Tuesday 27/12/05

Nice sunny morning, but with a little more cloud than yesterday. There is also more wind, which accentuates the low temperatures. 6 C is not bad, particularly in comparison to the -5 at Aviemore and the snow that blankets eastern England. Metcheck is awash with with people wanting to know to the nearest minute when their snow is going to start. And fill 75 posts with irrelevant chitchat. I therefore post a request to please stick to reporting, and discussion to be moved to the Forum. At 1.30pm, we go out in the car to Ness. Fortunately, nothing happens along the way, and we duly arrive in the area at 2.20. Drive to Port of Ness, then through Five Penny to Eoropie. Mrs B wants to have a look at the house of a friend, who used to live there. Then we walk to the beach. People are fishing. There is a magnificent swell, with rollers of about 7 ft high. It's cold though, the thin wind making it less pleasant. Next port of call is Port Skigersta, where I have not been before. As we are there, the sun sets in a blaze of orange. We head back to Stornoway along the Cross Skigersta Road. Speeddevils fly past us on the A857, people just don't learn, do they. In the supermarket, lots of stuff is marked down. Cranberries for 12p, instead of the usual £1.99. No papers left. A few strange stories from the general news. A group of youths went to the house of another youngster, to have a word. When his dad says he wasn't there, they set about trashing the family car. More humourously, a man had falled asleep at the Rangers Supporters Club, which contains a bar. He was not noticed by barstaff as they locked up, but he awoke at 5.25 a.m. He rang police to ask them to help out in his predicament, saying he was at the Sea Angling Club. The police got the manager of that place out of his bed, but nobody was found. The man was still locked inside the Rangers Club rang police again, sheepishly admitting that he was there, not at the SAC.