Tuesday 18/07/06

After the morning preliminaries, we went on the 1pm bus to Ness. It's fairly bright, but with some measure of cloudcover. As the bus heads north towards Barvas, clouds descend below the summit of Muirneag, 7 miles to the north. On descending to Barvas, the whole of the West Side can be seen to be covered in fog. It is grey, overcast and drizzly on the way up to Ness. The bus is fairly full and people get off at regular intervals. We reach Port Nis at 2pm, and first of all we're going to find a place to sit down and have lunch. There are benches down at the harbour, which has been cleared of about 7ft of accumulated silt. Fulmars wheel above the beach as we quietly eat our rolls and have tea. The haar comes down and envelops everything in a thin fog. Next stop: 10 Callicvol. We enter and are confronted by a choice: either go to the Quilt Floor or to Enquiries. We decide on the latter. We are greeted by an elderly man who remains seated behind his computer as we're interrogated to the Nth degree. Although I explain that I have conducted historical research, the man is not interested, saying my subject is too recent in history. I am advised to go to the Stornoway Library - have been there more than he'd think. He never introduced himself, and left it to us to deduce who the hell he was. When a phonecall came, he never said "excuse me" as he walked out. I was about to walk out myself in the opposite direction. Upstairs, we were forced to sign the visitors book - mrs B did not. The lady upstairs, the man's wife, said that when they moved here, she met 5 men who had been to Tasmania, so she felt immediately at home. His empathy with Lewis was born of a 9 day stay in the Flannan Isles, 35 miles west of Uig, in 1950. Arrogant, obnoxious and rude. More interested in fishing money off the enterprise company and everybody else. Return to Stornoway at 4.40 to buy some rewriteable CDs at Point1 on Bayhead. It's quite warm and sticky, about 21C. Temperatures elsewhere in the UK went up to 33C / 91F today and are expected to peak at 37C / 99F tomorrow. Result: buckled railway tracks and lots lots more. Breakdown of this heatwave as of Thursday. North Carolina is threatened by Tropical Storm Beryl. By 8pm, seahaar drifts in across the island and gradually envelops the town in fog, visibility down to about 100 metres. At 11.30pm, the fog lifts, as we watch Muirneag sailing into the fog, still lingering in the Minch.