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.

Wellington Water Bombing

I'm sure that most places in the world discourage such pursuits as water bombing in a public place such as a harbour inlet in the city centre. Not New Zealand. Not Wellington. The city has actually constructed special platforms to enable it to happen. And people have lots of fun taking advantage of it and watching too.

 

Six Quick Weeks

It is just over six weeks since I left Scotland. It's been six strange weeks. Very little has gone to plan: Pauline and I didn't have our planned safari and other visits I'd planned for last week were cancelled because I ended up in the Emergency Ward about 10 days ago with an infection and some other odds and ends I won't bore you with. The last week has had its ups and downs but I'm now feeling okay and the doc has pronounced me fit to fly. In a few hours I will leave Napier and by 2100 hours I should be in the air on the way back to Scotland via Dubai and a short stop in Australia. I arrive back in Scotland on Thursday (UK time) and on Lewis on Tuesday the 22nd.

Please don't think I've not had an great time. I have. It's just not been the time I intended. Instead I fell back into my usual life here. It has been good. I've cemented some friendships and, because I've been staying with The Family, my time with them has been wonderful.

I had intended to do almost daily blog posts but, despite masses of material, that just hasn't happened and I seem to have spent very little time in Blogland. Ironically last week when I cancelled travel plans and therefore had more time to blog, the infection and the cure (which of the two was worse I'm not sure) left me nauseous and lethargic.

So you may be getting posts about New Zealand for a while to come.

In the meantime I'll leave you with Max Patte's Solace in the Wind on the Wellington waterfront. Somehow that wasn't the title I had in mind (the significance of 'wind' by the way is, I assume, because Wellington is known as The Windy City).