Well.  It’s not often you get a week with 2 Sundays, a pair of Mondays, only 1 Tuesday and yet somehow it’s  Friday.

As far as pretty much everyone up here on a distinctly unpatriotic and uncelebrational Shetland (miserable buggers), Monday was a fairly standard working day.  I was in the office, my wife was at the surgery, the kids were at school.  Granted, they had little Jubilee parties  in their classes but that’s about the long and short of it.  Obviously, trying to get anything done that involved contacting people off the mainland was a no-go.  I don’t mind some of this, after all I get all the bank holidays I would normally have as random Mondays off during the year lumped together at Christmas, but still.  While others are enjoying their 4-day weekend, I’m sat drinking coffee and trying to work out why Sharepoint won’t do something that is blindingly simple in Drupal.

So then we get Sunday again.  Sorry, Tuesday.  Everyone gets a day off.  The leisure centres are all closed for the Jubilee (so no indoors-if-wet entertainment to be found there), the schools are closed and even my office is closed.  Normal day for the surgery, mind you, so it’s a good job my better half doesn’t work Tuesdays.  So, a quick spin around the events happening here in Gulberwick for the Jubilee…  Did you enjoy that?  Let’s have another look at them.  There, wasn’t that fun.  Yep, that’s right, nothing.  One large village hall, one community group who should have organised something (for which I will shoulder some blame, seeing as how I’m on the committee) and no scones, no bunting, nothing.

Ah, but, I hear you cry, Shetland has a Lord Lieutenant!  The Queen’s Representative to the Isles.  Recently appointed and looking to make a name for himself.  Yes, that’s true.  But as to what he was doing and why there wasn’t a bloody great street party in Lerwick (which we could’ve broadcast live via the CCTV cameras installed at great expense), only he knows.

I’m betting there’s going to be a big thing in the Shetland Times tomorrow showing just how wonderful Shetland’s Jubilee celebrations were, photographs from the small events that did happen.

Our council, who should be able to organise a pretty decent party, you’d think, can spend millions on consultants for wind farms, tunnels that are never going to happen, not-quite-making-decisions on where  a new high school should be built, but couldn’t make plans for an event that we’ve known is coming for some time.  Oh, and as part of a “blueprint for education”, are seeking to cut hundreds of thousands from their education budget “without impacting core services.”  Cloud bloody cuckoo land.

Anyway, I’m still not sure what happened to Wednesday or Thursday, one of them seemed to transform into another Monday.  Sharepoint still won’t behave and now it seems to be Friday tomorrow.

Weird week.