Dun­net Head ( Ceann Dùnaid ) in Caith­ness, Scot­land. The north­ern­most point on the British main­land. Lat­i­tude 58°40′21″N lon­gi­tude 03°22′31″W.

The sea is calm, dap­pled with sun­light. I’m in the dock­side “Peerie Cafe,” wait­ing for the fer­ry to Strom­ness, in Orkney. Through the win­dow, I can see a bleak head­land that is the north­ern­most point of the main­land of the Unit­ed King­dom. Clos­er to me, sheep are graz­ing on a six­ty degree slope — some­thing I’ve nev­er seen before. The timid Meri­no breed that I’m famil­iar with would nev­er do such a thing. This is the first calm meal and cof­fee that I’ve had since I left Toron­to. It’s been a pre­cip­i­tent jour­ney. Read more »

There’s a rather long list of places I con­sid­er high pri­or­i­ties to vis­it. Near the top of that list is the Orkney Islands. Thanks to some for­tu­itous cir­cum­stances, I’ll be going there at the end of this month. The prin­ci­ple expense is cov­ered, so I will now only have to deal with the loss of income while I’m gone and costs while trav­el­ling. It will mean, no doubt, a few cold nights in my back­pack­ing tent, and some cre­ative skimp­ing, but I’m quite used to that sort of thing. My step already has a jaun­ty skip to it, like my cat does in antic­i­pa­tion of tuna. I know exact­ly the feel­ing I’ll have when the plane moves out onto the run­way: I’m On the Road Again. This is when I’m hap­pi­est, when the game’s afoot, and unguess­able adven­tures lie before me. Read more »

Wel­come to the new ver­sion of PhilPaine.com. A new site and for­mat are long over­due. The old site, con­struct­ed with a now out-dat­ed pro­gram, was labour inten­sive, clut­tered, and vul­ner­a­ble to cyber-sab­o­tage. The new one cor­rects these ills. Most of the mate­r­i­al from the old site has been trans­ferred, at least in rough form, and it will all grad­u­al­ly be retro-fit­ted with graph­ics and con­sis­tent formatting. 

It’s been an exhaust­ing year, so far. I’ve been jug­gling dif­fi­cult per­son­al mat­ters, as well as try­ing to do some seri­ous work. Some­times, it has seemed to have the emo­tion­al tex­ture of this pic­ture tak­en on the Demp­ster High­way, near the bor­der of the Yukon and North­west Territories. 

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