The great HRT heist

and other ramblings

Last time I didn’t talk about my trip away, just the mammoth journey and the extraordinary (in my view) effort it takes to get anywhere. It is hard work, expensive and a massive ball ache but if it wasn’t, living here wouldn’t be the same. I actually like the inconvenience of life here, the fact we don’t have a Starbucks (tax dodgers) or McDonalds, that there is no such thing as a weekly food shop because it takes a full day to do it, that it’s difficult to get to. It limits the numbers! Don’t get me wrong we could probably do with a few more people and most certainly a more diverse community, but not loads, thank you very much.

When we first moved here, the Scottish Government had just put to bed the idea of a fixed link between Orkney and mainland, too tricksy. At the time I thought it was a shame. Two years on and I’m glad, plus I don’t think it would make any difference to our journey, we’re still a million miles away from Kent and Leeuwarden. Ok, 750 and 1100 miles respectively, but when you’re grounded on the tarmac due to fog ice (ice fog?) and looking out of the little window watching the plane getting doused with toxic anti-freeze (Dec 2022), everywhere feels like a million miles away. Never travelling in winter again. FACT.

Highland view

Rather than bore you with the ins and outs of my family meet-ups, the cheeky glass of vino I shared with my adorable uncle while everyone was sitting down for the birthday meal and coordinating catch ups with friends, instead I’m going to talk about the moment you know without a shadow of a doubt that you are a midlife woman.

I forgot my bloody HRT. Of course I did. What’s the point in having brain fog, losing words, feeling low and general exhaustion if you’re not going to leverage it by being a total idiot?

So what do you do when you forgot the one thing that keeps your brain vaguely functioning? The way I saw it I had 3 options:

1. Ride it out for 5 whole days (not an option).

2. Contact my surgery, get them to send an emergency prescription to a pharmacy here, collect prescription (ugh).

3. Sidle up to a friend and ask “have you got any oestrogen¹?”

Of course I went for option 3 and rather than looking at me like I lost my tiny mind, she saved my skin, went and got it and pumped me up.

But then, she remembered that she hadn’t had the pharmacy notification to say her new prescription was ready and she only had a few pumps left. And so began the whole clandestine affair of trying to get hold of ‘black market’ HRT through the WhatsApp groups. By the end of the day she had managed to secure the promise of an unopened bottle of oestrogen from a friend but thankfully the prescription was ready the following day meaning she kindly gave me the almost empty bottle to see me through the next few days. Honestly you’d think we were dealing crack or MDMA, I felt like Melissa McCarthy in some kind of comic parody, which wasn’t helped by the fact I slipped on a bloody manhole cover in BROAD daylight at a busy crossroads on Sunday evening and completely stacked it. I have the 9cm x 4cm shocking bruise to prove it. Stone cold sober.

Where are we living?

In the house.

Where do we want to be living?

In Colin. If you haven’t been following along for months, you won’t know that Colin is the static caravan we bought on a whim from a neighbour. He arrived with us back in May and progress has been slow.

Thankfully he is now anchored down. This involved moving him, levelling some of the ground, digging three holes for the concrete blocks, backfilling them, moving him back, jacking him up, putting in stabilisers & then chaining his undercarriage to said concrete blocks.

Poor Colin is in need of a good wash & some TLC.

We had help. Well I had nothing to do with it and E watched G do the graft. It can’t be called hard graft because the digger did the bulk of the work. There is now a general sense of relief but we still need plumbing and electricity, and gas if we ever plan to cook.

We are plumbed in at least, but not plumbed out. It would appear that attaching a water pipe is a lot easier then attaching waste pipes that then need to be linked to the house waste pipes. So far E has “ummed” and “aahed” and lifted up two massive slabs of concrete by the external waste pipe. I’m not entirely sure what this means but I think we may need to get a plumber involved at some point. The last thing I want is human waste pooling outside my kitchen window because the pipes don’t quite connect.

Electricity is easier but we are waiting on something (I don’t know what) to arrive from somewhere … I want to say Screwfix, it seems to be the place we spend most of our money. The last big purchase was a massive drill bit about half a meter long. No exaggeration.

The delivery system here falls into the category of inconvenient. Royal Mail is bloody marvellous but anything else takes a little longer on account of the fact none of the hauliers deliver to Hoy. Instead they leave it at the Streamline office in Kirkwall which is then collected daily by our island haulier (also shop owner) Groats where it is kept until the designated delivery day. I’m not entirely sure there is a designated day, but every now and then a van turns up with a package. So we wait, because driving 12 minutes to the shop is a step too far, so I’ve been told.

On Saturday I spent some time ‘fannying’ around with my office. A while back we put up thermal lining paper, but it didn’t stick and just fell off! After a good week of being dehumidified, we tried again but no, it’s falling off again and so I thought the best thing to do is just pull it off leaving me with fairly manky walls. Do I paint it or don’t I? It depends when we move into Colin but as you know, that could be in a few weeks or a few months, so maybe I should just grab one of the tins of paint and slap a coat on? That or use the blur function on my Zoom settings.

On a day like today it’s worth shiny forehead!

The sole purpose of reconfiguring the office is so I have a better view out of the window, inspired by

Hannah Ashe

’s recent office reno: Renovating never goes to plan, but I’m not convinced by the new set up and will doubtless move it all around again next week whist ignoring the ‘to paint or not to paint’ issue.

I know the jeopardy…make sure you’re tuned in for next week’s update!

Two things here on lovely Substack this week that have made me seek peace with the debacle that is the house renovation are a post from Bronwen and a reset from Mika.

In her post, Too Slow,

Bronwen Leigh

wen shared her struggle with being run-down but also feeling the need to tackle some of her bigger clearing out tasks. She talks about wanting “to be OK with just being” whilst also feeling frustrated and balancing that by doing some of the smaller things that her energy allows. Like her I think the little dopamine hits from the easy wins can really help give you a boost. And

Mika

is working through a 7 day gentle reset after returning from a holiday and seeing her daughter graduate (congrats!). On day zero before diving headlong into a reset Mika asks herself: am I ready for this? In Mika’s words:

“The gentle reset shifts your focus from what you’re not doing to asking, “What will help me feel better in the long term?” Then, we listen.”

It's a reminder that it's okay to take a step back and assess where you're at.

So this week, as most weeks it’s a little further forward but not as far as I would like.

Finally the BIG news for this week is that I created a logo. First I read

Kate Darracott

’s Why you should have a logo and branding post:

Why you should have a logo and branding

Next I commented asking for help, traditional creativity² is not really my thing. She suggested an off centre house and with that I wondered over to Canva and started looking through designs and creating the look I want. For the colours, I headed to Coolors a colour palette generator. It’s a lot of fun!

So here we have it, my logo, for now!

 "Life doesn't end with menopause; it's the beginning of a new adventure. Strap in and enjoy the ride!"

— Dame Helen Mirren

Take care

Han 🌱

PS. I have a microphone, but it’s not plugged in very well here and the acoustics in the room are quite a bit off.

1. Oestrogel pump pack

2. Traditional creativity as I see it is the art & design, the drawing, the sewing pattern design, the woodworking and weaving, writing. I am creative at solving problems, finding and rectifying the snags and finding holes in systems and processes.