Celebrities

I am heartily fed up with "celebrities" and "sports personalities" and the fact that their lives get splayed out on all the news media you may care to think of. The X-factor, Strictly Come Dancing, I'm a Celebrity, Get me out of Here, Big Brother, for heaven's sake. Even the mainstream news media, like the BBC and broadsheet newspapers are full of it.

Tiger Woods. He has been unfaithful to his wife and smashed his car outside their home. In other words, Tiger is daft. He is in the public limelight, as he is a good golfplayer. Doesn't he realise that when you live in a glass house, you can't afford to throw stones around? Doesn't he realise he is a role-model to young people and others around the world? However, why the hospitalisation of his mother in law had to be broadcast is beyond me.

Jade Goody. She died earlier this year of cervical cancer, but had climbed to prominence as being the dumbest Big Brother contestant ever seen. However, she did the right thing by putting her illness, treatment and death on public display. Why oh why do we have to be regaled to the fact that her husband, to whom she got married in the weeks before her death, has a season ticket to the dock in the criminal court?

Can't we have a day, a week, a month, a year (or even longer) without celebrity c**p?

Christmas decorations 2009

For the 5 years that I have been in this island, I have watched the Christmas decorations in Stornoway decrease in size and luminosity. Every year, one or other part of it no longer appears. Anyway, here are some pics of this year's display.


2009 / 2008

Visit to Coll and Back - 11 December

In the afternoon, I took the bus north to the villages of Coll and Back [marked as its neighbour Vatisker on above map], situated across the water from Garrabost. Upper Coll has a memorial cairn, but until my visit yesterday, I did not know what it was for. It turned out to be a monument to the Land Raiders of 1921, who appropriated land from landowner Lord Leverhulme. Another memorial, to the same cause, stands at Gress, 2 miles northeast of Coll.
The main objective of my trip was (once more) to photograph the war memorial at Back. 


Land Raiders' Memorial, Coll


Coll Beach


Back War Memorial


Back Free Church (and carpark)


Vatisker


Birds on a wire, Back


Abandoned machinery


Horse in croftland

Visit to Garrabost - 11 December

Ruined house


View along the main road


Church of Scotland


Free Church of Scotland


Point War Memorial


Entrance to Point War Memorial


Garrabost is a crofting township in the Point area of Lewis, 5 miles east of Stornoway. It is noteworthy that this small community has two churches, as shown above; the Church of Scotland is the mainstream church, the Free Church of Scotland was split off the CoS in the 19th century. Other schisms have occurred since, and continue to occur. A Church of Scotland has a musical instrument; the Free Church does not allow such frivolity. They sing psalms with a precentor, who sings out a line and the congregation follows suit, at its own pitch and tempo. This recording, taken at the Royal National Mod in Stornoway in 2005, demonstrates what it sounds like.

The objective of my journey was to photograph the war memorial for the Point District. I took detailed pictures of the four panels.

Saturday 12 December

Bright and sunny this morning, with only wispy high clouds about. It is cold outside, after the overnight temps dropped close to freezing. Tonight, a sharp frost is expected, with the mercury down to -6C in places in the Highlands. Count myself fortunate that I'm on the coast, so any frost won't be quite so severe.

Spent the past half hour compiling the latest hurricane bulletin for the southern hemisphere. Things are really livening up, with a cyclone about to form near Darwin in Australia, another one spinning up north of Fiji and a third forming in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The cyclone that is off the coast of India will make landfall south of Chennai in the course of tomorrow - that is of course a late northern hemisphere system. A tropical cyclone is the same as a hurricane, for reference.

More later

Friday 11 December

Brilliantly sunny day, but only 6½ hours of sunshine to enjoy. Went to Garrabost, 5 miles east of here, to photograph the war memorial for the Point district. In the afternoon, I travelled on the bus north to Back, 5 miles away, for the same purpose. At Coll, the village before Back, I located the memorial I kept seeing on passing through - and found it to be a Landraiders' Memorial, along the lines of the one at Gress, 2 miles to the north.

Pictures not yet available, will post those later tonight or tomorrow.

Award

Jeannette (Outside Looking In) has given me the Valued Blogger award. At this particular moment in time, I cannot make a choice who to pass it on to. I am very remiss in keeping up with journals reading, but I would like to dedicate it to all of you who are currently battling ill health and / or serious disease.

Picture sites

Apart from storing my pictures on flickr.com, I am now also keeping a photo journal on blipfoto.com. The title is Castle Town, bearing in mind that Stornoway has a castle, and so has my home town in Holland. Blipfoto only allows 1 picture per day, but gives you the opportunity to write a blogpost with the pic. For reference, I have put my Dutch pics on a different Flickr site, with the username Veluweman. I am considering merging the two, if only not to have to pay the Pro fee twice. 

Hurricane update - 10 December

A developing tropical cyclone is located northeast of Darwin, Australia. The system, prosaically entitled 92P, is traversing the Arafura Sea, parallel to the northern coastline of Arnhem Land. BOM Australia has placed portions of the coastline under tropical cyclone watch. Please follow the link for details.

Thursday 10 December

A bright and sunny day, if not very warm. The mercury reached 9C this afternoon, but is currently nosediving towards freezing (2C at the moment). The tanker is delivering another load of petrol, diesel and other fuels.



This afternoon, I was in Borve to sample (with others) the delights of the Borve House Hotel, which serves a very creditable lunch (and other meals). Borve lies 17 miles north of Stornoway, on the road to the Butt of Lewis. The drive there, out by bus, back by car, was very scenic in the low, December light. Returned to Stornoway at 4pm, in time to admire the Christmas decorations. I'm going out at some stage this week after dark to picture them. Here are some of this afternoon's photographs.


Point Street, Stornoway


Sunset near Barvas


Borve


Barvas Moor road

Wednesday 9 December

A lively day in terms of weather, with a thunderstorm at sunrise (9 am) and a second downpour at midday. It got so dark at 12 o'clock that the lights had to be put on. Only for the sun to come out 15 minutes later. Never a dull moment in this neck of the woods.

I've been trawling this town's stationery shops for photo paper, and finally managed to locate some at a half-decent price. I also got myself a diary for 2010, again at a lower price than I had originally anticipated. The successor to Woolworths in Stornoway, a shop called Wee W, was a tad disappointing when I looked for the above two items.

AOL / Time Warner is now once more just AOL. The business is worth only 10% of the value it had in 2001, and has lost 80% of its dial-up subscribers. Nonetheless, dial-up provision still accounts for 43% of its revenue. Not from me, at any rate - I quit AOL as a dial-up subscriber in May 2008, and abandoned its web-services after AOL jettisoned its Journals service in November 2008.

Pictures of this week so far

How do you mean, no ferry?


Decorations in the porch outside the front door


Christmas Tree


8.08 am this morning, fifty minutes before sunrise


An hour later...

Christmas decorations - intro

“Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations.  The bad news is that I had to take him down after two days.  I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever.  Great stories.  But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.
Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn’t realize that it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy).  By the way, she was one of the many people who attempted to do that.  My yard couldn’t take it either.  I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard."

Hierarchy - apologies for language

Tuesday 8 December

Put up the Christmas tree and other decorations last night. Tonight at 7.30, Stornoway's Christmas illuminations will be lit up, provided they have not been blown away in today's gale. Although it is 'only' a force 7, the southerly direction means that there is too much of a swell going in the Minch. I see some impressive waves crashing by the lighthouse, across from my position.

Was in town this morning to purchase printer ink (ouch), stamps (ouch) and what not. Anyone wanting a Christmas card from me, please leave a comment and I'll get back to you to make arrangements out of sight of the whole Internet.

Have got some pictures and images to post, which I will put up in following posts. Bear with me.

History of Scotland

The BBC's Neil Oliver has been commissioned to present a series (or two) of programmes on the history of Scotland. I've sat through three of them, and am far from impressed. Mr Oliver, who first rose to prominence as presenter of the Coast programmes, tends to digress, focus on minor details and omit the important. A previous episode appeared to be more about the American war of independence than about Scotland - for sure, Scots had some part to play in that, naturally. But it was relevent to American history, not really to Scottish. Last night's episode, on the 20th century, had more holes in it than a Swiss cheese, omitting such major events like the Glasgow rising of 1919, the Clydebank Blitz of '41, and the accession of the SNP to government - after Mr Oliver spent half the program charting the party's fortunes in the 20th century.

History is a contentious subject, and my grasp of Scottish history is not good enough to really be able to write a well-founded critique of Mr Oliver's series. Others have done that elsewhere. I can only repeat what I started my post with: far from impressed.

Credit: Image above courtesy BBC

Copenhagen

The Danish capital is playing host to a major international conference on climate change. One of the items under discussion is whether climate change is actually real. An exchange of emails, leaked from Cambridge University, appears to show the scientific community at loggerheads over the issue. Particularly those whose livelihood depends on the usage of oil tend to refer to this.

BBC News highlighted the issue of renewable energy and NIMBY'ism (Not In My Back Yard). Wind turbines tend to generate a lot of opposition from those living in the proximity of a windfarm - the Isle of Lewis has seen off one proposed windfarm on the grounds that it was in breach of an EU habitat directive. Elsewhere though, those opposing windfarm developments are accused of NIMBY'ism and narrow-mindedness. However, I will say that there is way too much focus on wind-energy as a source of renewable energy; wave- and tidal energy are actually more constant and reliable.

I can see that the Copenhagen Conference will see a lot of hot air and wonderfully phrased commitments. Whether it will lead to any major progress to fight climate change remains to be seen. To those who don't believe climate change is real: the extent of the polar ice cap has decreased by double-figure percentage points in the last few decades; the British Met Office has also released data showing that average temperatures have been on the rise in recent times.

7 December 1941

Today is the 68th anniversary of the attack by Imperial Japanese forces on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The surprise attack propelled the USA into the Second World War, eventually helping to vanquish Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Lest we forget.


Image courtesy University of Maine, showing USS Arizona on fire and sinking after the attacks.

Monday 7 December

A half-decent morning, with showers and strong winds. The wind will abate and the showers are expected to fade away. Tomorrow, gales and rain will return - more steady winter weather will arrive on Wednesday, and temperatures will fall. At the moment, it's about 8C.

All this weather did not deter the so-called flash mob which took turns protesting outside the Town Hall here in Stornoway this morning. There are plans afoot to make major alterations to the interior of the building, and this morning, internet and mobile phone messages went round for people to come and go in protest. The BBC termed it a flash mob. Footage is expected to be shown on local news this evening.

Stornoway Town Hall was built in 1905, burned down in 1918 and rebuilt in 1929. It is one of the most noticeable buildings in this town, and the interior is equally unique. As most of my readers are not familiar with the building, I won't go into the fine print of the proposals, but sufficient to say, there is a groundswell of opinion opposed to any changes. I can only say that not all change is bad.

The below picture shows the interior of the building in July 2006, when a group of Norwegian folk dancers were in full flow. 

Sunday 6 December

Bright and glary today, but cloud is increasing as a front approaches from the Atlantic. The wind is very prominent today, at force 7 at the moment, but forecast to get up to force 9, severe gale, later. The ferry, due out at 2.30pm today, is duly cancelled, as are all other cross-Minch sailings. It is a southerly wind today, which would create a heck of a swell along the islands.

Why is it that the X-factor, Strictly Come Dancing and I'm a Celebrity, Get me out of Here are so important that they warrant mentions on the BBC News? I'm disgusted. To paraphrase Marie-Antoinette and the last show I mentioned: Let them eat rats. Oh no, that won't do. Frying and eating a rat can get you prosecuted by the RSPCA. Tut.