Homecoming

Ruth Anthea Emslie

2002

It was the day after May Day, 2002. I awoke to largely sunny skies, across which clouds were sent a-scudding by the fresh breeze.

After a restless night, trying to squeeze my ample figure into a hotel room single bed where my wee four-legged companion was determined to join me, I set off in my laden car for Gill's Bay on the north coast of Scotland. As I made the brief journey from Thurso across the top of Caithness to join the ferry bound for St. Margaret's Hope in Orkney, excitement mounted with every second of the twenty-minute journey. Was I really going home? Was I about to embark on the final part of a journey that had taken several decades, from the time of my family leaving the islands in 1963 to the time of my returning this day? It was hard to believe, but believe it I did! In the intervening thirty-nine years, there had always been the desire to find 'my Orkney' wherever I travelled throughout Europe and in the United States, searching for the place I felt I could call 'home' one day that would remind me of the islands of my birth. I had even just spent almost three years living in West Bay, on the south coast of England, choosing it because it reminded me so much of my beloved birthplace. But it wasn't home; in the end, there was only one place that I could call 'home' and that was Orkney itself. ... (continues)