Wednesday 9 January

An increasingly bright day, with phenomenal sunset colours. Went into town this afternoon for a handful of small items in the shops. Included in those were some lightbulbs, filament bulbs to be precise - not all old fittings will take the new long-life ones. Mind you, they do have special long-life ones, but they cost something like £8 each. The old-fashioned ones are only £2 each. Filament bulbs burn out quickly here, because of surges in the electricity supply. Over Christmas, there were repeated powercuts, and those tend to get preceded by a surge.

Tuesday 8 January

A fairly bright day, although not very warm. Spent most of the day catching up with things like postcards, Christmas cards, photographs, and file management on the computer. A freight ship was in port, the Nordstern, which was delivering coal or roadsalt or something like that.

It was announced that jobs are under threat in the local salmon processing industry, in the plants at Marybank (north of Stornoway) and Arnish, across the bay from the town. Economic and biological reasons are quoted, but in an economically fragile area like the Western Isles, any job losses have a larger impact than might otherwise be the case.