SID5: The Good and The Bad

The days seem to be flying past at an alarming rate. Saturday was another pleasant enough day and I carried on working outside doing maintenance. Sunday was not pleasant and I spent the day doing household chores, reading blogs, drinking coffee and doing crosswords and then making a huge blitz on all the emails in my inbox. I hardly watched any television and eventually fell into bed just after midnight. 

At the weekend The Highlands (of Scotland) were inundated by camper vans and cars of people 'escaping' from the cities of the Central Belt and England. Many are heading for their holiday homes. The infrastructure of The Highlands can hardly cope in the summer these days but no one was expecting such a raid on the already panic-buying-stricken shops. All public gathering places such as pubs and restaurants had already been closed by the Scottish Government.

The Independent needs to use commas where appropriate.
 I'm not sure why the Army needs to help McDonalds to close

All ferry services  to the Scottish Islands have stopped carrying anyone except island residents and essential services personnel and freight. The ferry and air services have been very much reduced.

So far we have no known cases in the Outer Hebrides and we'd like to keep it that way. Our medical infrastructure would struggle. Indeed the RAF had to send an Atlas A400M Transport Aircraft to Shetland to transport a critically ill virus patient to Aberdeen Hospital at the weekend.

Our weather today is storm force gales and rain and the ferries are storm-bound in port anyway today and tomorrow. I'm not going out for a walk today that's for sure. The forecast is the same for tomorrow.

Talking of storm bound my son, daughter-in-law and 2 year old grandson (who live on Lewis) are marooned in Australia. Their flights home were 'suspended' this morning (UK time). Likewise two daughters of a friend staying with a sibling in New Zealand are also marooned. 

In the meantime we must all maintain our sense of humour. The Duke of Wellington Monument in Glasgow has been the battleground in the past for students who kept putting a traffic cone on the Duke's head and the Council who kept removing it. Eventually the Council conceded that it was a huge tourist draw for photos and selfies and left it there. So it was inevitable that someone would add a mask at this time. I assume it's photoshopped but who knows.

2020: The First Day

For those who haven't already seen my seasonal wishes I direct you to Meike's wish: Welcome to 2020. May your skies be blue and your seas be calm. I hope you will manage to keep what good and happy things you have in your life, and get rid of what bothers you. Happy New Year! 

It's been a strange day and not quite the way I had intended to spend the first day of the year but then wotthehellarchiewotthehell I've enjoyed it so far. I just haven't really achieved anything much of the things I set out to do. Will it alter anything in this world? No. And I have managed to keep up in Blogland.

This is a photo taken this morning New Zealand time (ie 2 January) in Havelock North by Martin from my New Zealand Family. That is the sun. It is almost blanked out by smoke from the fires in Eastern Australia. Sydney is 2365k /1437 miles away from Havelock. I'm sure that all my readers will be aware of the enormity of the fires which have been burning since September and now engulf huge swathes of Australia. To give a European perspective that is the distance between Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis off the West Coast of Scotland and Belgrade, Sarajevo and Rome.

The global effects of the fires in so many ways are demonstrated rather well by this photo. 

Oddly I have just had a notification from New Zealand One News with a bulletin about the fact that this is the second day that New Zealanders have woken up to a 'blood orange sun'. In some places the sun is a dark red. 

Let us all hope for better things in the coming weeks, months and years.