A postcard from Swona

[shewhomust]

When I open a new tab, something called 'Pocket' offers me a selection of links. I don't know what it is or where it came from, and mostly the topics it offers don't appeal to me anyway.

But I was hooked by this account of a visit to the abandoned island of Swona (that's the island between Orkney and the north coast of Scotland).

It's an extract from Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn. At first I wondered why I hadn't heard of this book before, but reading more about it, I suspect I have seen reviews, but that they emphasised passages about locations that don't press my buttons in the same way. Great photos, though...

(Still mainlining news broadcasts, still not happy about it, still resisting the temptation to vent here.)

Comments

[larryhammer]

I assume you're using Firefox? I'm guessing that, as that has integration with Pocket built-in. Pocket is a sort of clipping service, letting you save pages/articles for later reading, often in a "reader view" that strips out ads, site headers, and other cruft.

The ones being offered on a new Firefox tab are a sampling of the articles being most-shared currently by users of Pocket, plus some ads and promoted content. I generally ignore them. There is a way to customize the new tab that removes them, but I'd have to dig to find the setting.

[shewhomust]

Thanks - that's reassuring. I'll carry on mostly ignoring them, then.

[cmcmck]

So many abandoned islands I'd love to visit!

I'd love to get to Swein Asleifson's Gairsay.

[shewhomust]

So many islands, abandoned and populated ...