Saturday 03/06/06

The Canadians are leaving for the mainland on the lunchtime ferry. We say farewell at 11 o'clock, after which they head into town. Their hirecar is losing oil; it's a 06-reg (i.e. less than 3 months old) vehicle. The house seems empty all of a sudden. It's dry this morning, but quite grey. At 2.30, I nip into the arts centre An Lanntair [The Lantern] to view two exhibitions by two local artists. Angus Morrison (1870-1942) lived at Ness, north Lewis. His paintings are strongly maritime, with images of the ships he sailed on. He also showed an image that is familiar to me, the Doune Chapel at Filiscleitir. The second artist is Joanne Breen, a lady of Irish extraction who made Lewis her second home. She died in 2002. Her work, tapestries, are made with discarded threads and cuttings from Harris Tweed looms, and strongly influenced by the colours and shapes of the Lewis moor. The search for the missing fishermen yields a partial success: the boat is found sunk just off Eilean Trodday, a mile or so north of Skye. Two of its liferings were found nearby. The crewmen were not in the vessel, and the search for them goes on. Very low cloud drifts below the tops of the Arnish hills. A fine drizzle falls in the middle of the afternoon, but it brightens up very slowly through the evening. The sun comes out at 9.25. The second tropical depression in the Eastern Pacific does not pack much of a punch in terms of winds (below gale force), just dumps 471 mm of rain on Acapulco.