Pig Rumours

The Diary wishes to emulate our politicians by hotly and vehemently denying the totally unfounded rumour that he has been feeding Hughie's pigs in Hughie's absence on business.  The Diary's position on pig rearing in Ormsaigbeg is a matter of historic and long-term record: this is a nice place, and pigs make for uneasy neighbours, so the Diary wouldn't be doing anything to encourage them.

That said, the Diary was down at Bobby and Betsy's run first thing this morning, where the two seem to be getting on much better since Scarlet went back to Kilchoan.  They can be seen in this photo contentedly feeding together, with none of the quarrelling and pushing and shoving that used to go on.

Meanwhile, in a neighbouring pig run, the three new pigs have been confirmed to be sows and, so rumour has it, all are in piglet.  This means that, with Betsy the same way, we have the potential for the pig population of Ormsaigbeg to skyrocket, with upwards of forty or even fifty piglets arriving within the next few months.

It has also been confirmed that the orange sow is a Tamworth, a breed famous for escaping.  Older readers will remember the story of the Tamworth Two who became so famous that they now have their own Wikipedia page, here.  This does not bode well for Ormsaigbeg residents' carefully-tended flower gardens.

The three new sows are also now known to have come from Portuairk.  It's beyond belief that the pigs have been moved here: there's acres of ground, and some nice gardens in Portuairk for them to root around in.

We also now know that their owner is Angus-John, a Portuairk crofter.  Rumour has it that the three pigs weren't too pleased at being moved to Ormsaigbeg so one of them, probably the ginger sow, bit off the end of his finger.  An alternative story is that Angie lost his finger-end to a manhole cover.  Whatever the truth, the Diary understands that the injury is both serious and annoying to a man who works hard for his living, and therefore wishes Angie a very speedy recovery.

Talking to Angie this morning, he mentioned that he saw lights in the sky to the north and west of Portuairk around 5.30 this morning.  Almost certainly these were the aurora borealis.  The plot at the AuroraWatch website has been going mad for the last couple of days, though this may be due to a technical fault.  Nevertheless, with fine weather forecast for next week, we need to be watching the northern skies.