Wednesday 16/11/05

Bright but cold morning, 4C, with occasional hail showers. The guest goes to his fire extinguishers at 9 o'clock, mrs B goes to see a vampire and I sort out my stacks of paper. Over the weekend, 4 youths were discovered in a storage depot up the road, formerly a Harris Tweed mill. They vandalised a car by bashing all its windows in, and a caravan by spraying the windows with paint. They had rigged up a Xmas tree to a car battery. It's a quiet day, just for a change. A flotilla of ducks has taken up residency in the basin outside the front. Ferry is in later than scheduled at lunchtime. Generally the consensus is that we had an atrocious week, weatherwise last week; the weather is nobody's fault, but breakdowns are. As is a decision to sail in stormforce winds, which were forecast, although the formal warning came out a bit late. I sent an email to the Met Office expressing my concern over the absence of a galewarning for NW Scotland, until it was too late. It was issue at 10 a.m., but then the decision to set forth had been taken. After supper, mrs B's sister comes to call. She normally lives on Tyneside and came on the plane. She smokes like chimney stack. Bedtime around midnight. It's very cold; temperature around 0C, Eskdalemuir at -3C at that time.