An innocent abroad

"Dazed after leaving London first thing in the morning and landing before noon on an island that seems more Scandinavian than British, I ask the taxi driver taking me across Orkney if the tractor turning up brown matter is cutting peat. 'Ah no,' comes the sing-song reply (Glaswegians think Orcadians sound Welsh). 'That's manure spreading.'"

The Guardian's Jonathan Jones visits the Pier Art Gallery in Stromness for a piece on a travelling exhibition of Artists' Rooms; he seems to have liked it, but that opening paragraph is deliberate self-parody, surely? And a bit on the broad side, even so.

Here's another chunk, with a new interpretation of the purpose of Maes Howe:

"Outside Stromness there is a neolithic burial chamber called Maes Howe, its severe and perfect architecture achieved through dry stone walling. Here, in a room dedicated to the contemplation of the infinite, a shaft of light breaks in once a year on the Winter Solstice, making this one of the world's oldest pieces of time-based art."