Orkney

Kirkwall airport

St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall

I have just returned from a week in Orkney carrying out a review of corporate policymaking and the governance of sheltered housing and care homes. It was something that I had spent a lot of time on in the late 1970s when my team had produced many recommendations on special needs housing. I visited all 19 District Councils in Strathclyde to encourage a more diverse range of housing to be built or adapted. It had prompted a much-needed investment in special needs housing.

Orkney was bleak in the cradle of winter, geese were grazing, snow showers blew in intermittently and there was a sighting of the northern lights on Monday evening, which I missed. I was buttressed from the expansive Orkney skylines in a comfortable flat in the centre of Kirkwall. Freshly caught Westray haddock became my staple diet as I became a regular at the Kirkwall Hotel. I worked about 12 hours a day for the first 4 days and completed 35 interviews with residential and care home occupants and staff as well as social work and housing managers and politicians.

On Thursday evening I was invited to visit Alistair and Lorraine for a relaxed evening with the easy hospitality of good Orcadian friends. We had a bit of a blowout with several bottles of wine followed by a bottle of whisky. Alistair and I talked until 3:00 am, by which time a lift back to Kirkwall or a taxi was about as likely as another sighting of the northern lights. I grabbed a few hours of sleep in the spare room and the next morning we had a lift into Kirkwall from a friend of Alistair.

Friday was less productive but I managed another 7 meetings and took the chance at lunchtime to walk around St Magnus Cathedral and to buy a book by George Mackay Brown that I had discussed on Wednesday lunchtime with a couple of intense local animateurs. I completed 42 interviews with a wide cross-section of people and met with 25 older people during the week. It unearthed all sorts of fascinating insights into island life as well as boxing the compass of opinions on the workings of the Council and the concerns of elderly people who felt they had not been consulted about proposed closures to their homes.

Dawn, who had organised my diary all week and chauffeured me hither and thither, extracted me from a debriefing with Alistair at 3:30pm and dropped me at the airport about 20 minutes before departure. I met a group of auditors I knew and we had an interesting discussion about public sector efficiencies before embarking on the 4:00pm plane back to Edinburgh. It was one of the faster commutes home and took just 3 hours door to door. I could get used to this.