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It is Winter, but….

Well we have officially had gales for nine days straight. The average for January is seven days of gales, however they are not normally together at the start. To be fair in 1993 there were 19 days of Gales.

On the 5th January the MV Braer ran aground off Sumburgh and released 87,000 tonnes of crude oil. She was carrying twice the amount as the Exon Valdes. Therefore people feared the worst. By some stroke of luck. The storm that added to the accident also saved us. By all account’s the motion of the waves and wind emulsified the oil.

We did get oiled beaches, but not what was expected.

Friends who lived up here smelled the oil on the wind 50 odd miles away. They were out checking theirs and their neighbours fuel supplies as they thought they had developed a leak.

I remember watching things unfold on the evening news.

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Made it Home

You may be pleased that I made it back home in one piece. Swell coming back was a mere 4.5 metre compared to the 7.5 metre going down.

The kids all came with me and had great fun in Aberdeen’s shops.

I was so buggered with being sick so much, not sleeping and not eating/ drinking I couldn’t be arsed to walk 5 minutes to a model shop.

When I got home everything ached. So after a quick drink I went and sat in bed and promptly fell asleep and woke up at 15.30.

I really couldn’t be arsed to pick up a brush this evening. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Aberdeen before departure
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All Hands….

Brace for Bouncing

So I made it onto the boat and it is heading out two hours later due to the rough seas. It is now a 15 hour crossing instead of 12. We are missing out Orkney altogether.

Lerwick in the dark.

Here I am being stoic!

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Almost Finished

Yes, the Flintloque miniatures are nearly done. I worked on them this evening again. Painted the base, did the rims, took the photo and then realised I had forgotten all the brass work on the rifle and pistols!

I will try and get it done during the day tomorrow.

I have a hospital appointment with a specialist on Thursday so it is a ferry trip down to Aberdeen tomorrow evening. I could have taken a flight, but this way it is cheaper for the old NHS… oh yeah and it means I get some time in Aberdeen.

I am going to see if I can find any model shops… not holding my breath as I haven’t been able to in the past.

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Starting 2024 With…

Some painting! Yes indeed first day of new year and I painted. Okay totally forgot today was 1st January… so while I remember… I want to wish everyone health, wealth and happiness for the years ahead.

Here are the fruits of my labour so to speak…

I hadn’t really made many hobby plans for 2023, well apart from getting stuff painted and built. The one thing I did decide on was to give up printing for a bit, this is one thing I pretty much kept to. My new resin printer is still in the box and the only reason the FDM one was opened was to print my son a replica pipe pistol from Fallout.

So do I have any actual plans… not really. Try and people more should be a major one… hopefully that will come about.

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Another Rabbit Hole

As if I havent got enough to do! 😂

So after getting the Fallot RPG for Christmas I decided to dust off the game on the console… you know, for research purposes. I decided I didn’t want to just recreate the commonwealth around Boston in my games. Instead I decided to head North… Round about Chicago I thought…. so there I was following roads out of there and came across the town of Marengo… for some reason it is classed as a city, but with just over 7500 people, to me that is the same population as Lerwick.

Why Marengo… well it has a park, that has my surname. So many hours later I stopped ‘driving’ around on Google Maps.

Soo with a bit of Internet searching…. said family arrived I 1838, three years after the town was formed…. I fully intended to get some ideas down on paper…sadly never happened, I did however print off a few maps to help with the planning stage. Oh yeah… some of the houses would fit right into the Fallout aesthetic!

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A Bit Windy… An Update

To be honest this morning was a bit like ‘wind… what wind?’ Yesterday I could hardly stand and today I couldn’t have flown a kite. My good lady took this photo when she was out with the dog.

We got off easy.

Power kept on, but the other side of the hill was off. Funnily enough anywhere that had their power poles replaced due to being destroyed last winter were fine this time.

To our knowledge the worst that happened to our place was that the bin lid fell off and we lost a strip of felt off the pony shed.

My colleague lost their hen house and pigsty roof, oh and this was the Shetland hotel!

The road on the other side was closed for ages as the fire brigade had to assess the building to ensure it wasn’t going to fall down.

From what I remember strongest gust was 89 mph yesterday.

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A Bit Blowy

Well it is decidedly windy this evening coming from the South East which is unusual. From the outskirts of Lerwick and Scalloway southward lost power earlier. Thankfully we don’t have too many trees to cause further chaos.

All I can hear is the wind outside. Brrrr! Ferries, flights and buses all cancelled earlier or even yesterday.

So far we seem to have a pond where my porch floor seems to be. The wind is driving the rain under the bottom of the door. It already need the roof replacing due to a leak. Typically the wind direction is not the way I want the wind to be blowing!

Tomorrow we will check everywhere for damage!

So wind speed is about 65 -70 mph gusting up to 85.

Poor buggers on the mainland are getting similar and have woodlands to deal with too.

Respect to the Electricity dudes up poles on a night like this!

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Merry Christmas

I hope you had, are having or are going to have an awesome Christmas.

We have had a good one here…sadly all the snow disappeared on Christmas Eve!

So this was my haul along with lots of sweeties, a new mug, some new Lego, oh and some nice cheese!

Flippin heck this thing is comprehensive! Only just really had a flick through as we were at my in-laws and then my body decided I needed a sleep!