Surviving the Winter Weather

There are as many ups as downs to the coming of real winter weather. The loss of the electricity and water supplies, the failure of the mobile signal, the hail with its accompanying lightning strikes - we had one again this morning - which take out telephone connections, burn out phones and blow up broadband routers, are all a nuisance but can be overcome in the short term. The worst aspect of winter is the seemingly unending grey of the rainy days like today when, writing this at 11.00am, there's another gale blowing and it is hardly light enough to take a photo outdoors. Picture shows Mingary House from the Cal Mac pier.

The occasional fall of snow - this one occurred on the 10 December - gives a wonderful monochromatic texture to the landscape. The view looks across Kilchoan Bay to the rocks on the far side, black because they've been swept of snow by the tide; then across the white stretch of salt march to the dark line of the trees, with the houses of the village hidden amongst them. Beyond, a heather-clad hill, brown with a powdering of snow, rises to the stark blackness of a pine plantation. In the distance stands Beinn nan Losgann, the hill of the frog or toad, where the snow has collected deep on its lower slopes and blown against the sides of the pine forestry. The white summit of Beinn an Losgann is bare of trees.

Again on the positive side, winter brings old friends visiting. In the last few days we've had both coal tits and siskins back at the nut feeders, and the goldfinches, which deserted us in the autumn in favour of the abundant thistle seeds, are beginning to drift back and pick fights with the chaffinches.

For all of us, whether its the birds along the waterfront like these oystercatchers or the sheep in the fields, it's a hard time. A number of crofters have commented on how quickly their animals have lost condition, and we can hardly walk anywhere without seeing hunched figures struggling across the fields to deliver pellets or silage to their beasts. What keeps us humans going is our sense of community, that we're all in it together and, when things go wrong, there's a neighbour who will help - and, almost as important, there's always someone with whom we can laugh at our shared tribulations.