The weather turned much colder in the middle of November and the gritters are often to be seen out on the island's roads. The onset of colder weather seemed to encourage more mice to take up residence in the roof void over the kitchen. One day Maureen thought she had seen the robin in the garden during a very cold spell and felt very sorry for it. But when Maureen put on her glasses she saw that it not the robin but a mouse and headed for the back door to tell the mouse to clear off. As she did so she reached for the nearest thing to throw at the mouse and frighten it. The nearest thing happened to be some cat litter so the birds spent the next day or two pecking furiously in the yard at what they thought was a tasty titbit but was in fact just cat litter. We were supposed to fly to Kirkwall on Thursday 18 Nov for Maureen's appointments with the hospital eye specialist and the hairdresser. Unfortunately the day before we were due to fly the aircraft ran into a flock of geese as it was landing at Kirkwall and our flight was cancelled. However, we did manage to fly to Kirkwall a week later and Maureen did get her visit to the hairdresser even if her new hospital appointment will probably be sometime next year. The inter-island flights are quite cheap and the journey time of 10 minutes compares favourably with the ferry time of almost 2 hours. The aircraft - Britten-Norman Islanders - carry one pilot and up to 9 passengers with their luggage. We both decided that we have travelled in less comfortable taxicabs. Everything is very informal; the pilot just turns around in his seat, asks if everybody is strapped in then starts the engines and the aircraft is airborne within a minute or so. The island airfields are very small but have basic crash-rescue facilities- in the case of Stronsay airfield, which only opens twice a day; the facilities comprise a LandRover with a crash trailer and two local crash-rescue workers. Whilst driving back from the airfield after our trip to Mainland Orkney there was a tremendous clattering noise from beneath the car. At first I thought that there had been a major mechanical failure in the transmission but fortunately it was "only" one of the two liquid petroleum gas tanks that had broken free and was dragging on the ground. I spent all day Friday and most of Saturday morning trying to work out how to strap the tank back up again but in the end I had to just chop the cables and piping and lay the tank in the garage. It made us realise how much we rely upon the car when we had to ask a friend to collect a prescription from the doctor's surgery (which is about 1.5 miles from our house). As it happens I was already booked to go to a garage in Stromness on Monday 06 December to get the LPG system replaced and get the car's annual roadworthiness certificate renewed so things are not as bad as they might have been. On Saturday 27 November we lost Surrey our new kitten. We spent the morning and most of the afternoon searching all the downstairs rooms, the garage, the garden and the potting shed. I even drove along the road in both directions to see if I could see her anywhere. At about 2 pm we decided that she must have got out of the house somehow and got herself lost. I produced a couple of "kitten lost" posters and took them into the local shop then came home where we were both very despondent at the loss of Surrey. I went into the back room to get something from a shelf and when I opened the door a white flash shot past me heading for the kitchen. It was Surrey who had found a secret hiding place (we still don't know where it is) and had decided that it was time for some food. What a sense of relief! We have not heard or seen any signs of mice for over a week so Surrey appears to be doing her job merely by being around. (There are now some photographs of Surrey on our website - <http://www.stronsay.co.uk/claremont/Surrey.htm>). We were delighted to discover that the webcam at Maeshowe is back online until February 2005. We used the website <http://www.maeshowe.co.uk/main.html> last year when we were still planning our journey northwards. -- Bruce Fletcher Stronsay, Orkney, UK http://www.stronsay.co.uk/claremont If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you're reading it in English, thank a soldier.