Authentic Fair Isle’s fantastic
UNTIL this week I did not know that there are only 35 adults on Fair Isle. But now that I do know it explains a smouldering mystery.
When I was a very small chap, I had a Fair Isle pullover and Tam ‘o’ Shanter and two scarves. They were authentic Fair Isle. And of them all one scarf survived.
One wintry day in the 1950s I was walking down Victoria Street wearing this scarf when I was buttonholed by Mrs Lamont, the future Chancellor’s mother, who knew me.
‘Peter,’ said she. ‘I like your scarf. What’s more, I know who made it.’ And she explained the cottage industry that put Fair Isle on the fashion map, telling me that patterns used were exclusive to the maker. I believed it, of course. But how could she have known? Now I know, for in the war years when her husband Dan was a surgeon on clandestine sorties, the population was even smaller, and she would have known them all. Remarkable woman, Mrs Lamont.