Category Archives: Societies

Unveiling and deliveries

 Posted by Mark on Friday, 2 October 2015

 

Our repaired wall
The tiles in the very full garage
The new Office takes shape

Today Kevin Critchlow arrived out of the blue to repair the dry stone wall that had fallen down before we moved in. He had promised to do this job as soon as he had finished the other wall he was doing near here, by the end of the day it was all repaired and looking very ‘bonny’. Kevin is from Shropshire but he has been building dry stone walls for most of his life and last year he ran a course on dry-stone walling so if he runs another one I might sign up.

On Wednesday this week the John Rae Society organised the unveiling of a standing stone and brass plaque to Dr John Rae by the Hall of Clestrain, we had no idea how many would turn up but a marque was put up with displays of our work and hot drinks and food were laid on. I had intended to turn up early to help but a last minute problem with the build meant that I was considerably delayed and so just got there half an hour before the start. My job was to take photos of the event for the society. In the end we had a good turn out and the press in the form of the Orcadian and Radio Orkney turned up to see the stone that was presented by Historic Scotland being unveiled. A toast was made to John Rae and everybody then retired for refreshments. The day went very well and everyone enjoyed meeting up and ‘blathering.’

I then came back home and had to upload the photos and get the web site , Facebook and Twitter pages updated as well as dealing with bunch of stuff in the office, it was a very busy day, in fact this week has been pretty busy which is good as it makes Anna being away a little more bearable.

On Thursday the two pallets of floor tiles arrived a day early and as each pallet weighed a ton the issue of getting them off the lorry could pose a problem. I popped up to see Tommy Bain one of the local farmers to see if he could help, which he was more than happy to, and when the delivery lorry turned up Tommy drove down in his tractor with a fork lift attached. I just love it here that everyone is so willing to help out! My shoulder is still playing up so there was little I could do but between the four of them the job was done and the tiles were unloaded into the garage in to the space I had made ( see I did do something to help! )

Dwayne the plumber is here sorting out the final pipework before the plasterboard covers them up.

Today I was having a chat to Anna via email and she emailed ‘thanks for getting the washing done’, this threw me as I hadn’t told her, I looked through the photos I had uploaded to see if there was one of a fully laden washing line, there wasn’t, very strange. I questioned Anna how she knew about the washing, apparently Ross had taken a photo of me hanging out the washing with the caption ‘A woman’s work is never done!’ and sent it to Anna!