Happy New Year 2017
First of all, let us wish you all a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year. 🍾🎉 🤸 💷 We hope you had a good festive period with fun, family and friends.
We had a great time. Christmas dinner was cooked by Michaels daughter and her husband, beef wellington with all the trimmings, Michael made a crab and fennel starter and there was panacotta and a fantastic cheese board for after, yum, yum and YUM. 🤗 We had a very chilled day, played games and relaxed. My only error was to take the little dog, who decided not to settle at all and got herself in a right old state, no more days out for her. She is getting old and obviously likes her home comforts.
New year was quiet (how we like it) with a few passing visitors, Jools Holland Hootenanny 🎼 🎹 and a local guy doing a live stream from his studio over Facebook🎧. He played some good music and was funny, excellent Sean.👍 We had Champagne and then decided to put brandy in it too, very tasty, very silly😦😦. Not such a good idea the next morning. 🤢
Well it all has to come to an end, apparently you can have too much of a good thing, so we are back in the groove now. Michael is working hard in his new workshop, here at the house, and the gallery is open although it’s a quiet time with a lot of the local makers not opening for the next couple of months. Good time to catch up and get ready for the season which will kick off again come March.
The weather has been mixed, with some very stormy weather over Christmas, but with the warnings and extra planes etc put on, good on them, think most people got where they needed to be. Now come the drab months. Although we have turned the corner and passed the shortest day it always looks worse as the coloured lights are all turned off for another year. Hope we get some of those beautiful frosty days.❄
The Ba has been played on the Monday after Christmas and New Year. It is usually played on the actual days but as they fell on Sunday it is put back a day. I did go and watch on New Year while Mr Orkwoodturner made us a good chicken, leek and tattie soup to warm us up when we returned. I haven’t been to watch for years and I had forgotten how exciting it is. Unfortunately, they all went up this year and we are doonies. This is decided by where you are born in Orkney (Michael) or for me (an incomer) how you arrived 1st. Check out these links to see more. http://www.orkneyjar.com/tradition/bagame/ https://www.facebook.com/Live-Ba-updates-792564407515423/
Well again all the very best to you all and we hope to see some of you over this coming year. 👌
