Collapse of stout party...

Phew, wind's getting up again...these gales are getting a bit wearisome.
Amazed to hear about the Stornoway lorry driver who saw a sheep flying past his windscreen...I've never seen that, but it's possible that the native Shetland breed is less aerodynamic than the Hebridean equivalent...I have seen one apparently levitating over a fence.
Funniest thing from the Ananova news website I've seen in years was this, which almost sent me into complete hysterical collapse on air this afternoon:
"A Croatian widow has submitted a pickled cucumber for a place as the world's oldest in the Guinness Book of Records.
Vera Dudas, 73, from Duga Resa, says the cucumber was pickled by her mother-in-law when her late husband was born in 1930.
She has now had the cucumber insured. She says it's her only reminder of her husband Pavao who would have turned 76 this year.
Vera said: "Unfortunately, the cucumber has survived longer than Pavao.
"I remember my entire married life when I look at that cucumber, it was with us everywhere we ever lived and through all our experiences - good and bad."

Well. Quite.

Breezy

Big south westerly gales do this kind of thing in the Shetland Isles.
All the power went off in Hillswick in the early hours of Wednesday, thanks to winds gusting up to 11 (Nigel Tufnell would have loved it). Last time this happened, a window blew in at The Radiocroft, and almost next door, this trailer fell victim to the breeze on Wednesday. No injuries, thank God.
Yesterday marked the anniversary of the terrible tragedy in Uist, when five members of the same family were killed during a hurricane by wind-driven flooding.
Could the same thing happen in Shetland? Well, probably not. Shetland is nowhere near as low-lying as the Uists and Benbecula, there are few vulnerable causeways linking islands, and vulnerable coastal communities have been heavily protected by armouring, paid for by public money. That includes our own house, which is only a few metres from the sea and has flooded very badly in the past. In Lerwick, there are of course the Lodberries, houses built out into the sea and often incorporating boathouses. Most have always accomodated the ocean, more or less!
We have taken our own extensive anti-flooding measures since renovating our house, but perhaps the key difference between Shetland and the Western Isles is the financial muscle wielded by the local council (thank you, Big Oil), and the will to act on behalf of islanders. I simply cannot imagine anything like the Uist tragedy happening in Shetland. But if it had, I have absolutely no doubt that the council, for all its myriad sins, would have moved heaven and earth to ensure nothing like it ever happened again. And quickly too. It would appear that has not happened in the Western Isles.
The weather is gusty but bearable at the moment, though the forecast is for more gales at the weekend. As I'm booked on the boat to go south on Sunday night, this is not a pleasant prospect. To the Phenergan!

Old pictures...

This is a Wolseley, and it's the car that dominates my memories of childhood. Even though my father tells me it gave him "nothing but trouble", as I suppose you'd kind of expect from a British vehicle this old...cars nowadays may have less character, but my goodness they work.
I can remember long overnight journeys from Glasgow to the south of England, one sister asleep in a carry cot, the other on the rear parcel shelf, me on the floor, on cushions packed either side of the transmission tunnel. Seatbelts? You must be joking...
I had these pictures on 35mm slides (boxes and boxes given to me ages ago by dad) and before Christmas Tesco in Aberdeen, without fuss, transferred 30 or so onto CD and provided two sets of prints for a tenner in total. Not bad, I thought. the pictures themselves were all taken on a Braun Paxette, a lovely wee German camera from the 1950s. I still have one, though the winding mechanism is broken.
The other picture illustrates the defining influences on my childhood, apart from internal combustion engines, that is: Religion, in the form of Bethany Hall in Troon, and its Sunday School, plus music, which was an integral part of life in the Brethren. The picture shows, circa 1962, one of the summer open-air Sunday Schools at Troon prom. I am not the lad in the kilt belting out (probably) Store Your Treasure In The Bank of Heaven. I think that's someone called Alistair MacHaffie.
Ahem: let me see if I can remember the words, though:
Store your treasure in the Bank of Heaven
Where no thief can steal away
There you'll find it safely waiting for you
When you get to heaven (stamp stamp)
One day.
I could go on for hours in similar vein...but I won't. That's enough nostalgia.

Some snaps from last year to this, using my birthday camera

Just a wee collage, showing, variously, the coward's view of Eshaness this morning (9th January, so windy I could hardly stand; force nine gusting more); two shots of sunrise on 1st January, 2006 (around 9.00 am); a boat just along from our house, not mine; a remnant of the MOD presence at Eshaness, taken this morning; Hillswick from the Manse, around 9.00 am, New Year's Day; a corner of the kitchen during my birthday do. My dad.
All taken on the new Samsung PRO815, which is the size and weight of an SLR, but has a built-in (on?) zoom lens of colossal zoomability. It's all-singing, all-dancing, and so far I can make it sort of mumble and shuffle. Advice from Bruce, neighbour and ace landscape photographer, is to wrap it in clingfilm if out in windy, seaspray-laden conditions. Like today. Oops... 

2006 and all that

30th: Bang crash wallop. Bash Susan's borrowed/rented pick-up into sister's rental Corsa. Not good. Completely fed up and knackered.
31st: I am 50. Surprisingly good. Party starts at 3.00pm and continues for around 12 hours. Great music, food, moderate drinking. Only big disappointment is Scotch Malt Whisky Society bottling of 12-year-old Aberlour which tastes like bad schnapps. Millions of great presents and lovely people. It was...emotional.
1st: Glorious, crisp, sunny day. Walks, Busta for fantastic meal courtesy of the lovely Joe and Veronica, Lost in Translation on projection DVD...roads very slippy but no more accidents thank goodness.
2nd: Back to work. Huh! If you can call it work...