Features
Womanly Wiles by I Venus
03/09/2010 08:25:00
Surviving the summer recess
TWO weeks ago, or thereby, the kids went back to school. Yahoo, shouted thousands of mums, following up with a huge sigh of relief - not that they don't love the little darlings, but six weeks of unadulterated small-children-company can have its drawbacks.
A Now and Again Note from Andrew Appleby
27/08/2010 08:35:00
The Grimeston Girlie?
It was in 1976, just after moving to Orkney, that I stumbled across her. I had ventured from my abode, The Old Chicken House in Grimeston, and wandered across the Whins.
Eva Donald - Island life in a bygone era
06/08/2010 08:20:00
Stronsay fishing industry part 18
continued from last week
All households had a meal girnel; a wooden chest, oblong in shape, about six feet long by three feet wide, divided into two sections, oatmeal (made from oats) at one end and beremeal at the other.
Womanly Wiles by I Venus
06/08/2010 08:14:00
Airline food takes the biscuit
What is it about air travel that takes away your appetite? I think it's something to do with today's fast food culture and polystyrene cups and plates.
A few years ago I wrote a short article for The Lady magazine (not a namby-pamby publication at all) bemoaning the fact that breakfasts on aircraft over the years had deteriorated from hot meals with real cutlery to a bag with a croissant filled with ham or cheese. I called the story Breakfast in the Air.
I waxed lyrical about past airline breakfasts of sausage, bacon, scrambled egg, bread roll; and tiny oatcakes with custom-built rounds of cheese to fit the biscuits; with fruit in a dish and a glass of orange juice. It was well worth the journey just to eat the breakfast.
Eva Donald - Island life in a bygone era
30/07/2010 08:24:00
Stronsay fishing industry part 17
Each room in the farmhouse had a fireplace, but bedroom ones were only
lit if the cold was extreme or if someone was ill. Beds were made of
wood with wooden slats, a mattress on top, under blanket, sheets,
blankets and a quilt. Large families often slept four children to a bed
heated with a round stone from the beach nine to ten inches in diameter
or a cylinder shaped earthenware bottle about ten inches long, six
inches high, referred to as a 'pig' because of the shape. Stones were
warmed in the oven and pigs filled with hot water.
A Now and Again Note from Andrew Appleby
23/07/2010 08:35:00
Shedding light on ancient days
During the last digging season at the Ness of Brodgar excavations, the Orkney Archaeology Society was able to establish a wee shop to sell publications, replica ancient pots, T-shirts and the like to help fund Orkney's Archaeology. The shop was similar to a horsebox and was quite good, but limited in its scope to really make the best of our wonderful opportunity. We did, however raise a goodly sum to put back into several projects and especially our Daphne Lorimer Student Bursary Fund. We sold Lottery Tickets by the hundred. We sold many copies of Julie Gibson and Frank Bradford's book, Rising Tides. We had huge interest in our replica prehistoric pottery and flints, along with ceramic brooches and other interesting artefacts.
Health Matters A personal view from the chair of NHS Orkney John Ross Scott
23/07/2010 08:32:00
Heading for recovery
Like many other folk, I left last month's health board meeting with a sense of hope that we were heading in the right direction. The assessment of the financial outlook could not have been clearer or foreboding and yet everyone there on the day showed a real sense of ownership as we set out our recovery plans to deliver better health, better care and make better use of our resources.
Liz Ashworth on Food
16/07/2010 08:33:00
The Orcadian network
It is often said that no matter where you go in the world, there has always been an Orcadian there before you. However, from my experience, there is usually one beside you.
Are you being heard? by Frazer Campbell
08/07/2010 08:50:00
Great day
Monday, June 21 was a great day! Advocacy Orkney, along with 8 other
organisations, signed the See Me Pledge, a commitment to challenging the
stigma and discrimination that is often attached to people with mental
health issues. There are statistics that one in four people will have a
mental health issue at some point in their life, that's a lot of people.
Loose Talk by Les Cowan
08/07/2010 08:47:00
Pens, paper and Facebook friends
Anyone who hasn't spent the last thirty years in outer space or marooned on Love Island knows we're living in the Information Age. Whatever there is to know about anything - we now know more of it than anyone else in history - with all that information instantly available. My random web searches on Begonia, Beatles and Barbecue produced 1,820,000, 54,300,000 and 36,700,000 hits respectively in about 0.2 seconds each. In the case of any of them I could probably grown old and die before reading a tenth of it. So you would probably think that anything that could possibly count as information is bound to be in more plentiful supply than ever before. Wrong. I've recently stumbled on something truly informative that used to be part of almost everybody's life but has now almost entirely disappeared. It's not the secret knowledge of the druids or even the contents of latin volumes nobody can read any more. It's the humble, hand written, personal letter.