The Original Flat Pack Furniture!

Even further afield now - a couple of days in Orkney. We went expecting the worst weatherwise and were rewarded with days of glorious sunshine.

So first day and it has to be Skara Brae - the best preserved neolithic village remains in the world, complete with their original stone furnishings. There is virtually no wood on Orkney so it would be logical to create furniture out of the most abundent raw material - stone.

This is a reconstruction. The original remains are too fragile for the number of visitors they get so you can no longer enter them. Just love that stone dresser!

All the houses have an identical layout. Individuality was not a quality prized by this culture.

And here is the real thing. The square in the centre was for the fire and the two smaller "boxes" in front of the dresser were for soaking limpets for fish bait. The rectangular shape on the right is a box bed. It would have been filled with soft materials and animal hides for comfort.