Sisilly's tree

Tree of Life by Welsh artist Jen Delyth

A'm hame noo. Back wi the blether o' the seagulls o'er the ruiftops an' gae soft sleepy whirl o' the cushie doos in the trees. Thae soonds mak a lassie feel that this is kinda hame. Guid tae be hame!

But hame and heim .. they are blending, all becoming one. And thats nice. I like also that to the untrained eye the words for home and the world are so similar in Icelandic .. heim, heimur.

I saw sisilly's tree yesterday and I've been thinking of it this morning. Roots and branches .. perhaps you send a branch out into the world to taste the air in another place and it will become another root. But the world can feel small these days and we can stretch about and keep roots all over so that wherever you go back to you are going back home.

Untamed beauties!

The contestants have been announced! Read more on this blog.

Lab life

It's a Friday night and I am here, up there, above. I wish I could capture the buzz of the air conditoning the whirring of the instrument and the black black blackness of the view outside. Insdide it seems a grey world on the surface. Yet, I have been searching for points of colour as I wait for calibration.



I don't mind. After a while this little world becomes cosy and safe. And it's worth it .. I expect greatness from these results. Making connections where none were visible before, a great puzzle coming together. Jigsaws of lines of evidence, strands of impressions, sketches in notebooks, maps and on my brain blending and weaving into a story to tell. The life and desires of a palaenvironmental detective.

Meanwhile, microwave ready meals, pickled onion Monster Munch, pretty pink fairy cakes and Coca Cola keep me going, buzzing into the night.

Meanwhile sad news from "home" - a major fire and a burst hot water pipe both in downtown Reykjavik. Some people were badly scolded by the hot water running down Laugavegur. The fire has destroyed some of Reykjavik's oldest buildings.

Ceilidh classes in Reykjavik

Beginners Ceilidh classes start in Reykjavik in May.. I'm teaching! Ceilidh dancing is wonderful fun. Scottish country dancing the way real people do it. A great night out, really sociable and not too worried about the perfect steps. I love it! Being back in Scotland just now I am working away in the labs and writing occasional blogs with pretty pictures to remind me that it is spring outside .. or summer if you believe the Icelanders. I am dreaming however of the ceilidh we are going to next Saturday .. Last Tram Tae Auchenshuggle are playing in the Linlithgow Academy. Woohoo!! Never mind kicking up my heels for a dance, I'll be kicking off my shoes!

So, classes in Reykjavik! Dates are:

Sunday 6th May, 14:30 to 17:00
Sunday 13th May, 14:30 to 17:00
Sunday 20th May, 14:30 to 17:00
Thursday 24th May, 20:00 to 22:30

A further class is being planned for the last week in May to have social dancing and rehearse a demonstration set of dances for the Festival of Nations on June 2nd. This is the start of Ceilidh culture in Reykjavik. It's going to be fun and so easy everyone can join in. Have a look at Ceilidh in Reykjavik site for more information and updates.

Gleðilegt sumar - Happy Summer

One spring where I grew up

Today is the first day of summer in Iceland and I understand there is sunshine to celebrate the event. What I want to know is "was it frosty last night?" A frost on the night between winter and summer brings the good luck of a good summer and I want one of those please.

A bright spot

Night monsters

It is dark and cold outside but in a windowless room in Edinburgh there is work to be done. The smell of petroleum ether and araldite glue mix in the air along with shortbread and tea. I work on my slides, polishing and grinding until they shine and the coloured specks of ash from the volcanoes of Iceland glow like specks of gold. The air conditioning monsters growl and I play bellydance music to chase them away. They go. Perhaps they can try a little shimmy in their corner.

There are shadows outside waiting for me to join them and walk, head held high between pools of lamp light back to the homely warmth of my rented room. Plastic bags russling in the wind wait too, drifting along the pavement. They will follow me home, try to tempt me towards one glance back. What was that shadow, that noise?

Back to work, tea and shortbread and all monsters and shadows and plastic bags can wait, their time will come before bed. They have a ten minute slot as I walk to try their best. It's not long enough to get me.

Am I home?

I arrived "home" on Sunday. The first few days here have had a minor element of culture shock, a surprisingly substantial part of my brain saying "Is this home?"

I spent Sunday saying "takk" and "fyrirgefðu" to people in shops and forming sentences of enquiry.. "Ertu með kort á Glasgow?" I spent quite some time wandering around like a tourist in Glasgow Queen Street Station trying to work out how to find which way I was pointing as I spun in circles looking at my choice of exits. I always get lost in Glasgow .. there are no tall landmarks I can see from the street. Perhaps it is also associated with the consistent hangover feeling I have when I am there .. not from alcohol, like many other visitors passing through the town centre after a night on the town. No, this is the effect of sleep deprivation induced by a 4.30am start for a horrible-hour flight and packing until 3.30am. Still, it was worth staying up to enjoy Erik´s delicious little lamb that he forced into the oven and Sylvie´s famous chocolate moose! Meeeh.. jarm, jarm.. eek.. Yummy.

Small things I noticed too. Usually that's what happens when I am a visitor. The greenest of Strathclyde from the air, the arched glass of the roof at the station in Glasgow, the rows and rows of wine and spirits sold in the grocery store, the vast size of the Boots the Chemist (one of the smaller ones), the bird droppings on the platform at Edinburgh, the warmth of the sun on my skin, the birds singing in the gardens as I walked to University this morning (I walked to work!), the drunk man sat at the traffic lights on a patch of grass, the views of Blackford Hill and Arthur´s Seat sprinkled with yellow gorse blossoms, the single black lady walking along the street at 12.20am, the milk van delivering milk as I walked back to my guesthouse and the hand-painted cornice as I lie on my bed and look up... I am reminded now of the home that I grew up in.

It is nice to be here. It is different and familiar. But, is it home?

Kate world traveller

Hehe .. I am off on trips again, and this time venturing onto unknown soil.

Edinburgh for lab work in April (Óli too.. he is going to buy bagpipes!) and then .. woohoo.. Vancouver, via Montreal.

Packing bags.. packing sand and tephra .. dreaming.

Book Swapping in Iceland

A new local community is beginning for book swapping in Iceland. It is open to residents and visitors alike and is easy to use. You can meet people to exchange books or you can post them to another book swapper in Iceland. Books can be of any language.

I like this idea. It is environmentally friendly as well as economical and potentially sociable. Have a look and contact Iceland Bookswap if you want to register. It costs nothing and all you need to start is an email account and one spare book.

Bellydance show

My bellydance class are performing at the basement of the National Theatre on Friday. Today I saw some of the more experienced dancers practising and they are really fun to watch. Maher Kishk will also be performing. Hope you can make it.

Book swap

There is something about books that oozes comfort, particularly old, slightly bent at the edges books. I like the smell of a dusty old bookshop. It reminds me, I think, of the study in my parent's house, full of books and musical instruments, bits of computers and stacks of paper dating back to the year dot. There was always the aim to organise everything and behind the piles there are organised bookshelves which are now almost impossible to reach. There is usually a small zone somewhere not too far from the door and about a metre in diameter in which you can stand to survey the scene. Mum and Dad please don't take offence ... I love the room!

I have often, like so many ex-booksellers and bookworms, dreamt of having my own little bookshop where you can take a seat and grab a book and a coffee and wile away a few hours, a place where it is good to spend time, where you can get engrossed in the first few pages in a book and just have to take it home. Of course the range of massive book stores are wonderful but the more like a supermarket a bookshop becomes the less I want to go there, no matter how many books it stocks. I love little pokey places or rambling mazes of places, all shelves lined with spines of books, either second hand like Till's Bookshop near the Meadows in Edinburgh (it has a real fire inside) or new like Shakespeare and Company in Paris.

I also like to swap books with friends, share the experience of a fine book knowing it is in safe hands. I have just discovered the concept of book swapping with strangers and I am deciding if I like it or not.. Of course, it is nice passing on books and swapping them when you read something good. Also, with magazines, they can be so expensive but still girls like to look at fashion pictures or read yet more of the same articles about the same things .. make-up, men, fashion, recipes. These days I avoid fashion magazines on the whole.. they can make you feel bad. But still I do like the glamorous fashion shoots and the photography, the bright colours and the shiny pages.

Here there are less people who read books in English to swap with and I have just a few books in Icelandic .. maybe I can swap with the age ranges 5 to 12. I am enjoying trying to read one the Unfortunate Series of Events books translated into Icelandic. The next on the list after that is Hobbitinn, the Hobbit. If you live in Iceland and fancy being involved in a local english-language or multi-lingual bookswapping community get in touch with me here.

There is one café that I like which champions book swapping, and it doesn´t matter about the language of the book. Grái Kötturinn has shelves of books you can swap with .. so long as you replace the one you take with another of a similar colour and size! I have managed to go there once and found it to be a cosy little café with good hot chocolate. However, every other time I´ve passed it has had a gate across with a massive padlock keeping it locked. I´ve peered in once or twice hoping that the café of fine memories is still in business.. and yes, it looks like a normal cafe just shut for the day. So, unless everything was dropped at end of business one day and nobody has returned then I have to assume that it just has odd opening hours. There are no cobwebs or dusty windows after all. Don´t try there for an evening refreshment and book swap experiment though.

So, today I came across another the idea of internet-based book swapping sites. Two seem pretty good for English language readers.. Titletrader which is for books, DVDs and CDs and Readers United which is just books but I think looks much better and has a better range of titles. You lists books (or CDs and DVDs) that you want to swap and then you can requests others from another member. When someone requests one of your books and you send it to them you get awarded points to spend on other books on the sites. Titletrader allows you to buy points so it doesn´t matter so much if you don´t send of books, but then if you live in a town or city you could go to a secondhand book store and browse for hours instead which I think is more fun. Readers United awards you points for joining and listing books so you can request one book straight away. It seems to have a better postage system too.

However, can you really do this? Send your books off into the great big world unaccompanied? I love hoarding books and its only the thought of carrying them up another long set of stairs or moving them to another country (again) that tempts me to send them away on their adventure. And the tax on books in Iceland which makes them into a major investment. Book Crossing looks interesting .. a cross between geocaching and book swapping, you can track your swapped books around the world. I like this idea, it would keep me in contact with my dear books and i wouldn´t feel like I am sending them away into the unknown.

Well, anyone I am trying Titletrader for now and so far this week have received four requests for my books so when the post office opens on Tuesday after the Easter holidays I am going to be sending parcels to Bulgaria, Portugal, Quebec and England. Farewell dear books, I enjoyed your time with me.. find good homes now.

Spring lambs

Sheep and lamb bottoms, Fljótsdalur at the end of last summer.

Lambs and sheep make the Icelandic and Scottish news today. The first lambs in Iceland were born in the last week in the south of Iceland and red-sheep have been spotted near Bathgate in Scotland. We are getting ready for Easter here now, with thoughts of a trip to the country, chocolate eggs, daffodils which are still not blossoming and roast lamb or perhaps a little chicken.