Last night’s Orkney Folk Festival pre-party – brought to you by a Highlands and Islands Airports industrial dispute – actually kicked off in Shetland, somewhere around 5pm, when around a dozen of those other islanders, who’d planned to fly today, boarded the good ship Hjaltland in Lerwick and headed immediately for the bar, where they remained ensconced for the six-hour sailing to Kirkwall.
Knowing that even the fast car waiting at Hatston would only get them to bar in Stromness within an hour of last orders – and, let’s face it, being Shetlanders – they’d not only booked the taxi but adapted some kind of bijou flight-case into a mobile drinks cabinet for the journey, containing four bottles of prosecco, plastic glasses and Nurofen. Rumours of their falling from the vehicle upon delivery at the Stromness Hotel have been grossly exaggerated, we’re sure of it.
Among the Shetland delegation, the Peter Wood Dance Band of that parish were nonetheless sufficiently bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning to get a horde of Stromness Primary schoolkids delightedly strutting their stuff in a three-ring Circassian Circle. (Though it may be that bassist Arthur Nicolson was secretly grateful for...
