I am angry. Every day I have to meet afresh the reality that islanders have ZERO say in our own destiny. We are doomed to have policy done to us by people who know nothing about the islands, and care even less. When are we going to take some control back? And how?

You’ve heard of ‘The Silence of the Lambs’, but what about ‘The Racket of the Birds’? This is my garden, and the riot of noise happens several times every day. Is it cat-related, maybe?

Tonight I was reelected for a further term on the Stornoway Trust. I am delighted to be afforded the privilege to do something I genuinely love & get a real kick out of. Congratulations to my four colleagues also.

This was very nearly me, descaling the Dolce Gusto. My pet hate is ‘instruction manuals’ in picture form. There’s a reason why entire university departments were founded to study hieroglyphics.

Nine years since he left us. This was taken on the most perfect day - we were on the Neil Gunn walk in Dunbeath and simply delighted with the day and with one another. Memories are such a blessing.

The othering continues. Sadly, some people are attracted by the othering, and come to live here in order to perpetuate it. This is a real community, with real people and real socio-economic problems. We need carers, tradesmen etc, not Tom & Babs Mk II.

express.co.uk/travel/article…

Both myself and Mole try to follow the great Biblical exhortation, ‘do not despise the day of small things’. It’s very easy when your life is filled with lovely people, things & experiences - all good and perfect gifts from above.

For the first time in ages, I had to give someone my mobile number and I genuinely didn’t know which one of two I’d memorised was correct - one number being mine, and the other my late husband’s. He died almost nine years ago; how can his mobile number still be in my head?

Mmmm, peaty . . .

‘Shabby indeed, and small and poorly furnished, and yet his, the home he had made for himself, the home he had been so happy to get back to after his day’s work’. I so identify with Mole.

Indeed. This is why bald statements like ‘the Western Isles need 1500 new families’ are less than helpful. This is a complex and multi-faceted problem: plantation won’t work any better now than it did in 1598.

welovestornoway.com/index.php/arti…
Why has protecting our heritage got to be seen through the lens of any ‘industry’?

Was enjoying a nice dinner out with a pal at the weekend . . . until the waitress came over & asked, ‘does it taste alright’ in a doubtful tone. Most unsettling choice of words which I’ve been pondering ever since (food was A1).

Thanks, Sherlock & Pages - I plan to sit up till the wee, small hours reading this.

This morning’s view from my bedroom window. I flatly denied to a friend on the phone last night that we’d had any snow . . . I was wrong!

What a great opportunity for someone, even if it does mean going to Skye sometimes . . . (Kidding, please don’t write letters - Leòdhasaich are hardwired to say stuff like that about ‘the small plug of land, stopping the flow of water in the Minch’).

Drinking a tea called ‘Love Potion’ out of my Valentine’s mug. Awwwww . . .

Am feeling slightly bad for my derisive laughter this morning when a BBC Scotland journalist asked if Scotland could win today. And even more so my derisive ‘definitely not’ when he added ‘. . . in Wales’. Shows what I know.

For the avoidance of doubt, having lived with ‘the Isle of Lewis’ all my life, I don’t object to it. What I was bellyaching about was people calling it ‘the isle’. (Harris also suffers). Its ’the Isle of Lewis’, ‘Lewis’ or ‘the island’ - never ‘the isle’.

Powerful front page from The Herald tackling one of the biggest issues in the Highlands and Islands. And producing the newspaper from the Highlands in an historic first. Well done.