https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Uistlady/Uistlady writes about life in the Outer Hebrides of Scotlandhourly12000-01-01T12:00+00:00https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Uistlady/580414In small island communities, a death is always shattering. The population of the southern Outer Hebrides is about 4,000, and dwindling, so every inhabitant is highly valued. Yesterday we lost one of our neighbours, a man only in his early forties, to cancer. He leaves a wife and two young sons....https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Uistlady/579918Yesterday I was called by a couple of daily newspapers to take pics for a story which had attracted their interest. An inn/hotel not too far from where I live has just been bought by the Free Church of Scotland to convert into a church. This tickled the papers’ imagination, because on the...https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Uistlady/579732I've started a new blogit in Fiction, called A New Short Story Every Day. In it, I challenge myself to write a short story every day for a year. I'm doing it to sharpen my fiction writing and to force that daily discipline which is so required, while I try and finish my novel, and do all that...https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Uistlady/579723Full moon again. That means one or other of us is up early. This time it’s Mr Mac who at 4am declares he can’t sleep. He gets up and makes coffee and toast- my favourite smells to be wafting through a house, so I enjoy this and drift a while. The wind is back, but this time it’s more gentle. It...https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Uistlady/579065We’re enduring nasty gales again, after a fortnight of calm. Even our ferry was cancelled this morning, a mark of how extreme the weather is at the moment. I’ve been keeping an eye on our resident wildlife to see how they’re faring. We have three lapwings (curracag in Gaelic) who have taken...https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Uistlady/578165On a mild, sunny afternoon yesterday we went walking on the beaches of the RSPB reserve at Balranald. The tide was far out so we were able to splosh over those soft ridges it leaves behind and watch where worms below the surface were throwing up their little sandy coils, like rope round a...https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Uistlady/577625This morning I returned to the beach of the seaweed and sea glass that I blogged about previously. I remember saying then that the beaches are never the same twice here, and can confidently rest my case. There was no sign of the seaweed invasion, barely a shell or stone on the beach, and...https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Uistlady/577471I was clearing out my handbag the other day, when I found something which left me completely stumped. Handbag de-junking is normally quite therapeutic, binning all those crumpled receipts and old tissues, and rediscovering earrings and hair accessories (and the rest) you thought you’d lost...https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Uistlady/577070The trip from our home on North Uist to the Scottish mainland involves an hour and 45 minutes on board the MV Hebrides, a huge and lovely £53million ferry which has been plying our route since 2001. It takes us to Uig in Skye, from whence it’s around three hours drive to Inverness, or five to...https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Uistlady/576794Our internet went down during storms on Saturday and it turned out one of the relay masts had fallen to bits in gusts allegedly reaching 120 mph. I could rant about how through flawed official thinking we have been tied into a monopoly broadband service, delivered wirelessly, and cannot switch...