NIMFY

The 'Not In My Back Yard' people have it easy: we've got them in our FRONT Yard. Our glorious twenty-five mile view across the Sound of Mull to Tobermory and Ben Talla now has.... pigs in the foreground.

The threat has been there for weeks, ever since Hughie MacLachlan's sow produced ten little piglets. He informed us then that he would be moving them to Ormsaigbeg as soon as he could, to a 'field near you'. We hadn't fully appreciated the 'near' bit, not when there's 260 square kilometres of West Ardnamurchan where they could have gone.

So they arrived last night, one sow and the ten little horrors. They certainly looked pleased with their change of scenery. They've been in a corner of Hughie's shed since they were born a month ago - Diary report here - and were soon oinking around their new home.

The mother set about ploughing the place up, nose into the turf, snuffle, snuffle, and some of the more forward pigs, particularly the white one with the black face in the centre of this picture, were soon copying her. They're certainly a busy little family.

They're penned in with an electric fence run off an old car battery. This is totally inadequate in the opinion of local residents, who are absolutely certain that, as soon as they've got over their initial excitement, they'll be through the fence and ploughing up our front gardens and - horror of horrors - our carefully tended vegetable patches.

Hughie looked as pleased as the pigs once he had them settled in, so we asked him up for a wee dram to explain one or two hard facts - like he'll be hearing from us in no uncertain terms if any pigs get into our property. More, we're setting up a residents group called 'Pigs Out of Ormsaigbeg' to fight any further porcine incursions. We've applied for charitable status and we're already talking to local planners. He didn't seem at all worried, assuring us that they wouldn't get through the fence.

We'll see....