Sunday 30 January

After a spell of heavy rain and high winds, the sun has come out to grace us with its presence for the last hour of daylight. There was a cloud of seagulls over the harbour outside my window, and when I went down to find out what attracted 400 gulls it turned out to be BIRDSEED. Lewis Crofters stock birdseed and other stuff, and as we have not had any heavy rain for a while, a lot of it got washed down the stormdrain and ended up in the harbour.

A moutain walker in the Highlands is the luckiest man alive, after he fell down 1,000 feet off a mountain top, east of Ben Nevis. He was spotted by the crew of a helicopter, who had been sent to his rescue. They did not believe he was the casualty, as he was standing up and reading his map. However, when the chopper crew saw the trail of debris, leading from the summit to the point where the man was standing, it did become clear he was the casualty.

Not so lucky were the passengers on a train in the German state of Sachsen-Anhalt, when it collided head-on with a goods train near Magdeburg. Ten of them died, and 33 were injured. The cause of the crash, which headed on a single-track line, is not clear. German railways (DB) have a good safety record.

I have completed the website for the casualties from the Uists and Barra from WW1 and WW2, replacing two separate webpages. I do not have as much information on the Uists as I had for Lewis, so hope it does serve some purpose.

And today brought more sadness to J-land, when I was told that Angie Marshall (Can you all hear me at the back?) had passed away unexpectedly. I was not a regular reader of her blog, but the expressions of grief over the past few hours have shown she was well loved in the community, and will be sorely missed.