Phew.  Summer seems to have arrived without letting anyone know it was on the way.  Only last weekend I was actually swimming in the sea up here in Shetland, enjoying gorgeous weather and a fantastic family weekend.

I mean actually swimming in the real sea!  Okay, so that’s a 6mm wetsuit and I couldn’t feel my feet, but apart from that it was superb.  The water’s really clear up here, the wildlife is abundant and curious.  We’ve had crabs, flatfish, assorted varieties of sea snail and small fish I’ve not been able to identify.  Seals frolic in the bay and, very occasionally, we get a visiting pod of orcas.  I say “occasionally”, I’ve spotted them once in 10 years of being here.

By the way, blog’s now moved to a new host so I thought that deserved a new theme.  This is the new WordPress default.  I’m waiting on Ghost coming online, so I thought I’d give the bleeding edge a try.  Anything broken, let me know.

So, another advantage of living up here at the arse end of nowhere is the strange and wonderful visitors we get.  This one, for instance, is the Georg Stage, and it was lurking in our bay Wednesday morning.

Stunning Norwegian tall ship just there when we woke up!  “It’s a pirate ship!” exclaimed youngest.  When it left on Thursday, it was drifting off into very atmospheric fog.

Anyway, time to start posting again, getting this blog back up and running.  Oh, and I’ve got a new header image as and when this bleeding-edge 2013 theme supports uploading new ones or I get around to hacking it at work on Monday.

Toodles, folks!