Cheesey Does It

It is, as I am sure you are all aware, World Milk Day today. Up here, the supermarkets stock delicious local milks, creams and cheeses and the staff here are eager to support our local dairy and farmers. Why, only today, we forced down several tubs of local ice-cream in various flavours. 'Twas our citizenly duty and a tribute to World Milk Day...and it was hot... and ice-cream is quite nice...






Cheeses drying in Flotta, 1945



A woman using a plout kirn, Birsay.



Butter making class with Miss Boyd, Burray



Woman. making butter, Birsay

Cheese and butter making class at Grimness school, South Ronaldsay.



A plethora of cheeses

Come Back Sun! (Whatever we did or said, we're SORRY!)

The only way to describe the weather in Kirkwall today is the noise "UUUUUUUUURRRRRRGGGGHHHH!"

How wet, how cold, how windy, and dark. Not even the reappearance of our flock of waxwings outside the window can lift our soggy, water-logged hearts.

Thank goodness for Stromness library's wonderful advent calendar then which has been filling our days with cosy, Christmas cheer and reminding us of classic children's serials such as The Box Of Delights and The Children of Greene Knowe.

We therefore humbly remind you dear readers of the1988 BBC adaptation of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe which is the final member of the holy trinity of Children's Christmas shows.


We don't have anything to do with this C. S. Lewis classic in the archive but we do have the screenplay of Margaret Tait and Peter Hollander's documentary of Perugia entitled The Lion, The Griffin and The Kangaroo as well as some lovely snapshots taken by Margaret Tait when she was living in Italy.

Screenplay ref: D97/9/6, Photographs ref: D97/29/14

Hello, You Fool, I Love You!

This morning, a strange yellow light was detected over the town of Kirkwall. The light had a definite warming quality to it and was all-pervading; penetrating every window, cracks around front doors and the gaps between curtains.

Citizens were alarmed until one of the older folk chuckled wisely and said 'It's chist the sun! Do you no mind the sun?' Ah... the sun, welcome back old friend, we have missed you. We're a bit annoyed at your tardyness, if we're honest, but better late than never I suppose.

Here are some things from our collection which remind us of you. Wait... don't go... come back! We didn't mean to scare you!

A Rousay Picnic, c.1950.

Magnus Spence's notebook on Sun Worship in Orkney D32/3/20

Stromness Swimming Club, 1958

Kirkwall Swimming Gala in the basin.

The Sun newspaper's ridiculous take on Margaret Tait making Blue Black Permanent.





Summer, summer, sum-mer time...

The weather today makes yesterday's thunder storm seem very far away. The sun is shining and Kirkwall's streets are filled with tourists and children on holiday from school. If I was The Fresh Prince then I would be advising you to adjust the base and let the alpine blast, pop in my CD and let me run a rhyme and put your car on cruise and lay back 'cause this is Summertime. But I am an archives assistant, so I shall talk about that instead.

It is finally getting summer-busy in the archive. People have been queueing to use the microfilms and the staff have been scurrying to and fro in the searchroom.

As is usual in summer time, it is mainly family historians who have been visiting. We have therefore worn a path through the carpet between the Old Parish Register microfilms and the Census Transcriptions as these are the two basic genealogy tools which we pull out as soon as somebody approaches the desk and says   "Hello, I'm here in search of my Orcadian roots."

The book pictured above is technically a library acquisition but we get a copy for the Orkney Room. It is the new hard backed catalogue for the Pier Arts Centre and is beautifully illustrated with full page images of the gallery's  diverse collection.

Margaret Gardiner's original gift to Orkney of works by mainly St Ives artists like Ben Nicolson, Peter Lanyon and Barbara Hepworth begins the book. This collection is followed by some more recently acquired works by Ian Hamilton Finlay, Olafur Eliasson, Douglas Gordon, Anish Kapoor and others.

The last section of the book concentrates on Orkney artists. These are Former Her Majesty's Painter and Limner in Scotland, Stanley Cursiter, the marvellous landscape artist Bet Low, North Ronaldsay sculptor Ian Scott, Film maker Margaret Tait and the recently deceased Sylvia Wishart.

It really is a lovely book.

We hold collections of Stanley Cursitor's papers in the archive as well as those of Margaret Tait and there are two bronze cast busts by Ian Scott in the Orkney Room. They are of Stanley Cursitor himself and Orcadian novelist and poet George Mackay Brown.

                                                                  

We only put tinsel on George at Christmas time, we promise.

Yeah!!!!!!!

At long last, the sun has re-appeared and we can see our colleagues' faces once more. There were a couple of days last week that literally didn't ever get light and it felt like we were all doing the night-shift.

In fact, we are a little giddy with this unexpected sun light and some mirth has been experienced despite some of us having to do some quite complicated sums to work out the volume of archives that we hold.

Working out statistics is an important part of archive work. We calculate visitor statistics, photocopying statistics, spatial statistics, volume of requests per customer, type of archive requested, daily requests, monthly requests, yearly requests etc. etc. etc. Consequently, administration is also a large part of the job.

22nd April 2009 Sun sun sun sun sun sun !

Not many customers this morning as the weather is so glorious. To celebrate this sunny day, we are selecting summery books from the collection in the Orkney Room and putting them on display. Choices include Margaret Tait’s ‘The Grassy Stories’ and ‘The Sun’s Net’, a collection of stories by George Mackay Brown.

The Orkney Room contains books about Orkney, written in Orkney and/or written by Orcadians; both fiction and non-fiction. It also includes books on Shetland, the Faroes and Iceland. So really, it is a sort of Northern Isles room with a bit of Caithness and Canada thrown in.

My one enquiry today has been from a member of staff wondering what the names of the main roads in Burray village are. We got out some Council road plans but none were labelled. They must surely have official names? We found a reference to Blinkbonny road in a document but that was all.

I may have to refer to the County Road Committee minutes…