Keeping It Real - July 2007

It’s hard for me to believe, but it’s been a month since I stepped off the ferry from Aberdeen at the beginning of June. I’ve had a pretty busy time as I’ve been working full time at Radio Orkney as well as helping out with the St. Magnus Festival not to mention make time to go to Auskerry.

If I’m honest I was a little apprehensive about how I would feel when I arrived home knowing how different it is here to my life in Sunderland as well as the fact that I will be here for three months, but, after a couple of days of feeling a little lost without my flatmates, broadband and digital radio, I soon got re initiated into the ways of Orkney life. Becoming involved once again at Radio Orkney was instrumental in helping me to re adjust because not only does it give me a reason to get up and not spend half the day in bed, it has also got my finger firmly back on the local pulse. Having a purpose to get into the heart of the community and talk to people face to face about the things that effect and interest them on a daily basis is very rewarding and has reminded me what is missing in the anonymity of life in the city. Once again the team at Radio Orkney have made me feel very at home in the office and I have really enjoyed the last five weeks. In the past I have mostly filled the role of producer/tech ops for many of the evening programmes as well as presenting weather and the occasional sport report. However, this time I have been involved with compiling the morning news programme which has been a very steep but equally rewarding learning curve as I have had the opportunity to amongst other things, carry out interviews, make packages, edit audio and read scripts. I have briefly touched on many of these elements of broadcasting before, both at Radio Orkney and more recently at university. However as this last month has been ‘learning on the job’ as it were, I have crammed in a lot of new information. All of which will prove invaluable in my prospective future career as a radio presenter and in the more imminent future, passing my degree. One of the best things about radio for me is that no two days are ever the same. While I was presenting ‘Morning Glory’ with Danielle our show was always different and exciting and it’s no different here. Everyday I meet new people, hear new stories, see things I haven’t had the chance to see before and learn things that without the banner of ‘Reporter’ I would not otherwise be allowed to, at least not perhaps so easily.

One of the things I enjoyed a lot recently was covering the junior Inter County. Those of you that know me well will probably be laughing at this point as I have admittedly never had much of an interest in sport. I put this down to the fact that growing up on an island with two brothers and about 400 sheep, there wasn’t much opportunity during my childhood for a game of five a side. Anyway, for one reason or another I picked music over sport as my passion and have since struggled to feel much emotion for sport apart from perhaps the world cup. However, during the Inter County I quickly got the bug. I suddenly saw why people get so excited about the whole thing and I felt myself being swept along, quite willingly, in a tide of admiration and support for our young sports people. As the excellent result in the hockey brought the first day to a close leaving Orkney looking like they had a real chance of winning I felt myself being genuinely excited about the next day and was keen to be given the whole event as my baby to cover by myself which I was. Everyone I spoke to throughout the whole event was helpful and accommodating, people went out of their way to give me score info and the sports people from both sides were happy to speak which always make life easier. By the end of it all I had mixed feelings of both happiness that we had won, and sadness that it was all over. A big thank you to everyone involved.

More recently I have been helping out with front of house duties at the Magfest Spiegel tent. This has been really good fun. I haven’t really done anything like it before apart from a couple of times at my own parties, so again it’s been a good learning experience. It’s been nice to feel part of the team, if a very small one, still, I’ve got to meet new people and watch some excellent performances that I probably would not otherwise have seen.

One of the things I have been most glad to return to is the sea. I love boats and I have greatly missed the trips to and from Auskerry with the local boatmen. I still laugh when I get aboard a boat to Auskerry and think how much of an extreme contrast life on the island it is to ‘doon sooth’. I love the variety and am altogether glad to be back. I will be equally glad to proudly show off this beautiful place to my university friends when they come to stay in August. Looking ahead to this coming month I am planning to spend a decent amount of time on Auskerry as there is a fair bit of work to do out there with fencing and the like but I also want to have some time rowing and fishing. I will also be spending time in town enjoying my bike and seeing the friends who I have missed while being away. I just hope the weather warms up a little! See you around.