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.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Can't make it along the street for a chat? Leave us a comment instead, we love hearing from you.