Thursday 18/05/06

Raining hard and blowing a gale this morning. One of our guests was going to a meeting up the road in the Council Offices. He had noticed the rain, so he put on a light coat and brought out a foldable umbrella. He stepped out of the door and brolly and himself nearly took off. It's a full, force 8 gale today, which is tearing the new leaves off the trees. A taxi was duly ordered to take our guest to his meeting. A fishing boat left port, but found itself battling huge seas. Later that morning, mrs B's nephew made two appearances, on the second occasion with his wife in tow. At 2.30, the tanker turns up outside the port, but the southerly wind makes it impossible for her to come in. The sun starts to come out after lunchtime. When I go to the shops, I hear that the Stornoway Gazette did not arrive, because poor old Muirneag had to divert in the face of the gale today. She was last heard of sheltering off Benbecula. There is a row on about the local hospice. In order for it to operate legally, it needs a doctor. The last one resigned from her position, as the practice she normally works for is no longer funding the post. NHS Western Isles put out a statement saying that it was not justified to fund a hospice doctor for a population of 25,000. That went down like a lead balloon. Now the MSP has called for the entire management team to quit, something that I have been shouting about in the Lighthouse blog for months. Muirneag finally came in at 4.10. I go out to no 1 pier to watch her dock. So did half the town. Eight trailer units (colloquially referred to as horses) were waiting to take the cargo away. The tanker calls for a pilot to come in at 8.45. Dinner was chilli con carne. Eorpa on BBC 2 Scotland had an item on the North Harris Estate. Only 800 people live on it. The evening closed cloudy but very quiet. It would appear that the causative low pressure system is now overhead. Western England and Wales are battered by force 10 gusts. Even Heathrow Airport has force 8 gusts.