Shows Over

Here we are, the week after the Shows and the weather already thinks it is winter. Our feelings could perhaps be summed up by this Giddy Limit strip by Alex Leonard.

No.207. The Orcadian 13th August 2009   http://www.giddy-limit.com/Year4Archive/no.207.html

But with a week to go before the schools go back we are determined to squeeze ever last drop of fun out of the summer, so even if the weather is less than sunny you'll still get a warm welcome at the library. 

There is still time to complete  the Mythical Maze Summer Reading Challenge, so get reading and come along to the library to exchange your returned books for stickers, a bookmark, wristband and fortune teller. All those who complete the challenge will also get an invite to our award event, which will take place in Kirkwall library on Saturday 23rd August with special guest, local writer and storyteller Fran Flett Hollinrake, and a presentation of certificates and medals. 

We also still have our holiday reading display up, with books to keep you and your little ones entertained, whatever the weather.

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.