View across the Outer Harbour of Stornoway

Friday 13 January 2012

Friday 13 January

Friday the 13th started fairly bright, and before dawn, the moon was certainly bright enough. However, after lunch, the clouds drew in and we were back in the mid-January gloom. It's a bit colder than of late, and we had a frost last night, with the mercury down to -2C / 28F. As I type this, at nearly 10pm, the mercury is at its highest over the past 24 hours, namely 7C / 45F. The rest of the country is beginning to shiver under the first hard frost of the season. The Scottish Borders are down to -4C at the moment. This may not seem much for those of you in the States, who are used to temps to zero Fahrenheit if not below.

I'm continuing my perusal of WW1 service records, and some of them are not a credit to the soldiers involved. There is one, whose name I withhold, who was put on court martial for hitting a serving boy in a beertent over the head with a bottle, after he didn't get served fast enough. The soldier went AWOL for three years and was discharged in full disgrace in 1920. One other just disappeared after he was shipped over to the UK.