shewhomust | Plus ça change...

I have never lived in Kirkwall, never spent a long time here: but the short visits I have made span so many years that there's a feeling of coming home, not because everything is the same but because I am so aware of small changes.

We are staying at The Storehouse, a restaurant with rooms which, reading their website, may have been here last time we were in town, but probably not the time before: it's a very smart conversion of a derelict industrial building, and it's great fun if maybe just a bit too hip and tasteful...

We wandered into the town centre, past what used to be the Orcadian (newspaper) bookshop, then some sort of fast food outlet, now apparently pottery and fudge. The Highland Park shop was there last time, but they have redesigned the packaging of their whisky, which I always think is an ominous sign (their aiming at something with more general appeal, apparently, less masculine and less Viking-oriented). The Museum has modernised its information boards, which are now very smart but run out before you reach the end: the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are unmodernised. They also have a summer exhibition about Jim Baikie, which was a pleasant surprise, and I made the most of it while

durham_rambler tracked down a copy of today's paper. There was more museum to see, but instead we went to the café at the back of Judith Glue's shop, and ate fishy things for lunch (I had the excellent Westray rollmops,

durham_rambler had mackerel paté).

We emerged blinking into blazing sunshine, not sure what to do next: so we headed down to the Tourist Office (to my surprise, still where it used to be, next to the bus station). This put us so close to the harbour, we thought we might as well stroll on, but we soon turned back into town, past the new Ship of Fools art gallery. Well, when I say past... Many pretty things to see, of which this was by far my favourite:

It's a construction by local artist Sheena Graham-George (though if her website is any guide, it isn't typical of her work), made of driftwood and bits of vintage book, and it is called You are like an Ocean. It was only when I got it home and looked at the full-size image that I realised it has my name on it.

The rest of the afternoon was inconclusive: we established that the place we had thought of eating tonight stops serving at five, and I failed to buy anything in the Orcdian bookshop (though they already have poster up about Ann Cleeves' next book, due out in October, so that's another website that'll need updating when I get home). But really we were both ready to return to the hotel for rest and recovery.