Another late one tonight and I made the conscious choice not to do anything. It was a long day, so I thought I would read some rules or a book or even a magazine… I got them out flicked through them then put them away again.

Hopefully I will feel enthused when I return from work tomorrow 🤞

A big thank you to everyone for their support in my mojolessness!

My Mojo seems to have left the building, really cannot be bothered to do anything recently.

I must give myself a shake and a stern talking to. And get back into it…

Love this… we are doing rounding in school 😂

So I came home at 18.45 tonight so by time we had a meal etc I didn’t have time to do anything, okay not entirely true, I managed some time on War Thunder, I just couldn’t be bothered to get anything out.

When I got home I found a parcel on the table, and more terrain stuff from Geek Gaming was inside the box.

I was sent a really interesting story by my wife today, rather than type it all out again I have copied and pasted it for your perusal.

• In about 1700 Mary’s parents were shearing their corn at their croft of Stutaft near Baltasound, Unst, and Mary was lying in her shawl close by, at the side of the rig. After they had shorn a certain number of sheaves they proceeded to set them up in stooks. In so doing they moved a short distance from their infant who was fast asleep. To their horror a sea-eagle or erne, swooped down, clutched the bairn in the shawl in its talons, and flew off to the south.
  With some neighbours, they followed the flight of the eagle, which on reaching Colvadale, altered course for the Blue-Banks of Fetlar. The men went on to the south-east corner of Unst where at Ramnagio they procured a boat and went to Fetlar, landing at Colbinstoft. On informing the inhabitants there of their mission, they were informed that the eagle had her eyrie at Busta-Pund, at the East Neaps. A number of Fetlar men now joined them and went with ropes to the top of the cliffs above the eyrie situated under an overhang on the cliff face.
  Among the Fetlar men was a 12 year old boy, the son of Nicol Peterson of Crosbister, his name owing to the patronymic surnames in use, being Robert Nicolson. He volunteered to make the descent on the rope to the nest and was lowered over the cliff. To his amazement on reaching the nest, he found the child fast asleep along with two eaglets in the nest. He carefully disentangled the shawl from the nest, and was hauled up the cliff with his precious bundle to the safety of the cliff top and the crowd of men waiting there. Amongst the profuse congratulations extended to young Robert for his courageous deed was one from an elderly Unst man who said that he would maybe get her for a wife yet.
  Several years later some men from Fetlar had occasion to go to Unst and Robert taking the opportunity to go with them made a visit to the home of the young woman whom he had carried up the cliff face of Busta-Pund as an infant. The meeting proved to fulfil the old man’s prophecy for it ended as a good fairy tale should with the marriage of Robert Nicolson and Mary Anderson. They settled for a short time at Fetlar, but later moved their home to Kirkabister, on the north side of Mid Yell Voe where they raised their family.
  
  Abridged from:- Shetland Life, August 1981 page 14, by Robert L. Johnson.

Sea Eagles were common on Shetland, as were peregrine falcons (the best being found on the island of Fair Isle). Neither have survived into the 20th century. We do however still get visiting birds that cause twitchers the length and breadth of the UK to flock to our little island. In fact we had a rare warbler or something in our Kale Yard (the name of the planting area outside a Croft house). We only knew about it when half a dozen blokes with giant lenses on their camera’s turned up tromping down the track.

Out of interest we have had a flamingos on Shetland in 2013 a flock was seen on Strand Loch in Tingwall (the place I showed flooded last week)…

These were wild birds (we have had escaped/lost ones before). The people that know these things worked out that they probably came from India or Pakistan due to the wind speed and direction.

So we had bits and pieces to do today and I never had the urge to paint anything, I actually got as far as rescuing some miniatures out of the shed and even got the paints out, but err that was about as far as it got…

I did however stick some 6mm Samurai onto sticks!

This is about a quarter of what I need to do… so my plan is to get them done (as in Finished) in the Christmas holidays. Wish me luck!

So tonight was an unintentional night off. The kids were wanting to make bread, so I gave them the table and went and had a long soak in the bath 😂

After the rain and snow we now have 70mph winds as standard, gusting higher…The problem with up here is sometimes you cannot tell how windy it is as there are no trees or bushes to show you.

So we spent a lot of today working on moving the electrics so that they are in the new conservatory, there was a bit of swearing but not a huge amount, which was a pleasant change.

On the upside we did find some rather funky 70’s wallpaper…

Today we have had apocalyptic rain, with a nice breeze and as such it hasn’t been the best of days. So this evening my good lady sorted out the stables as everywhere is flooded and the stream in the field has totally burst it’s banks. With having the cold in the field we thought it better that they came in.

So in said wind and rain we got them in, we’ll sort of got them in. The two older ones went in and the colt panicked and legged it into the darkness. Thankfully we got him in the end but by then I was having a sense of humour failure, torches failed we fell over, fell in puddles etc. But thankfully they are all in the yard now.

I really, really couldn’t be bothered tonight so I decided to give things a miss.

So this is the kind of flooding I am talking about…

This is the main road North/South road at Tingwall…

Got back late tonight so I never really had much time to get anything done. This afternoon I did manage to get a teeny bit more done on the trees. I added some more flock to the trees, both the dark and a lighter one to add some highlights….

The next question I have for those more knowledgeable is how the flippin’ heck do I seal the flock on. Choices I have here are spray varnish or a PVA water mix. Any help greatly appreciated.

This could easily describe me and the weather, but sadly it is my diorama piece. I am sure it will dry eventually, by then it may look like a banana, but only time will tell. I actually haven’t got anything done this evening as I was helping kids with homework after having dinner and doing the horse. I have been thinking about what I am going to do with the diorama though.

Where the rhino are is going to be churned up as if they have been at it a long time. I really wish that there was a dead wolf in this set, but sadly not. So yeah a muddy bit surrounding the calf and the rest as rough grass. Now I don’t have a good static grassamator so I am going to have to use clumps I think. I might have some practice with the one I have this weekend. I have loads and loads of static grass from 2mm up to 6mm so I am sure that I should be able to do something with it.

So we have had a lot more Orca sightings over the last week or two, this is the reason why. This lot are having pups at this time of year and so with the thought of an easy meal they have returned. I took this photo a while ago (opposite the local Tesco in Lerwick).

This lot have their pups in June….

I have been meaning to write a blog post on seals for ages, and have never seemed to have got around to it.

Hopefully tomorrow will see some progress on the groundwork.

Today we went to the cinema to watch Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. It was the first time any of us had seen it on the big screen. The normal 160 people was down to 40 for social distancing. The last time I saw it that empty was for a rerun of Casablanca.

We also eventually got round to sorting out my daughter’s Birthday Takeaway. She eventually settled for the chip shop after running through thoughts of going for Indian, Chinese or Nepalese.

I then unfortunately went down the YouTube rabbit hole and didn’t really get as much done as I wanted. To be brutally honest I couldn’t really be bothered to do anything, but pushed myself to get the goats progressed a bit.

I was hoping to get some flock on the bases but the brown took ages to dry, so I will get that done tomorrow.

I managed to throw a bit of paint onto the maids and Witch King too

Hopefully I can get them finished tomorrow too.

The wind up here is rather strong at the minute so no Ferries either inter island or to the mainland. Hopefully we won’t have had any panic buying as I need to go shopping tomorrow.

On the conservatory front I managed to stop the drip the other day only to have it return today… as you can imagine I am now getting a bit miffed about this.