Picture post - 9 October

The Oldest Swinger in town, Carishader



Lewis Chessman, Ardroil

Uig Sands, Ardroil

Island in mourning

The Isle of Lewis, and in particular the tiny community of Mangersta in the district of Uig, is mourning the death of local resident Linda Norgrove, who was killed in Afghanistan today. I did not learn of this loss until I called into the Uig shop at Timsgarry this afternoon, which explained the presence of the news media in the district. Mangersta, population now 28, is perched on the edge of the west of Lewis, and can ill afford the loss of one its number, particular at such a young age. I am sure the readers of Atlantic Lines will join me in extending their heartfelt sympathies to Linda's family and friends, in Uig, Lewis and further afield.

Saturday 9 October

A stunningly beautiful autumn morning, with blue skies, hardly a cloud to be seen and only a gentle breeze. The birds were out early, looking for worms and other foodstuffs. We're promised a daytime maximum temperature of about 16C / 60F, which is quite decent for this time of year. Tomorrow should see more of the same.

I've been working with the emailed updates from a selected number of blogs, and it's working very well. I've got hundreds of feeds and blogs on Google Reader, and it was getting impossible to keep up. Now, about a dozen updates each morning is quite easy to go through.

I'll have another post later today - I may go out and about this afternoon, which usually results in dozens of pictures.

Friday 8 October

A brilliantly sunny and warm day, with the mercury at the dizzying heights of 18C / 64F at 4pm. Some high-level cloud is drifting over, but otherwise it was warm enough to sit outside for lunch. I had already put the garden chairs away, but I was more than happy to put them back again. 

Spent the afternoon transcribing more evidence from the Napier Commission in Orkney, and it contains some pretty harrowing stuff - unexpected perhaps. The island of Rousay, northwest of the archipelago's capital Kirkwall, was owned by a General Burroughs. He exercised his law-enshrined powers as landowners to such an extent that his tenants referred to his conduct as "wanton and inconsiderate inhumanity", only marginally diluted to "[being treated in an] utterly inconsiderate and unrighteous manner". The island's minister, Archibald Maccallum, spoke on behalf of most of the island's crofters, followed by an interrogation of others. James Leonard requested an assurance from the landowner that none of the evidence given by him or others would lead to 'consequences' - an assurance that General Burroughs refused to give point blank. In fact, he rebutted the request by saying that if anyone was not happy, they should just go away. The case, presented by Georgina Inkster, was a good demonstration of the general's high-handed attitude. Another exampled was quoted by James Leonard:

A woman [lived] in our island whom the proprietor visited, when she was on her death-bed. She had a small croft, and he would have to leave it, because he was going to give it to another person—a stranger. She said she would never leave it until she was put to a house from which no man could remove her. He said—What house is that?—and she said—' Where I will be buried;' and he struck his stick on the ground and said, ' Would you like to be buried here on this floor?'

Thursday 7 October

Today, I was pleased to meet with a well-known writer from the West Highlands, Roger Hutchinson, whose books include Calum's Road. This tells the tale of a man from Raasay, Calum Macleod, who single-handedly built a road to his village when Inverness-shire county council declined to do so. By the time the road was made, only Calum himself was left at Arnish, Raasay. Roger is attending a conference in Stornoway about the way forward to develop the economy of the Western Isles, which uses the model of the co-operative. Spent a couple of hours in Roger's company, alongside with a mainland-based facilitator, which made for a most enjoyable afternoon and evening.


Picture courtesy Flickr-user Raasayweb, who have released the image under a Creative Commons License.

Feedblitz

Feedblitz is a service that allows you to send out your own blogposts to those who have subscribed to that service; and allows you to be notified when any of the bloggers you want to keep track of makes a new post. As far as I understand it, if you are a new user you may be required to pay after 30 days. If you have been using it since about 2007 or '08, you can continue to use it for free.

If you Google for "RSS to email", you will be presented with a list of similar service providers. If you are familiar with Google Reader (or similar feed-aggregator), this should not present you with much difficulty. Basically, you need the URL of the blogs you want to be notified about and an email address to have the updates sent to. Read the FAQ's to see if you will be charged at some point.

Wednesday 6 October

The gale did not die down until the sun rose at 7.30 this morning. Heavy showers continued intermittently through the day, although it is not really cold outside. Spent an hour in the library transcribing tributes from the Stornoway Gazette from May and June 1917. The losses continue to mount up during those months - I found nearly twenty tributes over 5 weeks.

After the Deep Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Europe has its own pollution catastrophe. A massive spill of red toxic sludge is moving downstream along the River Danube in Hungary - it has caused sludge floods of 6 to 7 feet deep near the site where the reservoir of sludge was breached earlier this week.

Blog reading

An attempt to resume a blog reading habit that has fallen by the wayside: I am manually transferring my entries on Google Reader to Feedblitz, which generates a daily digest of everybody's blog entries every night - much like the much maligned (and missed) AOL Alerts. I have just done the blogs A to D, and hope to complete E to Z tomorrow.

Tuesday 5 October

Quite a wild day, with a steady force 7 blowing from the south, gusting to 70 mph at the Butt of Lewis. The ferry is sailing (barely), with extensive disruption elsewhere in the west and north of Scotland. The sun is out, in between some beefy downpours, with the mercury at a creditable 14C / 57F. I have resumed transcriptions of the Napier Report, currently going through the evidence gathered at Sanday, Orkney.


Sanday, courtesy Flickr-user phedre934

Monday 4 October

World Animal Day today. It is not a terribly nice day, with strong winds. Although it is sunny in the morning and the early afternoon, rain comes down in buckets later on. The start of it caught me out as I ventured forth to the shop, a couple of hundred yards away. There is extensive disruption on the ferries, and our freight ferry, the Muirneag, is off. Expecting empty shelves in the shop tomorrow.

The Callanish Stones have had a third more visitors this year than the year before, meaning that the visitor centre there has struggled to cope. It was upgraded in March, but another upgrade seems likely if island's prime tourist site continues to pull in the crowds. Callanish is a 5,000 year old site, where several dozen stones, some up to 15 feet in height, have been arranged in a circle and outward in the shape of a cross. Its purpose is shrouded in mystery, but the leading theory is of a lunar calendar. From the site, the Lunar Standstill can be observed - this sees the moon rising low behind the Lochs hills (15 miles away to the east), disappearing behind Roineabhal, then reappearing to set behind the Clisham. Three years ago, I was at Callanish to observe the phenomenon: I close the post with some of those pics.

Sunday 3 October

Fairly bright this morning, but with some showers and wind about. Not warm at all, the northeasterly making the 12C feel decidedly cool.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the reunification of Germany, which brought to a close more than seventy years of upheaval in the country. After the end of the First World War, Germany was pointed out as the sole culprit for the bloody conflagration, which was not a fair assertion. WW1 was a powderkeg, carefully assembled by the combatants United Kingdom, France, Austra-Hungary, Russia, Germany and their allies over the years between 1905 and 1914.

In the Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919, Germany had crippling reparations imposed upon it, which were whittled down considerably over the years. They served to wreck the German economy, and coupled with the economic depression of the 1930s, allowed Adolf Hitler to rise to the fore with a promise to make Germany great again. World War II is held by many to be a direct consequence of the Treaty of Versailles, and by implication the result of the vindictiveness of the victorious Allies.

That error was fortunately not repeated at the end of WW2. However, the division of Europe came in the wake of the Second World War, with the Berlin Wall (erected in 1961) being the most visible manifestation of that. The Wall did not just part Berlin, it also ran along the border between East and West Germany. Anyone trying to cross the boundary line without authorisation was liable to be shot dead on sight - a fate that befell several hundred people.

Communism imploded in Europe in the late 1980s, with the advent of Michail Gorbachev in the USSR and Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II. On November 9th, 1989, the people of East Germany tore down the Berlin Wall and crossed into West Germany without proper authority. The armed forces stood by and did not interfere. Germany was reunified within a year, on 3rd October 1990, bringing not just liberty to its eastern Länder, but also a large economic burden to the western part of the country.

Although the Fall of the Wall took place on November 9th, this date was not adopted as the date of commemoration. On 9 November 1938, nationwide pogroms (or anti-Jewish raids) were held across Germany, which came to be known as the Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht. I shall remember that night of infamy on 9 November this year (as I always do), and be thankful that much has changed in the 72 years since.

Blogoversary

As I hinted a few days ago, yesterday was the second anniversary of this blog, Atlantic Lines. It was a complete change from its predecessor Northern Trip, which remains on-line as an archive of four years of blogging. AOL no longer features in amongst my on-line service providers, its functionality having been usurped by Google, Facebook and Twitter. I am contemplating a revamp of my sidebar, which has remained broadly unchanged for the past two years. Keep checking back (said he, who hardly ever reads someone else's blog these days).

Royal National Mod

It's October, and in about two weeks' time, the Royal National Mod will be upon Gaelic Scotland again. The Mod is a showcase of Gaelic culture, not just about music incidentally. It is also about dance, drama and sport. This year, the event will take place in Caithness, the far northeast of Scotland, centred on the towns of Thurso and Wick. Caithness is not in the Gaelic heartland; it has more of a Norse background to its culture. The name Caithness runs as Cataibh in Gaelic, the Land of the Cats. The neighbouring county of Sutherland has a stronger Gaelic connection - Sutherland means Southland in Norse.

In 2005, I recorded some items from the Mod in Stornoway, which you can listen to from my Mod webpage, to give you an idea.

Saturday 2 October

Quite a nice day, with warm sunshine (behind glass) and varying cloudscapes. I have caught up with the tributes from the local paper for men who were killed in the First World War. I have relocated the links to a "page" page on Blogger, the link for which appears on my Faces from the Lewis War Memorial site. I'll have to go back to the library to find more tributes from the Gazette. This paper was published from 1917 onwards, but for the first four months, I have already dug up more than 30 tributes. One of them has me in touch with the Gaelic Society of London, as it refers to the son of one of its former presidents who was killed in action. Am awaiting snailmail, as the current Chief is not on email.

As I glanced out of the window at 6.30pm, the sun is headed for the horizon, leaving me with another glorious sunset. This was the image yesterday.


And tonight is about as impressive

Friday 1 October

Not a very pleasant start to October, with wind and rain for the morning. As I type this, with the clock nearing 3.30pm, there is some brightness moving up from the southwest, but it remains windy. Next Friday will see my 6th anniversary as a blogger, which commenced in the village of Kyleakin in the Isle of Skye, some 80 miles south of Stornoway.


Fifty miles to the north, a cave on the island of Rona will see a marriage for the first time. Rona (not to be confused with North Rona, which lies 45 miles northeast of Lewis) had a population of 240 in the 1880s, but nowadays only has 2 permanent inhabitants. The happy couple, from Bolton in Lancashire, first met in the cave, shown below.

Image courtesy Panoramio.com, copyright Andrew Russon. 

Thursday 30 September

The last day of the month, with reasonable weather - there is quite a bit of brightness about, but the clouds are announcing the advent of very windy conditions through tomorrow. Tragedy has continued to affect Lochaber, the area west of Fort William. The body of a man has washed up on a beach in the Isle of Canna, prompting fears that it might be that of a missing yachtsman, Neil Mackenzie. His yacht was found near Arisaig last week. Last year, a diver who went missing at Ardnamurchan turned up on a beach on the southern coast of the Isle of Skye. No confirmation of the identity of the dead man, found in Canna, has been issued.

It is two years ago today that AOL announced they were going to withdraw their Journals service, heralding the end of J-land as we know it. We had just over four weeks to relocate elsewhere, as AOL was not even prepared to archive the journals. By Hallowe'en, they were all pulled off the Net. Many journallers did not continue on other platforms, such as Blogger or Wordpress. Facebook and Twitter have taken over parts of the function that AOL abandoned.

Wednesday 29 September

The day started very wet, but when I went to the post office, at 11 am, the rain had stopped. The sun came out after 4 o'clock, following a trip to the library for more tribute stories from the Stornoway Gazette. I also unearthed a story of a message in a bottle, that had been washed up somewhere in 1917. It had come from one of the Canaries, where three island sailors had been shipwrecked in 1916. The message requested a lady in Stornoway to be contacted to be told that her nephew was ok. The only thing was that the name given was not that of one of her nephews. The other story concerned the sailor who was found dead on the deck of the barque (a sailing ship) one morning. His remains were taken ashore at Stornoway and buried at Sandwick. The ship, the Yuba, was torpedoed five weeks later; the U-boat that fired the fatal torpedoes ran into a mine off Terschelling, Holland, at the end of August 1917 and was sunk with all hands.

I end with some of today's pictures.



Here comes the sun



A still morning


Awaiting the schoolbus

Tuesday 28 September

Overcast today, and after about 3pm, the rain started. Not amounting to very much, and the rainfall radar shows it's only a relatively narrow and patchy band of precipitation moving across from the Atlantic. Looking at the weathercharts, it appears that we're in for a gale on Friday, which could well last into the weekend.

I've been into the library this afternoon to look at ancient copies of the Stornoway Gazette (our local weekly paper) from 1917. These have been put on microfiche, and I'm looking for tributes to island men who had fallen in battle during the First World War. There is a steady trickly of these, and I'm adding them to my WW1 tribute site "Faces from the Lewis War Memorial".

Looking across the water at the Arnish Fabrication Yard, the barge that came in on Sunday is now in place alongside the quay at Glumag Harbour, and a crane is moving stuff either to or from the barge. The Yard makes items for the renewable energy industry (e.g. windturbines).

Monday 27 September

A very nice day, full of sunshine - until highlevel cloud moved in and obscured the sun. After an overnight low of only +1C, the sun managed to push the mercury up to 14C / 57F this afternoon, and out of the wind it was quite pleasant. Operation Skip is now over, following the removal of said implement to the dump. It's a quiet autumn day here in the Western Isles, with the only major news item (locally) being the community buy-out bid being launched by the villagers of Mangersta, (35 miles west of Stornoway) whose number stands at 29. They seek control of their common land, which stretches to 9,000 acres to the south and east of their township (view below courtesy Google Street View).

Sunday 26 September

A bright and sunny day, with some high cloud about but not very warm - 12C/54F at the moment. It will grow a bit milder later in the new week. Another tug-with-barge has turned up at the Arnish Fabrication Yard; I could not properly see it, as the sun was in my eye when I tried to have a look. Will carry on with the transcription of the Napier Commission Reports later.

Sunday 26 September


Saturday 25 September


Friday 24 September