Only Myself

I never ever say 'Never'. Well (to quote from 

That is how I started  a post last night at about 9.15. I'd had a long fairly physical day. I decided to vacate my usual computer position in the 'kitchen' and take the laptop through to a nice comfy armchair in the living room. I then did something fairly unusual for me: at 21:09 I fell fast asleep and woke up 1 hour and 9 mins later at 22:14. 

I must have had something in my mind to write otherwise I wouldn't have started in the way I did. The strange thing is that I have zero recollection of what I was going to say and, more to the point in some ways,  which quotation I was going to use.

I have another fairly physical day coming up starting with an appointment for my bum jab and then I go to one of my new "jobs" helping mow the lawns at the bowling club where the two usual volunteer groundsmen are out of commission. 

As I have to be in town at the medical practice in 40 minutes this is very short.

This post is boring enough so I'll enliven it with a picture of a sock. It's one of my more interesting socks in the it's not plain and it has a Christmas Robin on it. Over the washing at the weekend it disappeared.  Everyone has a disappearing sock story but the effort I've put into finding this far outweighs the importance of the sock.  I have looked everywhere including places where I looked simply for the curiosity.

Now I have to fly. Bye for now.

PS This was to let you all know I'm alive and well.

Personal Responsibility

This is, of course, a huge topic on which every one of us who read and write blogs doubtless has an opinion. However this is a very narrow area where I see a lack of personal responsibility which has led to inconvenience for the many.

Like, JayCee, I live on an Island. Off the top of my head I can't think of any others of my readers who rely on seagoing ferries as part of daily life. We need to go to the Mainland and we are reliant of goods coming in on a daily basis for our fresh food etc. In the last year or two Covid has exacerbated the situation by depleting staff and  requiring the ferry to get a new crew or to be thoroughly cleaned. The principal problem, however, is the weather.

Almost 50 years ago we had a ferry plying between Ullapool and Stornoway called MV Suilven. She was a boat originally built for use in areas with potential ice floes with which to contend. She was an incredible seaboat and all the Masters I knew sang her praises. She sailed in all weathers and, on occasion, the 3¾ hour crossing could take many more hours. She had been known to run down and hide behind the Shiants because she couldn't get into Stornoway Harbour. Everyone who sailed on her will have a tale to tell. I used to travel quite a lot and have many tales that would put you off ever coming here except in high summer.

Some years ago, I was told by a member of the ferry staff, that there had been a big outburst one day when the ferry sailed and it was very rough and people were sick and, apparently, afraid.  I can understand that because I have been afraid on several occasions when the Good Ship Suilven plied the route. 

However, it was always our choice as to whether, given the weather, we wanted to sail or go another day. 

That choice is still available and anyone who lives on the Island knows the weather conditions and what to expect and, in any case, the ferry company used to post sea conditions at the passenger entrance.

The result of all the complaints received by frightened passengers with no sealegs was that the Masters decided that if the conditions were so adverse that complaints may be forthcoming then they wouldn't sail. It appears to have been thus ever since. So the many suffer because of the decisions of the few (to sail when they could have decided against it). 

Isn't this mirrored in every area of life now? Personal responsibility has gone. The responsibility is always that of someone else - preferably of someone "in authority" and preferably someone who is employed by an organisation which can be sued for compensation.

New Home

Anyone with an exceptional memory (so that excludes me for a start) might recall that I have bird nesting boxes in the garden. The one that I've shown on the blog in the past was a 'three bay' box sitting on the north wall of my garage and visible from the house window that overlooks The Minch.

I'm sure that the view is the last thing in which  the sparrows who occupy my boxes are interested. The old box succumbed to the ravages of the Hebridean weather and old age in a northerly gale at the end of last last year and is no more.  The new boxes were too late for last year's nesting season but this year the alpha male sparrow has invited his potential mate to view the property.

"Look pretty much the same to me!"

"Well!  What do you think?"

"I think we'll have this one."

Could Do Better

I'm not sure that I ever got those words on my report cards at school - do schools still issue report cards? - but if I didn't they would still have been very appropriate.  I never worked hard at school. I detested school. My parents were good enough to save on other things and sent me (and, later, my brother) to a small private prep school in Liverpool where I was born.  The discipline was ferocious. The preparation for the 11Plus was second to none and all but the most educationally challenged (in our parlance of the day 'the thickest') did exceptionally well in the 11Plus for the Grammar Schools or entrance exams to the many private public schools in the area (my apologies to anyone from the US who is probably totally lost in the terminology). 

I won my first choice and followed a couple of years behind the exceptionally talented and totally way-out John Lennon at Quarry Bank. Quarry (Motto: Ex hoc metall virtutem - out of this quarry came virtue) was an excellent and very small (680 pupils) Grammar School which concentrated on only one thing - getting pupils to Oxford or Cambridge. Anyone else was a failure and left to drift. I was never Oxbridge material.

My Mother had always wanted me to go to Quarry because she had gone to the partner girls school next door and had loved every minute and left with flying colours and very good academic results. 

I could have done better. But I didn't.....then. 

All that was by way of trying to say that recently my blogging record has been parlous and, although I have been reading some blogs, I'm feeling a bit out in the cold. 

So I'm going to try and do better.

This was the view from my window this morning: clouds dumping snow over The Minch and Mainland Scotland.