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.

'Be A Womanly Woman Under All Circumstances.'

Today, in 1920, the 19th amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing suffrage for women, hoorah!

6 years later, on the 18th of August 1926, an announcement appeared in the Orkney Herald for  the release of 'Women: An Inquiry', an essay exploring gender differences by Willa Muir, wife of  Orcadian poet Edwin Muir. Hoorah!

Willa Muir in 1967 - negative no. L818/2

On the 18th of August 2012, the archive staff found this terrifying piece in the 1905 Orcadian entitled '2s Every Girl Should Learn'

Thank goodness the female archive staff were not living in 1905, for we can admit to very few of these attributes. We do respect old age, (as an archive we revere it), and we sweep away some of the cobwebs and we of course read only the best of books (Does Games of Thrones count?) and steer away from trashy literature (Does Game of Thrones count?)

But we are not taking active exercise for anyone.