just back from far flung North Ronaldsay - if this Caithness land is far north then - whah! it ain't nothin' one and half hour boat trip to Stromness then eighteen minutes in an eight seater plane toOrkney's northernmost island. The wind does blow. The folks there are wind blown. At one place the island is just quarter of a mile wide and one of side the north sea, calling to its sister on the other, the Atlantic. I asked some of the older islander what where they called - as in North Ronaldsians or such? Selchies, one elderly man said, smiling with the sea eye and wind face. Aha! So that's where they hide out, the selchies? These few folks who live alongside wild seaweed eating shaggy sheep and basking brother and sister seals, on land there are the ones who, for some time at least, have removed their seal skins. They are getting out the accordion, playing the fiddle with a pixie eye, drumming for all she's worth not with a drum kit but a square of formica and very good it does too. And there was a sexophone put in an appearance too. And the wine did flow and the songs were sung and in the eternal light the seals at midnight joined in and sung in their deep haunting soulful way.