Saturday 20/05/06

Bright morning with shower clouds, which do not give much rain. Breakfast at 8.40, in the company of the two Germans who want fish for their breakfast - so they get fish every morning of their 4 night stay. The two workmen are also still around, so mrs B has got a lot of dishes to wash - five people's. Muirneag comes in at 10, the Coastguard tug Anglian Prince at 11.45, just as the sun comes out. The afternoon has some nice weather. I go to Somerfields for papers and food. The Lottery draw, later that evening, gets interrupted by protestors on the studio floor. The main concern for the presenters was to get everything over before the Eurovision Song Contest. Big deal. It stays light until 1 am - i.e., it does not get dark.

Friday 19/05/06

Drizzle, mist and generally very dreich. Muirneag comes in at lunchtime. After yesterday's delays, the crew will have had to go for a lie-down before setting out again at sort of 4 am. I venture out for some shopping at 4 pm, but it's quite wet. Not windy though. Get the Gazette in, which is full of the usual, and also up to the usual standard of inaccuracy. Browse through the Coastguard website, with its litany of disasters at sea, wrecks under detention and boozy captains at the helm. And the chappy who thought he could smuggle 300 litres of sulphuric acid through customs at Dover. Slap slap. A German couple comes on the ferry for a 4 day stay. Receive a wee plastic duck through the post (you know who you are, quack, quack).

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.

Wednesday 17/05/06

Bright morning, which sees the departure of all 3 guests - Karen from Australia as well as the two workmen. The latter are due to be replaced by two colleagues who are travelling up from Barra today. That is an 8 hour journey by road. Mrs B's brother-in-law calls in for coffee. Have not seen him for a while. As he is leaving, I spot a group of canoeists rowing up the harbour towards the town. Apparently, some start from the pier at Crosbost to row the 8 miles to Stornoway. One of the French fishingboats comes in for a crew change. Within 90 minutes it is leaving port again. At 1pm, the sun is out. It's set to be a nice afternoon, although tomorrow's forecast is pretty dismal. Yesterday, Eoropie had 26 mm (1 inch) of rainfall. That is a lot - it equates to 26 litres (6 gallons) of water on every square metre (11 sq feet). Go out for a walk and some shopping at 2.30. Walk up Island Road and Smith Avenue, where the sun makes it quite warm. It is just 13C / 55 F on the thermometer. Blossoms and leaves are out all over the place. Carry on down Goathill Avenue and Church Street right down to Cromwell Street. Pop into the Hebridean Jewellery Shop at the corner of Church Street for a book about a walk all the way down the Western isles, from the Butt of Lewis to Vatersay - 230 miles. Somerfields have abandoned their Saver card scheme, which will speed things up enormously at the tills. Back in Newton, mrs B is inundated with requests for accommodation. After 4pm, cloudcover increases and odd spots of rain begin to fall. The major fall commences at 6.35, when a wall of rain quickly moves across from Arnish.

Tuesday 16/05/06

Pouring with rain today, low mist obscures the Arnish hills. Dreich in other words. Since last night, two workmen are staying with us. I discover a reference to mrs B's accommodation in a Swedish report from a holiday company. It is basically someone's travel diary in Swedish. Out of sheer curiosity I drag it through an on-line translator. I find it contains an oblique reference to myself, but the details are mercifully incorrect. The rain continues through the afternoon. It's cold outside, with a northeasterly wind. This causes a groundswell out in the Minch, and when a wee boat goes out, it encounters some rough conditions. Sun peeps through the clouds once or twice. On the whole though, it remains wet and miserable. Late in the evening, news comes through that foxes have been sighted on the island. They are not a native species, and if really present, will cause slaughter amongst sheep and lambs - it does not bear thinking about. Who would want to bring a fox here, for god's sake?! Mrs B gives me a recipe for cranachan, see pics in gallery.

Monday 15/05/06

Cloudy but dry today. Muirneag comes into port at 8.30. My breakfast is rather later. Karen heads out for the day, for a walk round the Castle Grounds and a drive to Ness. She has now taken about 800 pics on her trip. At 4.30, a gastanker comes into port. It's called the Gas Pioneer this time round. At 7pm, I take mrs B out to An Lanntair to view "14 days in Great Britain". This is a condensation into 92 minutes, of 139 hours of footage shot by David W. Gibbons. This chappie toured the UK in August 2005, visiting 14 towns in 14 days. His format was simple: talk to ordinary people in the street, take their picture and an interview if they are agreeable. The subject: life in general. Questions like "What do you want from life, what advice would you give the next generation". It is followed by a Q&A session, finishing at 9.45. It was half an hour late in starting. The start was billed for 7.00 pm, but for an obscure reason, they played the same song 6 times over and started the show at 7.30.

Sunday 14/05/06

Breakfast at the unbelievably early time of 9 a.m.. I have a chat with our Australian guest, who is interested in the Arnish Lighthouse. She leaves at 12.30 for a look round. It's bright and sunny if cold day. The blackbirds and sparrows all have nests with young and are frantically looking for food. One sparrow is in and out of the bushes at the front, looking for spiders. The blackbirds are raiding the worms. For the second time this spring, a bird is pictured in the paper, nesting in the amber light of a traffic light in Glasgow. Nice underfloor heating, the green light having a nice long phase. This picture shows the bird incubating, a later pic clearly shows 3 chicks. A little rain falls after 8pm and a rainbow ends at one of the gun emplacements at Arnish Point. Not staying up late tonight.