Monday 2 July

Quite a nice sunny day, except for this cool breeze. We seem to be bucking the trend nationwide, with our mainly bright and sunny weather. Over the next day or so we should see slightly warmer weather, but only for a few days. It was reported today that June was the wettest on record, with many places having more than double their normal monthly totals. Here, we only had half the normal rainfall for June.

The Big Minch Swim has now collected £15,000, after a successful weekend of fundraising in the pubs of Stornoway - more than £1,000 on Saturday alone.

Yesterday, we all lived a second longer, when a leap-second was added to our time. This was necessary, as the earth's rotation is continually slowing down. However, it is reported that certain major websites tripped over this extra second and crashed out. Google circumvented the problem by adding milliseconds through the day. 430 years ago, Pope Gregory ordained that 12 days should be omitted from the calendar.

Sunday 1 July

We've passed the halfway mark in 2012, and the days will start to draw in very soon. Sunday is always a quiet day, and today started likewise. Although it had been wet in the night, the day ended with bright sunshine as we passed the sunset hour of about 10.30pm.

I spent a little time trying to make a start with building an index for the Napier Report, but have to think carefully how that is going to pan out. You can categorise in so many ways, and the devil lies in striking a balance between too much detail and too little. The Napier Report being a session of 46,000 Q&As, you have to read carefully to determine how each question should be filed. I went as far as #150, but probably have to start from the top. So far, there are 46 headings for the index; there will be many more as I progress through the report.