Sunday 31 July

July is going out on a dreich (wet, grey and breezy) note. A fine drizzle punctuated the afternoon. As I type this (9.40pm), it has dried up, but it remains very overcast and dull. A cargoship, the Bondenau, came into port, this afternoon, when conditions looked like this. Bear in mind that the ship is less than a mile away from where I took the pic. And it's not the small boat I'm referring to!


The ferry was once again delayed by technical problems this afternoon; a mooring rope had gotten into the ship's propellor, and a diver had to go down to get it off. The Isle of Lewis finally departed at 5pm, and she won't be back much before midnight tonight. That's a bit better than the 5 am she turned up last Monday morning, instead of the scheduled 9pm on Sunday.

I was asked to look into someone's connection to the Isle of Lewis, only to discover that the ancestor they had referred to was in fact an illegitimate child. In other words, not born out of a marriage. We are talking early 20th century here, when there was a different attitude to these events. The relevant page on the birth register showed two illegitimate births. The question is of course: how do you broach that subject to the person asking the question? Knowing a little about springing bad news on people, I'll just find out how much they do know. But sometimes it's better to let sleeping dogs lie.