91热爆

Went to see Tales From the Golden Slipper on Friday night. This play, especially created by Alan Plater (yeah, him again!) was based on the legendary Golden Slipper, an illegal drinking howff in Stenness, where the good folk from roond and aboot would gather to tell stories, play tunes, and drink whisky, all presided over by the genial host and occasional cobbler, Willie Farquhar. Stromness was 'dry' town until 1947, and Willie's shebeen served a need, and also proved popular with service personnel during the war and after.

The play had some good tunes (courtesy of Pater Maxwell Davies) and a cracking script with lots of Orkney jokes. Verged on the folksy at times, but I loved the banter between George (Catholic and poet) and Ian (communist, teacher and artist) - who could they be based on, I wonder.....?

In the interest of professional integrity, I must take mild issue wth the lady tour guide - if she had been a real Orkney guide, she would have been wearing neither a skirt, nor high heels! Try that at the Ring of Brodgar on a rainy, breezy day. Ahem.

I went with pals, including a Stromness lady who remembers the place, and went there several times as a lass. I tackled her about a vexed issue. Whilst chatting to Inverness folk about Orkney stuff, I mentioned the Golden Slipper and they sniggered and snorted and thought it terribly amusing, because apparently a Golden Slipper is a euphemism for a condom. Anyone else ever heard this? So, I asked this lady fae Stromness and she said she'd never heard that, but that Willie did in fact sell the aforementioned articles. He kept them, she told me, in a Jacob's Cream Cracker tin. Fantastic.