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Vol.21 No. 4 31st January 1998 Karen and Oscar came for dinner on Sunday. We had roast tatties, chicken and a few
vegetables. We went for a very long walk. We watched Ski Sunday on the television. Scott and I played Peter Pan. We used some chopsticks for swords. Scott used his yellow
hook. Mum found a green dress in the dressing up box. She cut the dress into some leaf
shapes and tied it round me. it looked good when we played the game. We went to Charlotte's birthday. We gave her some bubble bath and from the Chalet we
gave her a pizza making kit. Rachel , Lewis and I brought an old record player to school.
Dad bought it at a sale in an old house when he was 12 years old. He also got some
records. We listened to some records, they are very good. On Saturday it was my 9th birthday. I got an All Saints CD, an Oasis tape, a video of
Annie and Oliver and Muppets shower and bath gel with a free Kermit puppet. In the
afternoon I had a birthday party. We played lots of games and I had a big cake. On Friday we went down to Burkle. Dad has made part of one of the studios into a office
so we painted it white. That evening we just lazed about in the sitting room. I am Joe. I went to Up-Helly-Aa. The Vikings marched along the streets. They were
holding big torches. They took the galley to a park and sang a song and then they threw
the torches on the galley to burn it. There were lots of other guizers like ballet
dancers, witches, teletubbies and skeletons.
Vic Thomas came in to the school, he is from the Shetland Amenity Trust. He came in on Monday to present us with a big cheque for £75.00. This is because we came second in the aluminium can competition. We are going to put the money towards our video camera fund. We also got a silver certificate for collecting 30 kilo's of aluminium. We talked about recycling and re-use of materials. He brought in a bag of junk including lobster, shopping bags, paper and bottles. Dave came and took our photograph for the Shetland Times (see next weeks edition).
Betty came up to the school on Tuesday to talk to us about her life from the 1930's when she was a young child. Betty grew up in a little village just north of London. They had gas lights and a gas iron. There was no central heating and the water had to be heated by gas on a 'copper'. They had an outside toilet in the garden. In the kitchen they had a larder to keep the food in which had a special wooden meat box in it because there were no fridges. They all listened to the radio a lot. Bettys mum used to listen to the 'Daily Service' which Betty didn't like. Radio's worked by an accumulator which was a glass container full of acid and other chemicals. This had to be charged up at the bicycle shop and it cost six pence. Betty's dad worked in London and he earned £2.50 a week, £1 had to go on the rent and the rest went on clothes, fodd and his tobacco. They had no car, they either walked or went on the bus. It was a treat to take the train up to London. Betty's brother used to go to the bus stop on his home made stilts and and then climb on top of the bus. He used to bang the roof of the bus and one day the bus driver came to their house and complained about him. When Betty went to school there were 50 children in her class and her teacher was Mrs Wilson. Later on she had Mrs Leadbetter and all the children used to say "Is your leg better ?" to her! If you were naughty your mouth was taped up and you were put in the corner with the wastepaper basket over your head. In their street there was one person with a telephone. There were lots of people who came to sell things each week like the cleaneasy man, the hat man, the coal man, and the rag and bone man. The rag and bone man collected any unwanted things and also old bones which were sold to the glue factory. He paid either in money or goldfish. Sometimes on Fridays Betty would get an ice-cream from the ice-cream cart if there was any money. The cleaneasy man gave her a bottle brush when she was sitting in her pram in the garden one day. The hat man used to let her try on all the hats. In the war her brother was a navigator in the Air Force. He did photographic reconnaissance in Mosquito planes. These had Rolls Royce engines and could fly 400 miles /hour. When he was stationed near them he would send them a message to tell them when he would be flying over and then he would tell the pilot to wiggle the plane to make it 'wave'. Thank you Betty for coming to the school and for the half penny you gave to each of us.
Rachel is still needing recipes for part of her school work. Please give us your favourite recipe as soon as possible. New television stand is available at the school for the first interested person.
LOGANAIR INFORMATION Cpt. Ian Potten has given me this DRAFT copy of the Fair Isle - Tingwall section of the LOGANAIR/BRITISH AIRWAYS EXPRESS 29th March to 24th October 1998
Due to the removal of the Kirkwall-Wick Loganair schedule, Bob Tulloch (Loganair Kirkwall) is looking into the possibility of arranging 'tourism' flights to Fair Isle from Kirkwall on Saturdays during this summer. The idea is that an 'Islander' will bring a party of visitors up to Fair Isle - allowing them about 3 hours here (the aircraft remaining on the ground at Fair Isle) - before returning them to Orkney. Further information on the above in due course. Dave (Manager, FIAS)
THE Weather Channel, Britain's only 24-hour TV forecasting service, closed yesterday after 16 months. The cable and satellite operation was shut because of audience indifference, despite the country's obsession with the weather. As staff at the channel's tiny studio in the West End of London packed up for the last time, Landmark, the US company that owns it, blamed distribution problems for the decision. "If you cannot attain distribution your product cannot be seen," Kathy Lane, a spokesman in Atlanta, said. "We carried out a strategy review in the fourth quarter of 1997 and it was decided it was no longer economically viable to continue. It is very sad." Other observers, however, cited different problems. Some said the channel's content - a blend of rolling forecasts and weather-related features - was too American in style to suit a British audience already well served with quality television forecasts. Some argued that Britain was too small and its weather too undramatic to sustain a round-the-clock service. The Dutch and Italian versions of the channel have also been closed, possibly adding to the existing redundancy total of 69. In its dying weeks, the British channel was attracting only 320,000 viewers a week. A healthy satellite channel, such as Sky 1, has an average audience of more than 5.3 million. In America however. the 15-year-old Weather Channel, owned by the same company, goes into more than 65 million homes and is regularly in the ten most popular channels. Cable space is currently at a premium and the Weather Channel's slot will be snapped up - possibly by one of the BBC's channels, such as UK Horizon. Colm Feeney, broadcasting director of Western International, a media buying company, said: "The US backers will be quite surprised at this failure but it is not surprising to us. One of the problems in Britain is that it is so small. In the US each state is about the size of the UK and so there are lots of different extremes of weather to talk about. "Here, the weather patterns aren't as exciting; there aren't the hurricanes or huge freezes to sustain it so R became a bit dull. We are also very well served by our weather presenters on the terrestrial channels, both locally and nationally. "It's the same with the Discovery Channel, which does reasonably well here. It is incredibly successful in the States largely because their mainstream television channels are so bad."
Saturday morning was calm and dry, so after making bread and succumbing to a quick burst with the Hoover, I walked to the shop in canine company. Later on, it was John's turn to exhaust the young pup but it was he who came back wilting after Rakki had got lost once again on the Hill. Loss of sight, hearing and other sundry disabilities are tough for a dog who has served us so well. The evening brought further activity, exercising our jaws in the good company of Florrie and Jimmy, (the reason for the Hoovering). Sunday started leisurely with rolls, coffee and Radio 4. We briefly discussed Stewart's sermon subject of the Prodigal Son and decided he would cite Fidel Castro's return to the papal fold as a present day example. (he didn't!) We had left-overs for Sunday dinner and got indigestion from the World this Weekend which had wasted good money sending their front man, James Cox, to the US, to cover the Clinton affair. We switched off and enjoyed fine music instead before our next bout of dog/human walkies. Ian was returning from the water scheme and showed us a bottle of crystal clear fluid - could it be water? Will there soon be an end to brown baths and off-white underwear, not to mention the kick of chlorine in the tea? Monday morning's news brought the report on the Queen Mother's hip fracture, and then the joint replacement surgery. 97 is some age to go through that ! Guess what ? it removed the alleged peccadilloes of Clinton from the top headlines. This was the planned D day for letter writing but only 4 were completed as urgent distractions tempted. Tuesday began windy, then wet, before clearing in plenty of time for Lerwick's Up-Helly-A'. Robert spent the morning upgrading the computer so that when John joined him later it seemed to me that it had become an all-singing and all dancing console: it plays C.D.s. I had a great afternoon at the school talking about childhood experiences, many of which are etched clearly in the memory - more than I can say for last month or last year. The attentive audience was a treat. Wednesday was Boat day - delayed because of weather - and we were glad to receive news of friends around the world. It was good to meet up again with Jean Stewart, the relief nurse, for a coffee and chat session. An early visit to the shop with Hannah on Thursday included the free bonus offer of Scott, so they spent the morning at Utra on varied activities - making popcorn, blowing bubbles, watching the oft repeated Australian playschool video and sampling lychees. What a brilliant morning for a walk with the dogs on Friday, then a bit of clearing in the vegetable patch. I found some potatoes which will surely taste better for having been discovered so unexpectedly. I was just thinking what a quiet week it has been for news (even the World Service hasn't kept me awake) but the isle has made some through the children being presented with a cheque (see their section of F.I. Times) and the proposed royal ceremony for the closure of the lighthouse being announced. Betty.
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