“Air, I should explain, becomes wind when it is agitated.”*

by chuckofish

I had a hellish week full of interminable, stressful meetings. By Thursday night I was exhausted and on the verge of quitting all my community and work-related obligations (I may yet do so). Then my sweet DH gave me this little gem of a book for Valentine’s Day and my equanimity has been restored.

After working as a harassed GP in Glasgow for several years, Dr. Alexander moves his family (at that point a wife and four young boys) to Eday, a small island in the Orkneys off the northeast tip of Scotland. It is a beautiful, barren and windswept island of peat bogs, fields and scattered farms.

On sunny days it is the most benign place on earth, but when a gale blows, winds can reach 125 mph and the waves pummel the shore with ferocious force!

Everyone knows everyone else and pitches in to do whatever is necessary. With no support staff, hospital or even a pharmacy on the island, and the nearest help a plane-ride away in Kirkwall, Dr. Alexander quickly learns to improvise. In typical Scottish fashion, he soon finds himself not only treating the Island’s inhabitants and sometimes their animals, but leading church services, because the minister, who serves several parishes on different islands, cannot make the trip in the winter. Who more qualified than the doctor to replace him?

I’m about halfway through and I must say that this book is as good as a vacation. It is such a relief to read something low-key about nice people being decent to each other. It also brings back fond memories of my own trip to the Orkneys back in the early 1980s. I visited the main island and saw such sites as the ruined Earl’s palace at Kirkwall,

the Ring of Brodgar standing stones,

and Skara Brae, the Neolithic village.

It was a cool trip. Come Monday I will still have to face micromanaging administrators and unhappy colleagues but I will do it with a renewed sense of perspective. Not everyone in the world is crazy or looking to control what other people do. Be comforted!

*Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

None of the photos are my own. I retrieved them all via Google image.