Crying for County Show Cakes

We like cakes and we like the County Show.




Imagine our delight therefore, when we found a copy of James Flett & Sons' bakery production list for the 1979 show.




We are very noble at Orkney Archive and, although it is every member of staff's dearest wish to spend tomorrow whirling about in a tea-cup, drunk, with cream and jam all over our faces, in the company of tractors, two of us will be manning the archive desk.




Just... manning the desk. With no cakes. No booze. No tea cups. No tractors. Just crying.


We may have complained about this before...




Orkney Archive Reference D122/6/1

County Show Woe

We are pretty good to our customers really. While the rest of the county is drunk and 'tasting' cakes in Bignold park, we valiantly maintain our posts at the archive desk just in case someone gets tired of a field full of home-brew, home-bakes and waltzers.

It is County Show day again in Orkney and, whilst we would normally be crying into our documents because we're not eating a cake next to a pony, we feel slightly less short-changed today. Because it is raining. Lots.

The same thing happened in 1950:

 

 

 

Psssst, winter is coming...

Winter Is Coming...

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The Orkney County Show is a wonderful thing. Taking place at the beginning of August each year, it is usually a balmy delight of farmyard animals, fairground rides, stalls brimming with local produce and, most importantly, home bakes. Yet there is always a cold shadow to be felt behind the warm joys of craft tents, crab - meat baps, 'refreshed' teenagers and wee lasses on their be-ribboned ponies..
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If you listen closely enough you can hear the whispers: 'County Show... then winter!'.

"Rubbish" You think to yourself every single year as you eat your third ice-cream and decide which of the roosters looks most psychopathic. "There's at least six weeks left of Summer time. My washing's out and everything. I'm only wearing one fleece for Pete's sake!".

And yet every year the old wives are proven right. The day after County show always has a nip in the air and a distinctly autumnal smell. It is September now and the sunny show season is but a distant memory.

Winter is coming...

Bagsy we're Ned Stark.

"County Show, then it's winter......"

There are cars parked all over the pavements and people are talking about "the dark nights drawing in". It must be County Show day.

Sadly, for the staff here, Orkney Library and Archive is open today and so we shall not be propping up the bar in the beer tent, munching on homebakes, vomiting on fairground rides or cooing at cute ponies. Life is cruel.

If any of you tire of having a brilliant time, then we hold County Show catalogues from 1936-1955 and 1965-1982 which you can read. You can also relive County Shows of yore by consulting our complete collection of both The Orcadian and the Orkney Herald.

Behold below two photos from our County Show file. First of all, an ace Shetland pony and, second of all, a tiny child in a kilt on a pony. You can find these images filed under 630, which is the dewey decimal number for 'almost unreasonably cute.'

Other dewey categories we use include 'dwindling chances', 'provocative foliage', ' butchers who are not averse to Eastenders', 'landscapes captured at prescisely 5.15pm' and 'ayyyye, but that's no the Orcadian way...'