A Brief Respite

Davie and Ailsa were across from Birsay today and the Current Mrs Creel cooked an absolutely superb meal, and a cake.  It was off the scale – we had to look at the cake from 200 yds away through sunglasses.


Whilst with us Davie reminded us of the following tale of the parish.
There was a needle bowls match between Stromness and the Parish.  Tradition demanded that the host (in this case the Parish) provided the tea and hosted a raffle.  All members of the Parish team also had to provide raffle prizes.  It was noted that some of the ‘prizes’ had become rather rudimentary, e.g. an often seen prize was two tins of lager sellotaped together (it didn’t improve the taste).


One member of the Parish team was determined to ‘raise the bar’ with his prize.  Back home he asked his wife to donate a huge, beautiful and glittery box to put the prize inside.  Taking the box into the shed he then went to the garden.  He dug up, and very neatly trimmed, a really big neep – plenty of eating.  He took it inside and his wife taped up the box and tied a huge bow around it. 


Come the evening of the match the provider of the special prize confided in team mate Ivan – to protect the innocent his real name is Ivan Sclater of Russamyre.  He said ‘Are you wise min?’ – too late now as the prizes were on display.  After the game (Stromness narrowly won) the raffle was drawn.  The special prize was won by Johnny Harcus of the Stromness team.  Ivan advised the prize donor ‘Beuy, you’re in trouble – he’s absolutely nae sense of humour.’ Right enough he'd had a dour demeanour all night.  However being thrawn Johnny wouldn’t open his prize despite encouragement from his team mates.  So only two folk on the night knew the contents.  After the game Ivan advised the donor to book the first ferry sooth.


Lo and behold, and no-one saw this coming, Johnny had a great idea. At that stage he must have been past fifty years married.  In that length of time he’d  never given his wife a valentine present (the match was four days before) so he gave her the box.  Imagine her surprise, she was overcome with emotion and then proceeded to open the box.  Imagine receiving a neep for your Valentine.  Well, nobody can, except Mrs Harcus.