Tuesday 19 June

A cool but bright day, with the mercury still stuck down at 12C and no further rain to speak of. The grand total for this month is 6 mm, a quarter of an inch. However, the forecast is for copious amounts of rain later in the week, which gives us a chance to make up for nearly 3 weeks of drought. It may seem like an exaggeration, but people are complaining of football pitches that bear a resemblance more to concrete than a grassy lawn; grassy lawns that have turned brown and yellow; and low water levels in rivers. I also found out that on Saturday evening, a few hours after I visited the fire-stricken area near the Creed River, fire once more flared up. I could not help but notice that it felt warm near the Creed Bridge - warmer than in the Castle Grounds or along the nearby Arnish Road.

I have gathered further information on 13 WW1 casualties from Lewis, my on-going project. The total is 258 to date; just over 1,000 left to do. Another project is the indexing of the Napier Report, which will take me quite a while. For the moment, this is an Excel file; I'll have to think of a way to put this on the WWW.

Locally, a Russian cargo-ship was halted off the north coast of Scotland, apparently near the Western Isles. The Alaed allegedly carried attack helicopters, bound for Syria. The company had had its insurance cancelled, meaning that the vessel could not proceed on its journey. The British Foreign Secretary has now announced that the Alaed is on its way back to Russia. The last recorded position of the Alaed was 40 miles north of the Butt of Lewis, at 1.37 am yesterday morning.


Image courtesy www.vesseltracker.com