Stromness Dragon

We at the new Dragon’s lair would like to wish all you dear bloggers and commentators a very Happy New Year, and the same to all your cats, dogs, otters, horses, ducks, PUs, sheep, goats, families and any others I have forgotten! May 2009 bring us many hours of blogging fun!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Tags: Orkney

Here is my own 5 cat gang enjoying their Christmas dinner.

Yum yum

Hope you are all enjoying your leftovers!

Greetings to you all - here’s a festive little story I wrote a while ago as an entry for a competition!

SOLSTICE CAKE

My mother used to make Solstice cake. The recipe was never written down, because my grandmother, who gave it to her, couldn’t write.

Take dark brown sugar, the darkest there is. That’s for deepest winter. Then you need eggs from well-fed hens – they mean new life and make the cake rise high! A good pinch of saffron – the gold is like sunlight on a gloomy day. Some flour you’ve ground yourself, that’s next, and yellow butter - your cake needs fat to give it a lovely taste and keep it moist. It’s nice to use dried fruit; that sweetness is a memory of summers past. It goes well with the dandelion wine that you pour in slowly as you mix.

Everything needs a good stir - it helps if you’ve a man nearby. Pour the mixture into a deep tin, then place in a warm oven. Here, the magic will take place, your base ingredients transformed. Bake the cake until risen and brown, then take it out to cool. With a sharp knife, cut a slice for yourself, before inviting everyone else to share. Oh, and if you want the quantities for the ingredients, you’d better ask your own mother!

I wish you all a wonderful Christmas/solstice/Yule and a wonderful and fruitful New Year! Island Blogging lives on (thanks to Jay, DoaD and Les)!

Eat, drink and be merry!

Oh, and hello again, everybody!

A loud bell startles the dozens of folk poking about in boxes of books and dishes and old fridges……..an ancient pedal organ wheezes and puffs clouds of dust……the smell of cow manure pervades the chilly air…..yes, it’s an auction at the mart. Hooray!

The Orkney auction mart is, of course, mostly used for the sale of livestock. A report of farming sales is broadcast on BBC Radio Orkney most weeks, enticing the listener into the intricate and arcane world of stotts, hogs, store beasts and Norse farm names. It’s like a wonderful, exotic foreign language and has a rythmn and poetry all its own, delivered with aplomb by the incomparable John Copeland. These auctions are for proper farmers.

But every month or so an auction is held that sells furniture and household items. These sales are often the result of a house clearance following the demise of an island resident and can yield remarkable things. They also yield a phenomenal amount of bruck - more of which later. The auctions are always held on a Thursday, with viewing the day before, where interested parties can poke, sniff, turn plates upside down to see if any are Spode. Lest the reader imagine a Christie’s style sale with a catalogue and well-numbered system, or chaps in bowties with gavels, let me set you straight. In the five years of going to auctions at the mart, only twice has a catalogue been produced, and on one very rare occasion they actually took the lots in numerical order.

The large hall is filled with stuff, as is the ring where the auctions are held (the same one they use for the cattle). Boxes and boxes of books lie under tables. Here is a butter churn rotting with damp. A plastic fake-coal effect electric fire leans against a plastered wall. A glass cabinet holds the small, special items – sometimes costume jewellery, or enamelled teaspoons, or wartime medals. Each lot whispers of a life lived, or at least a life spent surrounded by glass animals. The sale this week mainly consists of the contents of two houses: one from Stromness and one from the island of Eday. The lots are all jumbled together and adorned with either a white numbered sticker or a flamboyant marker pen scrawl. We see a lot of the usual suspects, but a few unfamiliar faces, and the rumour flies about that this auction has attracted (sucking of teeth) dealers fae sooth. These unscrupulous people come from mainland Scotland or further afield with horse boxes, fill them with farmhouse kitchen tables, dressers and wooden kists, then have the temerity to clean them, restore them and sell them in posh antique shops to marketing executives who read Country Life. Or so we all assume.

Whilst examining a coal scuttle I spy a friend who is an auction novice, and looking to furnish a room or two which she is now renting in a farmhouse in the East Mainland. She needs a fridge and a chest of drawers. Across a crowded room I spot a colourful wooden model ship in a case, and simultaneously spot my husband weaving towards it. If there is one thing we do not need it is more stuff. Does this ever stop us? No. Just as well we have big sheds.

Having fetched polystyrene cups of tea, we take our seats (just left of middle, about half way up the tiered steps, me wearing visible red scarf) just as the bell rings. A door opens into the auctioneer’s booth and there is a collective feminine (and occasional masculine) sigh as the lovely Robbie makes his entrance, resplendent in maroon auctioneer’s coat, neat tie and fine, fair, boyish hair. He announces straight off that there is so much stuff to sell that there is a lot to get through and thus the sale will not stop for lunch. The crowd mutter. And there is a crowd. Right at the front, the old Orkney farmers in bunnets and pre-war tweed jackets. These man have made bidding an art form, their twitches and eyebrow raises barely visible to the naked eye. Last year a photographer made portraits of them and their likenesses now adorn pinnies and mugs which one can buy at the Pier Arts Centre. In the middle ground sit the semi-regulars and dealers, if there are any. I am a very obvious bidder, and wave whatever I have to hand. To our left is a row of posh ladies, the nearest Orkney has to a county set, enjoying hugely the experience of slumming it on plastic seats. We surmise that they may have been friends of one of the previous owners of the goods, or that they are coming to bid for the very fine Orkney chairs. One lady is surely going to buy ‘I Sank the Royal Oak’ by Gunther Prien, seeing as U-Boat 47 actually passed her house on its way in to Scapa Flow on the 13^th of October 1939. The lady in question was a small child at the time and has often been heard to muse on how different things might have been had she looked out of the window just before midnight on that fateful night.

The first box of crockery is dragged to the fore, the bidding starts at a sporty £1.00, and we’re off.

Tags: Auction, Blog, Dragon, mart, Orkney, Stromness