Half day

Spent the morning helping in the craft shop.

Between 9 and 11am there were 3 coaches bringing passengers from The Magellan cruise ship to the village.

As long as panic doesn't set in, it's quite fun on these shifts. One minute the shop is empty, and all is calm. We potter, adjusting items on the shelves, folding jumpers, chatting.

Then the door opens and suddenly the (small) shop is full. It's all a familiar pattern but it happens very fast. Hello and welcome; do have a look at our exhibition.... lively chatter, questions, directions, weather predictions, till, card machine, bubble wrap, tissue paper....

Then, as quickly as it started, it's all over.

A few minutes to draw breathe, restock, tidy, and then the door opens with the next group piling in and it starts all over again.

Spent the rest of the day in Kirkwall. Friends to meet who are down from Shetland for the weekend. Then tea out with D and a chance to catch up with each others news.

Enjoyed a leisurely mooch round the library mid-afternoon and came away with 3 interesting books. Today's blip if one of them.

Now I know, if anyone should ask, that barbed wire came to Orkney between 1850 and 1870.

Very fine day, (except the weather).