Oh No! Yet More Pigs!

It was going to be a bad day anyway, despite the stunning weather, starting as it did with a trip to Tobermory to see the very pleasant lady dentist - picture shows Rubha nan Gall lighthouse from the 8.00am Kilchoan-Tobermory ferry, with the white houses of Ormsaigbeg strung out in the distance.

Tobermory Bay was crowded with pleasure craft, but in amongst them were two RN patrol boats.  This is P264, HMS Archer, a ship we've seen before in these waters.  Presumably they were paying a courtesy call to Tobermory, but shortly after our ferry docked they were....

....out in the Sound of Mull with the Tobermory lifeboat.  The boat here is P164, HMS Explorer.  There will probably be something on the very good Tobermory RNLI Facebook page about the exercise shortly - it's here.

Tobermory is a pretty little town even in the wet, but today, with the coloured houses reflected in the bay, it was stunning.

To salvage something useful out of the morning, and to divert myself from an aching tooth, I called in at Hughie's shed as he'd said there was something interesting to see in there.  What I found was a very sweaty Hughie shearing the sheep from Tom Bryson and Alasdair Cameron's crofts, with Iain Peyton assisting by catching the sheep and feeding them through to Hughie.  Tom will put more about the shearing on his blog, Craigard Croft, shortly.

But what Hughie intended to show off wasn't his shearing prowess, which is considerable, but this - yet another batch of piglets from Betsy.  There are nine this time, all pink and black, though presumably Bobby's the father.  Talking of him - he's off courting other ladies at this tender, maternal time, though perhaps 'courting' isn't the right word.

I left Hughie's barn with a headache to add to the toothache.  Readers must understand that we've just had more bad pig news.  Hughie has sold one of Betsy's earlier litters to the crofter on the other side of our house, so we are now utterly surrounded by pigs - and she's talking of buying two more off him.  This one, who takes after her mother in having a very sweet disposition, is called Dusty.