Missing Home...

We are almost finished cataloguing the Margaret Tait papers... only a couple of boxes to go now.

The last two boxes have been a treasure of unpublished poems and other pieces of writing. There are many gems but this excerpt taken from one handwritten page touched us today.

'I miss Buttquoy. I miss the sun streaming in.
I miss its openness, its airy spaces.
I miss the freedom of the staircase
It had a good feeling in it      not grand, not poky.
The grates were well placed in relation to the doors.
Everything there was pretty well right, in size and placing-
Good fireplaces, where a coal or peat fire heated the room
I liked the height of the rooms, I miss that too.'


(The Tait family home, Buttquoy house was vacated by Tait in 1975. Her colour film, Place Of Work, as well as a black and white companion piece Tailpiece, were filmed in the house in the last few months before her departure.)

We're Having a Bad Side-Bar Day...

Many apologies for the horrific look of our blog today... we are trying to fix it but our IT knowledge is not exceptional.

Blogger! Why have you forsaken us???

Spare a thought...

If ever you have been worried about your luggage going missing when on your holidays, spare a thought for this gentleman in 1900:

He and the other passengers certainly had a lucky escape...here's an extract from the Orcadian 28th April 1900:

And here's a photograph of the wreck:

As I said before, a lucky escape...but everyone was safely evacuated from the steamship.

One lady said:

You'll be pleased to know that our distressed luggage bereft gentleman did not get his luggage back, but did get compensation in the end.

Archive References: SC11/5/1900/21; Orcadian Newspaper April 28 1900; Photos TK410 & TK2983

One Feels Like Chicken Tonight...

Poor old royals, they must be feeling really ignored poor dears. William wed Kate in a modest little ceremony, barely attended; the Queen's diamond jubilee slipped by with nary a party popper and would it have killed us to let them join in a little with all that Olympics hoop-la?

I do hope that there is something done to mark our Queen's coronation which was 60 years ago today. We shall be eating coronation chicken sandwiches whilst enacting pivotal fight scenes from coronation street but we are very loyal subjects so don't put pressure on yourselves.

These photos of the event, taken by Margaret Tait, were found in the box of her papers currently being catalogued:

As you can see, Tait has noted that the coronation happened on the same day that Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay conquered Mount Everest. This is not strictly true; the summit was reached on the 29th of May 1953 but the news only reached London on the morning of the coronation.