Saturday, 26 January 2013

Dear Rest of The World, Is it Tea-time yet?

Orkney is completely connected and global nowadays. We have internet-shopping, the UHI, hats, everything; but this was not always the case.

Reading copies of the John O'Groats Journal, a Caithness paper, from the 1850s highlights how remote the Northern Isles used to be. The news updates from Orkney and Shetland are very occasional, the regularity of the mail service to the isles is referred to as 'a joke' and on the 18th of July 1851, the Stromness correspondent asked WHAT THE TIME WAS...

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3 comments:

  1. Robin30 January 2013 at 12:21

    Not to be too serious about it, but it may have been because GMT was only just getting established: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_time)

    So I'll let the people of the past off for their ridiculousness this time. This time...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stromness Library2 February 2013 at 13:08

    It must of course have been Kirkwall folk working to the wrong time ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dusty2 February 2013 at 14:23

    Oooh! The gloves are off now...

    ReplyDelete

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