the ferries stop running due to the bad weather, but that is usually only for 24 hours or so.  Suddenly you have to check things for “postage rates for uk mainland only”.

I have decided that somewhere deep in the ancestral roots of Suffolk sheep someone sneaked a pig in there.  They strike me as being petulant 5 year olds, greedy, uncaring and downright selfish.  They really dont care who or what they have to climb over, as long as they get food, the most food, and before everyone else. 

January 20th, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

Ho hum….

I shove my finger through the surpisingly tough membrane bag that holds the lamb, still suspended in its amniotic fluid.  The gush of wet soaks the straw and reveals the tiny writing body, instinct driving it onwards to get up onto its feet as soon as it can.  Sods law has it that as soon as Hazel heads into the house the lamb would be born, and so this is what happens.  Being alone and ushering another life into the world is something special, to be present when that first gasp of air is taken is a real privilidge.

Later the lambs go downhill.  A lamb is born with “brown fat”, a substance which even human babies have, which provided energy and warmtg for them during and just after birth.  However, premature lambs or lambs which have a traumatic birth can use up their brown fat reserves and plunge into hypothermia, shivering and quickly dying unless action is taken as soon as possible. 

These lambs were premature, and true to form they both get very cold very rapidly.  This also meant they were unable to stand and get their first vital drink of colostrum, a very fatty milk full of antibodies which is vital to the lambs survival.  We pass a tube into the stomachs of the lambs and feed them colostrum via syringe, and then put both into the “hot box”, a wooden box with a grille floor where hot air can be blown over them.  This ensures they are warm and dry and helps revive them.  Once both are up to temperature they are brought into the house to keep them from getting chilled again. 

Later that evening, despite doing all we can, the lifeless form of the smaller lamb is quietly taken out and placed in a bag ready to be buried. 

You win some you lose some. 

January 18th, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

Waiting…

My body clock seems to have stopped.  Maybe i need duracell batteries or something, not those cheap yellow ones you get from Ikea.  I seem to be able to sleep anytime (although it takes me an hour or so to get there), and stay awake all night.  Strange, i hardly see the sun these days, just the deep enveloping blackness of the Orcadian night.  Im still looking forward to seeing the merry dancers - the northern lights. 

Actually, looking forward is the wrong phrase. 

Years ago when i was a child my dad woke me up to see the northern lights and it *terrified* me to the point that my mum had to sit up with me for a couple of hours until i had calmed down.  Dr Who has an awful lot to answer for (and that weird series with the giant tripods which sucked you up and squeezed out your brains or something). 

So even 20 years later i am a little apprehensive about seeing the dancers, even though i could bore you silly with what they actually are (dad being an authority on all things like that had explained at length), deep down they clang against some primeval nerve and make me want to hide under the duvet.

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The weather is keeping us waiting, strong winds turning ropes into straight lines to and from the pier.  Seagulls whirl on the updraughts and spray peppers the concrete.  Back on the farm the dead yellowed grass from last year is pulled right over, tarpaulins flap as if brought to life and the cold bites at any uncovered flesh.  We are forecast snow for later in the month so its cold, and deep joy, its going to get even colder.

So we wait for the next phase of the cunning plan for world domination to take place.  All we have to do is sneak around while the weather isnt watching.

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Never, ever underestimate a sheeps ability to fart.

January 16th, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

A tad windy….

The lodge shudders in the wind hitting it broadside.  I ponder quite how windy it would need to be to actually make this thing move, and then wuss out and decide not to hang around to find out.  Made from logs i would think that it weighed several more tonnes than it actually does, but as i bed down on the sofa in the house the noise of the wind is becomes distant and i retreat into the waiting arms of sleep.

The other thing keeping me awake at the moment is my cast.  Not that my arm hurts as much as it did, only an ache made worse by me trying to do too much with my fingers reminds me of the cracked bone deep inside my wrist.  What wakes me up is turning over and headbutting the cast.  The other thing is it makes getting dressed an absolute nightmare.  Try doing a bra strap up with only one useful thumb, or pulling your socks up.  Doing anything else takes twice as long and ten times as frustrating.  I feel bloody useless.

 The most valuable thing in the world is now a 12 inch plastic ruler which reaches the itches i cant scratch.

I saw my first C-Section yesterday too, one of the ewes having problems giving birth was operated on and two healthy lambs were the result, although i dont think the ewe was too impressed with it all.

January 13th, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments