Brackin’ da Bröd

Hei!

What a fast week last week was! Far too fast for my liking: the happenings whizzed by like a sweetie paper in a Shetland gale.

After work on Monday I got the bus to Sumburgh to catch my flight to Aberdeen and after arriving safely it was off to the, rather uninspiring, lodgings for a good nights sleep before going back to the airport for the Oslo flight in the morning.

This trip all came about, rather suddenly, two weeks ago. VisitScotland were organising an event in Oslo to highlighting the new direct air links to the North of Scotland, Orkney and Shetland as well as letting our Norse counterparts know about homecoming 09. The Ed wasn’t too interested in the homecoming aspect (Shetland has its Hamefarin, to welcome back emigrants, next year) and since none of the reporters wanted to leave their stories for a day trip I was asked; first I said no – likewise, I thought it was a long way to go for a day but, almost immediately after, the words “ok” flew out of my mouth – I’ll certainly not get to go to Norway for free again (…I’m gemini, I’m allowed to change my mind very quickly with little or no warning or excuses and, sometimes, without scruples.)

The Ed told me to enjoy myself and take full advantage of the offer, I’d have nothing to do but enjoy the champagne reception and sightsee…alas! He hadn’t told VisitScotland that they could pay for my flights and hotel etc and I wouldn’t be writing a story in return…

Met by their press-officer at the airport and this is the gist of the conversation…

HER: so what kind of story are you going to do?

ME: (utter bewilderment) Um, well…

HER: I can set up some interviews at the reception if you want?

ME: Ummm….weell….

HER: and there’ll be a photographer, so just tell him what you need ok?

ME: (nervous laughter, turns white)…oh, well, I don’t know if I can…Umm

HER: (looking anxious) you are a reporter aren’t you?

ME: Uummm…weell…(huge awkward pause)…not exactly

HER: (alarmed) you are being trained though?

ME: Ummmm…weeeeeeeeelll…. (a small, but dead-wrong word coming up)….yes

HER: (sighs with relief) Phew…well you can just do something more observational if you like.

EEK! I felt such a fraud but, as afore mentioned, I am a gemini and (like Monica in Friends) have an uncontrollable need to please people, even if that means indicating that I kinda, sorta, maybe, might be a reporter instead of an editorial assistant.

So, having successfully swindled the press-officer, Visit Scotland and all the people that the press-officer introduced me to as being a reporter, we got on the plane!

T’was a bumpy old journey due to the wind, and I won’t even tell you about the landing, but the views of snow covered Norway with its frozen fjords was breathtaking.

Once we arrived in Oslo I was really taken on how they get you from A-B really quite swiftly and neatly…but very expensively! In the airport was a train station where we caught the flytoget (the very comfortable express train) to Oslo Central Station, which led us through a shopping centre, across the road from which was our hotel the Clarion Royal Christiania; which was very swish (and I was really glad I wasn’t paying for it!)

There wasn’t too much time to get to see the city as it was off to the British Ambassador’s residence for the event.

 Villa Frognæs is no simple city crash-pad that’s for sure. It used to be farmland and now there stands a mean-looking “farmhouse” along with its own, steepled, coach house! I just kept walking around – when I wasn’t furiously writing down everything that was happening, in case the press officer asked to see my note – in awe of the place and feeling very small in comparison to its greatness.

The event was very successful and Shetland’s tourist board representatives, along with Orkney and Aberdeen, did a sterling job in trying to persuade the Norwegians to visit us…but we did have a fiddler, so I think we had the edge! After the guests had left we got to have our own refreshments in the drawing room. Whilst a lot of the ladies associated with the party made jokes about feeling that they belonged in the drawing room, I couldn’t sit down, I kept walking to the outside or to the back…possibly because I wasn’t too well acquainted with most of them, but I think it was more of an upstairs, downstairs thing…I reckon in a previous life I was probably a parlour maid haha, I just wasn’t comfortable in the sofa area at all.

Anyway day two and more meanderings next time including, being called Norwegian, being called beautiful and being spat at all in the same morning and why the phrase, er det en garn buttikk i nærheten was particularly handy, and how fortuitous it was that I came by it before I went.

Back in Bressay and yesterday was a delightful spring day, and quite warm too. I went over to Lerwick to get my haircut  (got a slight fringe thing going on, not had one of them since high school) and I actually had to shed my coat and then my cardi in quick succession, but will it last?? Up here you are, sometimes, loathed to wish for more nice days at such an early juncture in the spring, because there is the fear that it’s all the summer you might get. Having said that, last year Shetland had the hottest summer in years and everyone else perished in the rain and flood, but we are good at our superstitions…a blog for another day I think!

But with regards to the nice weather sustaining, I saw the sheep all-congregating on the hill tonight, and that’s another superstition that foretells that a washout is not far away; we shall see, but until then I hope it’s nice and cheery wherever you may be.

Farvel for now folks!

Okay, so let me clear up some of the intrigue for you…

No, I’m not in Italy, though the climate might be a bit less fresh at this time of year!
…and Brackin’ da Bröd, while sounding like a pal of Noggin the Nog, is an old Shetland phrase for walking, or building, a pathway…taking new steps in life…new steps in the blogging world and in life too I suppose…but that might take a wee detour and another day to tell…

Bressay is a small island which lies close to the east side of Shetland, directly opposite the capital Lerwick. Bressa (we drop the Y , I don’t know why) is a quiet little island all in all - one shop, one school, one hall, one pub/hotel, but because we’re only a seven minute ferry ride from the mainland it doesn’t need to aspire to much.
My earliest memories of being aware of living on an island was about aged 4. I was on a trailer full of new hay with my sister and my little cousin, being pulled up to our family’s croft on my Dad’s tractor.
From the back of the trailer I could see Lerwick and the Bressay Sound separating us and I remember asking later if the sea was a moat! In all honesty, there isn’t many places in Bressay that you can’t see the sea (it’s about 7miles by 4) and the vista from our kitchen window is the same (albeit from the south end), but it’s funny how the mind of a child works!

Speaking of children, I had the nieces over at the weekend…those whose wellie-enclosed tootsies you can see. Aged three and eight, they are so similar in some ways and poles apart in others. The eldest thinks because she is so active in school sports and drama and music etc, that she can relax and weekends…the youngest gets her sister to herself at the weekends and wants to do fun, outdoorsy things, which is usually met with a roll of the eyes!
I like to take them on walks around Bressa’ and try to get them interested in nature. Whilst “peerie een” gets very excited about it, “big een” is less impressed at the thought.

This weekend I decided to try a new tack. They both love taking photos, but have a surprise, point and shoot approach (I am sure they would make good assassins the pair of them!) and we end up with a collection of snaps of people looking shocked! I’m no David Bailey either, in fact I’m not fit to carry his tripod, so I bought us some throw-away cameras and we sat at the kitchen table looking in magazines for some interesting pictures to cut out.

From looking at the pictures we took down some key words…tropical, old tree, still as a statute, something sad etc and we chose two out of a hat (it’s my aim to do this every weekend they come over).Then it was on with the coats and out with the cameras to see what we could find…

The chosen themes were something spiky and fantastic clothes and I was amazed at the ideas that they had and what they interpreted these to be.  We took pictures of some neighbouring sheep and some daffodils which fell under fantastic clothes and barbed wire fence with some daffodil shoots spearing up in the foreground for something spiky. Once we got back to the house, the both couldn’t wait to do it again…success!!

In other news, I’m going to Oslo tomorrow, just for an overnight stay…I shall report back next time and hopefully have a few photos!

Well, this is a whole new world to me!

For a long time I wanted to write a blog, but every time i sat down to write I would soon find myself staring at a blank page for hours on end. But my good friend and neighbour mirlnlass has taken me by the hand, be it ever so cyberly, and given me a bit of an induction.

To be honest, I am simply following where she leads, and not just up the cyber path (my goodness! that sounds so wrong!).

I moved back home  within a few weeks of her moving back and we are both now sharing the joys and, perhaps, some tribulations, of being back in the bosom o’ Bressa’ again! I do enjoy being home again, but sometimes it good to go next door and get gossipy and fish-wifey with someone who feels the same.

we can be quite a nostalgic pair when we get going, especially when we get together with our friend Jam. mirlin and i seem to have the better memories when it comes to remembering some things…such as our youthful drinking days, although i think Jam is just being modest sometimes when she says she can’t remember some of the wilder things! oh! the stories i could tell…

…but I won’t. i shall spare them the blushes…and me too!

Anyhow, the heady world of local media waits for no-one…I hope to add another little paving slab of my life to the new curving pathway soon!