Of Skinny Lib and Snipe

Since my teens I have weighed seven and a half stone and had a waist which was 28 inches . The latter increased to about 29 inches when I was in my late 20s. Lots of folk would love a figure like that but I warn you its no fun standing sideways at a bus stop and having them go past because the driver didn't see you. I was over five foot ten at the age of twenty but have now shrunk to five nine.

In my teens it was so difficult to buy clothes off the peg that I had to have my shirts, suits and trousers made to measure. While I was at college a bloke actually tried to found an organisation called Skinny Lib to campaign for clothes manufacturers to make things to fit the likes of me. And every time I sought life insurance I had to have medicals because I was underweight.

Every so often when my doctor has changed or added to my medication he has warned me that I might put weight on - Ho! Ho!


But now it has happened. Six months ago my tablets were changed again. And in the last few months I have put on two stone and two inches around my waist. I am now almost my correct weight for my height. The problem is that if I carry on shrinking and putting on weight at this rate I reckon by the end of 2010 I shall be a four foot round ball weighing 20 stone. Perhaps I'll be able to market myself as a giant Christmas pudding.


GB's weather recorder packed up a for a while this morning, I hadn't actually examined it until then. I tend to look out of the window and stick my head out of the door. When it started working again I took a look at it. It tells you the temperature, wind speed, wind direction, rainfall, humidity, and a host of other things.


I think I'll probably carry on looking out of the window and going in the garden to stick a wet finger in the air. I'm a bit slow to catch up with the 21st century.


At home in Pensby the occasional Blackbird song, Starling noises and mewing Buzzards accompany the twitter of the House Sparrow during the day. The highlight comes when a Dunnock sings or an Oystercatcher pipes its way past. Here at GB's the bird sounds are entirely different. It is lovely to hear the Skylarks singing and last night the Snipe could be heard drumming across the crofts. F W Headley, in a letter to the magazine Nature in 1904, described it as a " loud throbbing hum that startles one when it suddenly descends from an ethereal height, and the small bird is descried, hardly more than a speck to the naked eye, circling round in wild career, and now and then swooping headlong downwards and thrilling the air with his weird music". Last year one swooped within a couple of feet of me during daylight on the croft and gave me the fright of my life. Just one of many unforgettable experiences the Hebrides have given me.