Friday 4 March

As sunny as Thursday was, so grey was Friday. A thoroughly featureless and at times nearly foggy day. Not without excitement, although I suppose the crew of the Symphonie would not particularly appreciate the breakdown of their vessel as excitement. This Bayonne-registered vessel, crew 14, broke down just before 4 am, and the RNLI lifeboat went out to tow it into Stornoway. The two vessels arrived at 11 am. Two other rescues have had to be effected over the past 24 hours, one involving a ship off Benbecula whose cook was injured after a fall. The other was from another fishing vessel who had an unwell crewmember who required transfer to hospital. Conditions were difficult at sea.

The famous Stornoway black pudding (a type of blood sausage) has been put forward for special protection status, to prevent people from elsewhere in Scotland (or indeed the island!) from pinching the famous name for their own poor imitations. Consultation has closed, and the Scottish Government will now apply to the European Union for this special status. It has already been awarded to champagne and Parma ham.
Black pudding? Can't stand the stuff, way too rich for me.

Thursday 3 March

A cloudless and windless day, with the barometer quite high at 1039 mbar, 30.7 inches. Anticyclonic brilliance, except that cloud does move in from the west, obscuring the sun after lunchtime.

I recently obtained the war diaries for a battalion from the First World War, the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders. They were active on the Western Front, and about 110 of their number from the Isle of Lewis were lost in action. I have opened a new blog, in which I am transcribing the diary entry for a day in which a Lewisman was lost. See more here.

I am also cleaning up the transferred blog entries from Arnish Lighthouse, which was initially hosted on the BBC Island Blogging website. It is now hosted on an independent website, but the transfer missed some entries, the picture links don't work and the comments are not there. However, I only have the posts from March to December 2006 left to do.