Dancers

In the sky, at the Ceilidh and in my heart.

We’ve lived in Orkney for five years now and were beginning to think that the Mirrie Dancers, or Northern Lights, were something people talked about to make Incomers like us feel that they weren’t really part of Orkney just yet. Well, we must have made it now as we’ve seen three auroras in the last few months, two back in November and a fabulous display last night.

Our local What’sApp group, set up for shopping and any other support required during COVID-19, has almost morphed into an aurora alert system and it was pinging away last evening. The photo above was taken from the kitchen balcony as the show started to develop, and the one below from by the front door. When it’s a good show like last night even the lights of Burray, opposite us across the Fourth Churchill Barrier, can’t diminish the spectacle. The photos were taken with an iPhone, nothing fancy. The lights danced for about an hour.

The start of the year has seen the sad loss of Lynn, a wonderful friend, a true Orcadian, and someone that we would have wished to know for much longer. It emerged at her funeral that she would have loved to have been a dancer - perhaps it was her dancing last night? I have done fund-raising cookery demonstrations for Jo at Just Dance in Kirkwall, a studio that is teaching a wide range of dance styles to everyone from toddlers to adults. Lynn might have made it to the stage professionally had Just Dance existed when she was young.

We did, however, take to the dance floor ourselves, albeit with very little aplomb, for a ceilidh in Burray Hall just after Christmas. Oh dear!

We both felt gently confused and extremely puffed by the proceedings but have resolved to attend the fortnightly ceilidh dancing classes in the village so that we are not such embarrassments, either to ourselves or our guests, in future. People were very kind - but then they always are, here in Orkney. Dance on…