filskadacat

I thought your point was perfectly clear and well made. If we all drove around at a speed to ensure we did not risk hitting someone out running on a main road in the dark in dark clothing, no-one would ever get to work and it would be next morning before we got home for tea.

Thanks for the e-mail. I'm on BT and have been getting the 'nothing doing' message since yesterday or maybe even the day before.

Just happened to catch most of a programme on Channel 5 tonight about MCGB's journey from the factory in Pennsylvania, on board a massive Antonov and with her rotors in a box, to Prestwick, thence to Dalcross and finally on to Sumburgh. Realise I may be massively behind the times on this one but very much enjoyed the programme!

You're been how long in Shetland? Glad to hear you made it safely home with no purple bits. So now do you have to go to the GB to get replastered? Take care.

Frances – don’t fly anywhere with a stookie! I was in Germany with kids at a world championship when my husband had his first heart attack. On the way out I had slipped at the end of the moving pavement in Schiphol and mangled my ankle. The very efficient German hospital X-rayed it, pronounced it to be merely a bad sprain and put on what they called an air cast – to about halfway up my calf. The next day I had to fly as an emergency from Stuttgart to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt to Edinburgh – both flights no more than 90 mins. When I finally reached Ninewells at 10pm and husband was still alive, I said they would have to get the cast off me as I couldn’t have him in intensive care and me unable to drive. After I assured them it wasn’t broken they agreed to take a saw to it; you should have seen my leg. My toes were proverbial cocktail sausages and completely purple, with it spreading up my foot. I got roundly ticked off by the A&E doctor for having ‘not told the airline I had a cast on’; well they didn't ask, I was wearing trousers and I caught the flight with 5 mins to go. He said I could have ended up in the bed next to my husband with my very own heart attack and that if you ever have to fly with a cast, you have to get them to saw through it and then hold it back together with sticking plaster – as it were - till you get to where you’re going. Apparently everyone ‘should know this’ – I’m not quite sure how!

One gets medals on ARRSE. What could we have instead of dots? Bonxie silhouettes maybe?

Oooh! A Like button!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_12?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=james%20morton%20brilliant%20bread&sprefix=james+Morton%2Cstripbooks%2C350 Shetland's very own answer - out on 29th August ...

Peat – anyone wishing to become a doctor has to go south to medical school to train. So unclear whence you are deriving your ‘leaving to enhance his / her skills’ suggestion. As for our new ‘You should be grateful that there are people like me’ member; his skill set has obviously been honed in an industry where interpersonal skills and team working are of no importance whatsoever. Can anyone think what such an occupation might be? (anticipating flood of sarcastic suggestions ...)

Form today's Times. There's a photo as well but I don't have time to work out how to insert it atm. War effort of island who answered the call to buy a Spitfire Fiona MacGregor As the Blitz pounded Britain an island community answered a desperate appeal for funds for fighter aircraft to defend the country. Children gave pocket money, there were dances and parades, and in ten weeks Shetland had raised enough to pay for a Spitfire. Every donation, even sixpence, was recorded by the local newspaper, and an amateur historian who stumbled upon the files has published a book about a Spitfire called Shetlander, the people who bought it and the brave American who flew it. Margaret Stuart was researching the role of Shetland women during the Second World War when she found the Shetland News reports of how more than £250,000 in today’s money was raised. She also investigated the story of Flight Sergeant Walter Wicker, from Chicago, who took Shetlander into action against the Luftwaffe. Ms Stuart, of Walls, a village on Shetland, said: “I noticed an advertisement on the front page of the Shetland News — on August 22, 1940, about a Fighter Plane Fund.†It was the height of the Battle of Britain and the Government had called for communities across the Empire to raise money to pay for Spitfires. Those who raised the £5,000 needed could name “their†aeroplane. Ms Stuart said: “The Shetland community were really enthusiastic. It involved ten weeks of intensive fundraising; £5,000 was a huge sum of money in 1940. It was kicked off with two shopkeepers in Lerwick who gave £500 — a huge amount. “Every week, every donation was acknowledged in the columns of the Shetland News. There were more than 7,000 individual donors. They had collection boxes in shops, dances and the Boys Brigade paraded a model Spitfire through the streets. “Everyone wanted to join in, including children giving their pocket money. Someone in Gulberwick sold 200 hens, at one penny a hen.†By October 1940 they had raised £6,000 and in April 1942 their Spitfire, Shetlander, was assigned to 133 Squadron, one of the Eagle squadrons of American volunteers serving in the Royal Air Force. Its pilot was Flight Sergeant Wicker. Ms Stuart said: “Walter was an exceptional young man. He came from a wealthy Chicago family — his mother was a famous children’s entertainer known as the ‘Singing Lady’ — but he had such a strong social conscience.†An entry in his pilot’s logbook for April 13, 1942, shows his satisfaction at being given a Spitfire: “Finally got a kite.†He and Shetlander survived only eight sorties. On April 27, while escorting bombers over the Channel, he was shot down and killed. Flight Sergeant Wicker’s body was washed up in Dover and he is buried in nearby Folkestone. On his headstone are the words: “He died that democracy may live.†Ms Stuart, whose book is called The Spitfire “Shetlander†said: “I found the story totally engrossing and very humbling. Hopefully it will now show some of the sacrifice made during the war. It’s part of our history, something we should all remember with pride.â€

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/willardfoxton2/100009007/how-twitter-and-facebook-forced-thatchers-adoring-fans-and-hysterical-enemies-to-face-each-other/#disqus_thread

When Shetlink was new and the first 1000 or so people were on it, it had a wonderful community feel - you were made welcome, you could chat to people / have constructive arguments about the issues of the day / exchange information / help out. I have three friends from those days whom I met on Shetlink, subsequently met in real life, liked very much and with whom I keep in touch - mostly on Facebook. I'm sure others do too. But then people moved in and started to play out their private lives in front of us - for what warped purpose it is hard to discern. At one point there was a threesome going on - one third of which is probably Crocus in his 5th or 6th incarnation - whose means of communication append to be rock videos with in-jokes based on sexual connotations. Absolutely fine among consenting adults but the rest of us really didn’t want to know. Then some of the same people took it upon themselves to lecture everyone else about anything and everything. There was no topic on which one person in particular was not an expert. It became tedious beyond belief, and after the long-running argument about whether or not one might reasonably walk up someone’s garden path to express an interest in purchasing their house, large numbers of Shetlinkers gave up on the forum and have not come back. Which is a great shame - a community resource destroyed by the egos of a very few damaged individuals. Perhaps you could offer them some pro bono psychotherapy / counselling for the good of (the other members of) what used to be a community?

You know the worst bits of ARRSE? - (some of) this lot are every bit as bad. There are lots of lovely people in Shetland. Most of them are not on Shetlink as the trolls have driven them all away and even the mods have given up. Look on Facebook instead?

Maybe, and even hopefully, there are those out there who can like something without the need to tweet or click Facebook I LIKE button, just like those in my family who are quietly enjoying the series. Just a thought. Oxna. You seem to have time to twitter about it on this instead of quietly enjoying it like the rest of your family then? Not quite sure at whom this rejoinder was directed as the quotation marks have got a little confused. But in any case - what a grossly insensitive comment! (Par for the course on Shetlink these days.) How do you know that Oxna (whom I don't know at all) is surrounded by a supportive family under the same roof? Has it occurred to you that for people living alone, chatting away on Twitter or Facebook or both, about something you are simultaneously watching, particularly if the other person is hundreds of miles away and so cannot pop round to watch it with you, can be a helpful antidote to the loneliness that faces you when you come home from work, shut the door and realise you won't see another living soul except the cats till the next morning? Go technology!

Fair enough. Although I have to say I much appreciate the sense of community and friendship engendered by me sitting in Dundee chatting on Facebook to James's friends and neighbours in Hillswick as we all watched the programme together. So I don't quite see why you would 'hopefully' class that as A Bad Thing.

D'you not reckon Brendan is just a bit too smug? He said something last night about his years of experience which really gave the impression he looked down on everyone else. Anyway 'our' James has such a lovely smile and takes risks! The cobwebby barn was a work of genius!

Says quite a lot about the loss of vibrancy and community on Shetlink that not one person has even mentioned James winning star baker on last night's episode, recorded on his 21st birthday. It was all over Twitter and several of us Shetlinkers were smiling about it on Facebook. Guess we've all given up on the sourness and sniping on here. What a shame.

Have been glued to it for weeks - was wondering how long it would take Shetlink to catch up. There wasn't even a mention the night he got star baker.

Has it not always been the case that Lexmark ink was so unfeasibly and ludicrously expensive that when it ran out you just bought a new printer? Have they addressed that?

Have had a Canon MP610 for ages - over 4 years I think. Continues to do an excellent job printing photos and everything you would expect scanning and printing text. When it expires my first choice will be another Canon.

Almost too good. I find asking someone who is obviously busy about where I can find something and they take me rather that just telling me a bit embarrassing. I think it is Tesco policy for staff to walk you to where things are. They have done it here for the past 20 years. So don't be embarrassed - it's their job to be helpful .

Given that you were online anyway to post the question, how difficult would it have been for you to google the number yourself? http://www.tesco.com/storeLocator/default.asp?bID=5760 On the one hand it's difficult to figure out the unfortunate mentality of someone that posts the police number; on the other hand, maybe that was his way of making the same point that I am?

Maybe da Western Isles ir been quietly holding dir ain Up Helly Aa aa dis years an we never kent ...

D'you mean the stalking or the time spent? I am supposedly on holiday and I - rather sadly - live alone, so at this time of year I can afford to 'waste' a whole afternoon. I wouldn't be doing it on a working day!

Well - that took my entire afternoon! Thank you so much. By the time I had trailed through all 3,000 folk in the group, discovered one set of cousins have got their house sold, a more distant bunch have changed jobs and moved to Aberdeen, somebody else has got engaged and one of the babies is learning to swim - have got nothing else done at all! Now - all the old prints in the drawer, and the scanner, and it's raining ...