Serena! He's Playing Doubles With Serena!

We usually try to shoe-horn an Andy Murray post in during Wimbledon and worried that it would have to be a poignant lament full of hip-based puns.




But! He's back on the doubles court, not only with Pierre-Hugues Herbert but we've just heard it confirmed he's playing mixed doubles with Serena flippin' Williams!




We warded off our hysteria the only way we know how. We looked out archives with a tenuous link to the momentous occasion:

A plan for DOUBLE cottages for married men, to be built in pairs back to back. Taken from the Lieutenant General Sir Frederick William Traill Burroughs Papers Orkney Archive Reference D19/9/11.



A DOUBLE exposure of Orcadian painter Sylvia Wishart. Orkney Archive Reference D136/47/6.

A story about a DOUBLE set of teeth belonging to John Muir, the Papdale millar. Orkney Archive reference D31/1/3/11.

'They dug up a jaw full of teeth, but all the teeth were double, none of them single. Mr Baikie of Tankerness was there when the jaw was discovered. He said 'this is remarkable; you might look around the world and not find a similar thing'. My Great Grandfather heard him, and said ''Deed Sir, you needna' look that far' Then he opened his mouth and showed Mr Baikie that he himself had complete sets of teeth, but all of them double teeth.

We shall be celebrating this tip-top sports pairing by singing these lyrics to the tune of West Side Story's Maria: Ser-e-na! He's playing doubles with Ser-e-na! and hope that, in turn, Andy and Serena will do the right thing and end every match they play together by pinching microphones from the press box and performing this classic in the middle of the court:

Little Arrows

With the sad news that Darts legend Jocky Wilson died on Saturday I thought we'd look back at his first visit to Orkney (he visited, professionally anyway, twice).

World Champion Darts player Jocky Wilson in the Queens Hotel, Kirkwall,

June 1982

Jocky, aged 32 at the time, is seen in this photograph enjoying a pint in the Queens Hotel, Kirkwall. He was booked to play 20 local darts players for which he was to receive the handsome sum of £400. After the event Jocky told a local reporter that he had been a bit disappointed with his form on the night as he lost the first two games, but he did manage to beat the other eighteen!

For you statisticians out there during the whole event Jocky scored six 180s, sixteen 140s, eight 100 plus and sixty 100s.

Jocky is proudly showing his teeth in this photograph, every one of them false. Famously he had lost all his teeth by the age of 28 due to a combination of a love of sweets and a lack of brushing (take heed kids!) so when he won the World Championship he spent £1200 of his winnings getting some new ones made. He told a local reporter, however, that he removed them when he was playing darts because "the vodkas and coke don't taste right with them in".