Orcadian Tales

[ewein2412]

 

There may be somebody out there who will be amused by this. Everyone else will go… What is she TALKING about?

The first time I went to Orkney a shepherd named Iain tried to seduce me. I was a girl alone, he was travelling with his mother; I was tempted, but naïve and a little scared. They tried to get me to come on a trip with them to the outer islands. I fled, as fast as I have ever fled from anything, to my beloved Pennines for the next season. It was nearly 20 years before I went back.

I went back because the Orkney Islands Council asked me to come. They arranged and paid for my journey, they provided food and a comfortable place for me to sleep. (I swear I saw no ghosts of ANYBODY.) But it was very windy. My children followed a day later, when my interview was over and we would be able to explore. When my four-year-old disembarked the adults had to make a barricade around him to keep him from blowing over. He had to creep to shelter bent double, hair blown flat against his skull, laughing hilariously the whole way.

I didn't get the job. I wasn't entirely disappointed, as it would have meant staying there, without the children, for two seasons, and not the light ones.

But we had such a marvellous visit, that time, that the following summer my husband and children went back without me, taking grandparents along for the ride. I was at WorldCon in Glasgow. (I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP, YOU KNOW.) Thus, when  sdnor  ellen_kushneror someone asked if my children were around, I was able to reply truthfully (and not without some small amount of hilarity): "No, my entire family is in Orkney." 

This post brought to you courtesy of the fact that I've been reading some of the HIGHLY UNPUBLISHABLE stuff I wrote in high school.  By "unpublishable" I don't mean "Viking wouldn't buy it"--I mean that it should be burnt, and that I would spontaneously combust of shame if anyone ever read any of it. Not that they would understand it if they did. I myself had some trouble with it, having forgotten, for example, that the boy magician was in fact a sort of transgender Orlando creature, and that his twentieth century arch-enemy does turn out to be Mordred. Or that he and Telemakos have the same birthday. Can I possibly have done that on PURPOSE?  It really is a miracle that I subsequently ever wrote anything remotely readable.

Comments

[mhari.livejournal.com]

Hee hee hee.

And hee again. E Wein has no favorite tropes, no sir! XD But I sympathize. This is why I don't allow my mother to actually read any notebooks of mine when we're housecleaning.

[ewein2412]

This is me....

Actually, I am pleased that you have inspired me to find it on the web, because it is ALWAYS in the back of my mind (I think I will post it in my bio!). Especially now that some pigs have actually appeared in the story. Once the 4th Branch of the Mabinogion pierces your consciousness you are doomed for life.

[meener.livejournal.com]

that link is EXCELLENT. next time i'm back home, i'm going to piece together a writing chronology of my own; when grad school gets too overwhelming, i'll dig it out and cry laugh.

[ewein2412]

honestly. I ALWAYS think of it. I wrote a story about salt-smuggling when I was 16. I seem to recycle EVERYTHING.