Show Season

Here we are in August already, and in the words of George Mackay Brown*, 'The "Show Season" is on us once more. How quickly the cycle of the year turns!'.

Stromness Library will be closed on Thursday 7th August for the annual public holiday for the Dounby Show. As ever the hope is that the weather will be kind. 

Writing forty years ago, in The Orcadian , George Mackay Brown was both looking forward to the delights of 'The Show Season' and reflecting on memories of Dounby Shows past:

...may the Dounby Show be blessed this year with sunshine and tumultuous crowds. Here, if anywhere, it is possible to see, gathered into one small field, a swatch of the typical Orkney - laird, merchant, farmer, seaman, countrywoman, student, bairn...

If I try to think of any one happy Dounby Show out of the past, it is almost impossible, for all those August days unfold like a single fan covered with gay patterns. Even when the gate is finally closed in the show park, and the patient beasts are loaded for home, the day keeps an afterglow. 

Whatever the weather may bring on Thursday we hope your day out at the Dounby Show is full of happy memories.



* quotes from George Mackay Brown, 'The Show Season, 8.8.1974' in Letters from Hamnavoe, 2002,Steve Savage Publishers Ltd, p.166. 

May holiday

Stromness Library will be closed on Monday 5th May due to the public holiday. We'll leave you with a thought on locked libraries from Virginia Woolf.

https://www.facebook.com/grammarly/photos/a.158139670871698.33824.139729956046003/702201189798874/?type=1&theater

Don't worry we'll be open again as usual on Tuesday 6th May from 2pm-7pm.

It's Show Time!

With Orkney's agricultural show season under way our thoughts turn to next Thursday's Dounby Show.

While those entering livestock are busy washing, grooming, and going through their paces in preparation for the big day, there is still time to prepare your entries for the 115th West Mainland Flower, Produce & Industrial Show.

Pick up a schedule from one of the West Mainland country shops and you will find eight sections with classes for everything from pot plants to photographs -including  a junior section for children, divided into four age groups.

The schedule includes recipes for the items in the baking and confectionery classes - or you can use your own tried and tested ones. For those seeking last minute inspiration or tips then we have lots of baking and craft books in the library which could help you create the winning entry. We suspect that the knitting section may well feature work from some of our Yap and Yarn group.

The competition is open to all who permanently reside in the West Mainland, and exhibits can be entered at The Dounby Centre between 10am and 12.30pm on Wednesday 7th August or between 8pm-9pm on Tuesday 6th. Membership tickets, which include the entry fee and admission, cost £2 for adults and 50p for juniors.

The exhibits can be viewed by the public between 7pm -9pm on Wednesday 7th, and from 10am -5pm on Thursday 8th August. So if you're at the Dounby Show don't forget to take a trip along the road to The Dounby Centre as well. If you can't make it to Dounby you can get a taste of the even from the show's facebook page.

Good luck to all competitors next Thursday,  and remember both Kirkwall and Stromness libraries will be closed that day so the staff can enjoy the show too. We're already looking forward to catching up with friends and enjoying  our usual show-day treats of lunch in the pavilion and a 99 ice cream :-)

Photo of vegetable section from the Show's Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=242677019092453&set=pb.242518355774986.-2207520000.1375528606.&type=3&theater

Easter Daffodils

The sun is shining on Stromness this Easter Saturday morning, and on our way into the library we noticed, among the bright oranges and purples of the crocuses, the first golden daffodils unfolding to greet the spring.

For, despite the cold, spring is here (don't forget to put your clocks forward tonight as we enter British Summer Time) though for many places in the south tomorrow's Easter egg rolling will be complicated by lying snow.

In view of the mixture of weather and season it seemed appropriate to share the first stanza of George Mackay Brown's poem 'Daffodil Time'

1 Daffodils

Ho, Mistress Daffodil, said Ikey (tinker)
Where have you been all winter?
There was snow in the ditches last night
And here you are.
Did you light your lamp in that blizzard?

When Ikey came back
Next day, with his pack, from windy Njalsay
The yellow hosts
Were cheering and dancing all the way to the inn.          

Both Stromness and Kirkwall  libraries will be closed on Monday 1st April for the Easter Monday public holiday. We wish all our readers a day full of warm spring sunshine and golden daffodils.

 

 

 

Jubilee Celebrations

Time to remind you that the Stromness Library  will be closed on Tuesday 5th June due to the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Celebrations.

But never fear, for the good folk of Stromness have planned lots of fun things to fill the day, and help you to celebrate in right Royal style.

At 11am there will be a Scavenger Hunt for all ages, followed by a tea party fit for a Queen from 12 noon until 2pm. Then in the afternoon there will be two children's parties, the first from 2.30pm-3.30pm for children in nursery - primary 2 , and a second from 3.30pm-5pm for children in primary 3 - Primary 7.

All events will be in the Stromness Town Hall and folk are encouraged to wear a splash of red, white or blue for fun.

Tea, cake and a scavenger hunt? How could we resist?!

Easter in Stromness

The library will be closed on Monday (9th April) for the Easter Monday public holiday - so pop along today for your holiday-weekend reading.

With a glut of chocolate eggs filling the shops straight after the New Year, and hot-cross buns seemingly available all year round, it seems traditional festive celebrations around Easter have become just another opportunity for consumption rather than a focus for communal  participation.

Looking for evidence of local Easter traditions we turn to George Mackay Brown, who writes in Letters from Hamnavoe of the practice of his childhood, when on 'the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday' the children of Stromness 'with baskets and tin cans, used to range about the countryside after "pace eggs"'. GMB tells us:

        'It was impossible to cover the whole parish of Stromness - Innertoon, Ootertoon, Quholm, Cairston, Kirbister, the Loons. You had to keep to one district; and then only visit farms where there were knidly women and tame dogs. You might come home with anything from six to a dozen eggs in your an, and all unbroken, if there was no fighting or bullying or horseplay on the road'

The children took their treasures home where 'the eggs were boiled, and coloured in various hues; and on the Saturday or Sunday there was a feast of "pace eggs" and spicy hot cross buns'.

GMB goes on to highlight the symbolism of the Easter 'pace eggs' as part of:

' a very ancient ceremony of gifts, with traditions going back further that Christianity, and seemingly universal in the ancient world. The egg is never so plentiful as at this time of year; and to the first tribes of the world it symbolised the life of springtime when the apparently inert egg brike open to reveal a new bird.'

This symbolism is for GMB alive and well in the traditions of his Stromness childhood where the universal becomes local and personal:

' So when the peedie boys and lasses of Stromness ranged through the parish for "pace eggs", what the kindly farm wives gave them was an Easter gift; a pledge that winter was at last over, and that soon the earth would be full of the plentitude of summer - young beasts, and birds, and growing oats - and the tide of ripeness would not stop till harvest. And after that there would be food enough in barn and cupboard to last through the darkness of another winter. Life was an endless celebration of death-and-renewal, darkness-and-light, barrenness-and-fruition...'

We wish you all a weekend of celebration, whether your eggs are hard boiled and decorated or made of yummy chocolate, may you enjoy their symbolic promise of new life and renewal.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas ...

and a Happy New Year!

We close for the holidays at 5pm on Friday 23rd December and re-open at 2pm on Wednesday 4th January 2012. So you have a few days yet to come in and stock up with holiday reading.

With two days of the Book Amnesty remaining there is still time to return those poor overdue library books to their place on the shelves - though the competition for the longest overdue return is hotting up, with a book returned to Kirkwall Library which a due date of 18th February 1956. Can anyone beat that we wonder?!

Dounby Show

It's show season again and we are crossing our fingers that the sun will shine and the rain stay away all week. Thursday 11th August is the Dounby Show which is celebrated by a local public holiday, so both the Stromness Library and Orkney Library and Archive in Kirkwall will be closed for the day.

Instead of stamping books we'll be donning our sunhats and enjoying a day out among the livestock and stalls. This year, in addition to the usual delights of the Sheep Sheering Competition, the Highland Dancing Demonstration and of course the refreshments in the Pavilion, we are promised the Scottish Terrier Racing Team, a Quad Bike Agility Challenge and Award-Winning Chainsaw Creations!

If you would like to find out more about the history of the show, and the Orkney West Mainland Agricultural Society which runs it, then you may like to come and have a look at our copy of Showyard on the Heather by George T. Wylie. which tells of the show's development from the first "Show of Stock to be held at Dounby on Thursday 9th July 1891" to the Centenary celebrations of 1991. 

We hope you enjoy your day out at the show, just remember to pace yourself though, otherwise you could find all the excitement gets too much for you!

We'll miss you too ....

We thought we ought to alert you to the fact that, due to essential maintenance to our IT systems, we will have no internet connection tomorrow Saturday 30th April. But although you won't be able to get online, check the online library catalogue or catch up on with library goings-on via our blogs, twitter or our Facebook page, you will still be able to borrow books and browse our selection of newspapers and magazines. Apologies for the disruption to our normal service which will resume on Tuesday 3rd May.

"Tuesday?!" I hear you cry, well the other piece of bad news I must impart is that, for the second week in a row, Monday is a public holiday and so we will be closed. Although I know you will miss us, it does give you an extra day to recover from the Royal Wedding celebrations - a trip up the hill to wash your face in the May Day dew might be just the thing!