Saturday 10 April 2010

And now.... Heatwave

Fifteen degrees in the shade and only a slight breeze - it has suddenly turned so hot that, for some, it's exhausting. For others the year's work has only just started: this mother produced her triplets late yesterday afternoon.

This neat little croft house is Lag na Lion, Flax Hollow, the photo taken today. The green of the new grass is clearly visible on the hillside, and much appreciated by the new mothers, though much of this end of the village is covered with last year's dead bracken.

My family's reaction to wall-to-wall sunshine was to take the kayaks out. With the tide falling the waves were bouncy enough to be fun but, as it turned, there was a noticeable drop in the state of the sea.

The winter behind us has been unusual in so many ways - not least that we thought we were going to weather it without a power cut. Many of us have generators at the back of our houses ready for these occasions, and they are in use several times through a normal winter; the worst outage lasted three days. But, at nine the night before last, the system reverted to type, with some 440 homes cut off from Glenborrodale westwards. Most were back shortly after eleven but, with the fault in a transformer down the far end of the village at Coilum, Ormsaigbeg stayed off until shortly after three yesterday morning. When asked, the electricity board blamed 'aging equipment'.

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