Fair Isle: the social life
Sep. 9th, 2010 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThe excuse for our trip to Fair Isle was to celebrate the publication of Ann Cleeves' book Blue Lightning and the completion of her quartet of novels about Shetland. This week Blue Lightning came out in paperback. That makes me feel a long time must have passed: not quite as long as you'd think, since the hardback was actually published in February - but even the hardiest of us didn't contemplate a trip to Fair Isle in February!
The launch party was only one of the social events arranged for the visitors to the island. On Saturday evening we (all the guests and our various hosts) were invited to the Hall for a slide show - local photographer Dave Wheeler had put together a collection of photographs of Fair Isle in the 1970s, when Ann had first gone there.
The pictures were interesting enough in themselves, but even more interesting was looking at them in the company of islanders of all ages. The 1970s seem quite recent to me, but it's over a generation ago; we were looking at old family photographs with the family. The adults pointed out people and events they recognised, but even the children could identify the crofts by name. Afterwards, I commented on this to Ann: it's not 'Jimmy's house' but 'Busta' or 'Kennaby'. She pointed out that far from houses being identified by their owners, people would be identified by where they lived: one of the island's several Jimmys would be identified as 'Busta Jimmy'.
One set of photographs felt older, as if they'd come from a much more distant past. Nowadays most of the island is grazed by sheep, but in the 70s more of it was used for crops, and every last patch of grazing had to be used. That includes the four hectares of grassland on Sheep Rock:
- the rocky mound on the right of the photo, connected to the island only by a narrow isthmus, much too precipitous for the sheep to be driven across. So they were taken out to the rock in spring, and brought home again for the winter, by boat, and hoist onto the rock with ropes (here's one of Dave's photos). Truly, people are amazing.
Sunday's party for Blue Lightning was an even grander affair: everyone on the island was at the Hall (including a group of ladies who had booked into their Bed & Breakfast because they were keen knitters, and were a little embarrassed to find themselves at a party: but their host had told them they had to come, there'd be nowhere else to eat tonight. There was plenty to eat at the party: heaps of smoked salmon and mussels, great vats of salad, bannocks spread with reestit mutton, and there was music from Chris Stout and others...
Here's Dave Wheeler's photoset of the evening; and here's David Robinson's description of the party (published in The Scotsman last weekend, which is why it's about time I wrote this post).
Both nights, we left the party somewhere between ten and eleven, and walked home to the South Light in the last of the twilight, the white cottages luminous on the dark hillsides.
The launch party was only one of the social events arranged for the visitors to the island. On Saturday evening we (all the guests and our various hosts) were invited to the Hall for a slide show - local photographer Dave Wheeler had put together a collection of photographs of Fair Isle in the 1970s, when Ann had first gone there.
The pictures were interesting enough in themselves, but even more interesting was looking at them in the company of islanders of all ages. The 1970s seem quite recent to me, but it's over a generation ago; we were looking at old family photographs with the family. The adults pointed out people and events they recognised, but even the children could identify the crofts by name. Afterwards, I commented on this to Ann: it's not 'Jimmy's house' but 'Busta' or 'Kennaby'. She pointed out that far from houses being identified by their owners, people would be identified by where they lived: one of the island's several Jimmys would be identified as 'Busta Jimmy'.
One set of photographs felt older, as if they'd come from a much more distant past. Nowadays most of the island is grazed by sheep, but in the 70s more of it was used for crops, and every last patch of grazing had to be used. That includes the four hectares of grassland on Sheep Rock:
- the rocky mound on the right of the photo, connected to the island only by a narrow isthmus, much too precipitous for the sheep to be driven across. So they were taken out to the rock in spring, and brought home again for the winter, by boat, and hoist onto the rock with ropes (here's one of Dave's photos). Truly, people are amazing.
Sunday's party for Blue Lightning was an even grander affair: everyone on the island was at the Hall (including a group of ladies who had booked into their Bed & Breakfast because they were keen knitters, and were a little embarrassed to find themselves at a party: but their host had told them they had to come, there'd be nowhere else to eat tonight. There was plenty to eat at the party: heaps of smoked salmon and mussels, great vats of salad, bannocks spread with reestit mutton, and there was music from Chris Stout and others...
Here's Dave Wheeler's photoset of the evening; and here's David Robinson's description of the party (published in The Scotsman last weekend, which is why it's about time I wrote this post).
Both nights, we left the party somewhere between ten and eleven, and walked home to the South Light in the last of the twilight, the white cottages luminous on the dark hillsides.
