Category: Simmer Dim

Have you ever wanted to know what it is like to sell up and go and live in Shetland?

Tiggy out on the lane outside the croft house I bought in Levenwick.

July, I made the decision to return to the city and share the reasons why.

July starts like this:-

July – Shetland

A month of sea swimming at Levenwick, at Spiggie, then on the west side.

Vegetables growing in builders’ sacks that I filled with sieved soil, in the roofless byre.

Speckle of Wild purple orchids peeping out of the long grass.

A long line of sea urchin shells residing in my newly painted deep bathroom window sill.

I return to sit upon a hill, by the sea, where the gulls drop the sea urchins to crack open for dinner – it is, Sea Urchin hill.

The old flagged back yard is dug out and cleared of a hundred years of weeds.

I cradle a large hedgehog curled in a great ball in the palm of both my hands, at Sumburgh Head where the fog horn sounds and the light spears out in the night.

The beautiful gift of a full Fleece from Francis, shorn from a ewe that I greatly admired daily in his field.  

The most exquisite incomparable morning light over sea and sky.

The return of heavy fog for days and days.  

I write ‘worry’ in the sand at the beach and let the sea wash it away but my worry still lingers in every moment.

The ‘Dear Susan’ jumper is finished – it glows upon the sands

I met with Hazel Tindel in town.  She lifted my spirits and didn’t know that I had felt so low

Reading Saturday’s guardian on the bench on Sunday, a Sheffield potted baby oak tree at my feet.

The inside of the understairs cupboard door is papered perfectly with the wallpaper that I lifted from the derelict house.  

My first intrepid knitting visitors to the house for a colour blending workshop are welcomed – A hint of things to come.

A visit back to my city of Sheffield, where a daughter meets me for 3 hours from London and I know. I just know.

Here is the beginning of July’s post – extract

Moments on the edge

Have you ever driven to the very edge of the rock upon which you live, so that you can see the curvature of the earth on the horizon in the fading light of the day? To sit, to knit, to think, to feel? To Be grateful for this roller coaster of beautiful life? Have you sat still long enough to hear the call of a thousand birds beneath the whir of a lighthouse light gently turning and the sea slightly roaring below your feet? This is where time stops and the world slows down.

The approach of mid summer.

We are approaching midsummer, the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. We are in the Shetland Simmer Dim – my first fully experienced one here and it is a rare experience. June is the time of year where we are graced with a light until after midnight although the sun sets at around 10:30pm.  The evenings are some kind of twilight, a half light in which you can still see everything even at 1am. From the bed, I look out to sea where the twilight meets the sun rise at around 3:30am.  Together, these joining lights and the calmness of the evenings full of bird song are recognisable only as Shetland.   

For a few short weeks, Simmer Dim means that there is no true darkness at all, which I am accepting as the flip side of the coin of Winter whereupon it is daylight between 9am and 3pm and if it is a bad day, there is no true daylight at all – just a greyness.

In June, time is like a breath.  It feels as if the world held its breath so long that now, there is an opportunity for a gentle exhale.  

The Summer light in which we are living by here in Shetland, brings us out from hibernation. I have become lighter with the lightness fo the weather. The plants grow at a speedy rate, pushed on by the long days. The cats lounge outside rolling around in the dust. Finally, the winds have slowed.  

I find myself wallpapering at 11pm because it feels like early evening then I’m awake by 4:30am because of the fully sun lit day light. The cats think it is breakfast time, I’m up, dressed, out and down on the beach by 7am before work. I feel tired because I’m doing so much but it is not an exhausted tired.  It’s a fulfilled tired of living a long full day, Then, I am aware that on 21st June, the days will begin to grow shorter, slowly at first then gather speed.   I don’t even want to think about it.

I was hoping a friend would be here on Summer Solstice but I am not sure, so, I will mark the day in some special way – by doing something I hardly do anymore, camping or swimming in the sea, or just by sitting out and listening to the world – not knitting, or writing – just sitting and marvelling at this special place where the season of Summer rewards our waiting.  Maybe I’ll do all three.