Poised between one life and the next
Here I sit, balanced between my old life and my new. Next week sometime my beloved father in law will come to live with us. I have spent the last few days sorting papers and cleaning in the room which was my study and which is to become his bedroom. The room looks bare and empty now with only a bed and a chair and a bookcase in place, although it is a lovely room with a huge red rug on the quarry tiled floor and a deep windowsill. It looks out towards the bakehouse and across the valley. In the morning the sun streams in. I want it to look welcoming. Ian will bring some of his many family pictures and maybe the photos of Orkney and the wallmounted map of the islands. As a working class lad from the industrial North it must have been extraordinary for my father in law to find himself spending his war on little boats patrolling the islands. He still has all their names on his tongue: Mainland, North Ronaldsay, South Ronaldsay, Papa Westray...