Welcome

Hello and welcome to the St Magnus Festival "unofficial" blog. You're probably already familiar with the official St Magnus Festival website. So what's this blog for? We thought it might be fun to try to give a flavour of the Festival as it's happening. I'll be posting Festival-related words and pictures, maybe even try to get some quotes or short interviews. There'll also be some (not entirely serious) Orkney survival tips: what to wear, why not to bother with an umbrella, how to say "hello" in Orcadian, that sort of thing. Some of the posts will be very short or contain typos as I'll be posting in part from my mobile phone. If you've got any stories, pictures or other content you'd like to share, send them to blogsmf@googlemail.com

What's my connection with the Festival? Well, I was a performer in (I think) the second ever St Magnus Festival at the tender age of 10 years old, playing part of a computer in Ian McQueen's Time Flight. In subsequent years, as my parents became more and more involved in the Festival, our family home was a regular venue for performers to hang out until the early hours. The Festival has always had a strong association with the local schools, and I continued to take part in performances occasionally in the school orchestra or choir. In the 20 years I lived away from Orkney, I was kept well-informed about the increasing scale and renown of the Festival - many family & friends have continued to be involved through most of the Festival's history. So I hope my strong emotional and social connection to the Festival will make the content of this blog worthy of your attention, despite my less-than-stellar knowledge about the music and performers! My goal is to be more of a conduit than an authority.

I've also created a Twitter account (stmagnus)to accompany the blog. I'll tweet links to blog articles as they're posted. Maybe there'll be some other stuff too.