The Real World

Sometimes it can be hard to recall, when one is away on holiday, that the real world is carrying on as normal at home.   

I have missed this month’s meeting of the Book Club but will be home in time for next month’s and the book that has been chosen is Kate Atkinson’s ‘Life after Life’.  Brother-who-blogs had a copy on his shelves and I am two thirds of the way into it.  I’m not sure I would continue if it were not for it being the Book Club’s book and yet I may end up liking it.  We shall see.

Most of the other reading I have done while I have been up here on Lewis has been from GB’s collection of books on the Western Isles.  I always find it fascinating to read about places while I am there but usually there is so little time before one’s holiday is over and one is thrust back into the real world.  Two  books I have especially enjoyed this visit are ‘A Guide to Point’, edited by Liz Chaplin (2014) and 'Lewis in History and Legend - the East Coast' by Bill Lawson (2015).  I was also fortunate to find on the Co-op charity stall Joan Burnie's 'Postbus Country' about the Scottish postbus service from 1968 to 1994. A book just up my street single track road.

Also carrying on in the real world has been Partner-who-loves-tea.  She has been working her shoes, socks and toe-nails off as she has done all year.  At least she will get a chance to relax a little from now on as she arrives on Lewis today. We travel back together at the start of next week.  She will be away from home for eight whole days.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed the weather picks up for her but at the moment it is somewhere between those two wonderful words that GB uses – dreich and pish… (historically regarded as a dreich corner of Britain, Scotland's very name comes from the Greek word for “dark”).

And I have no doubt that lots of postcards will have been arriving at home.  Hopefully those that have gathered on the doormat so far will be brought up by Partner-who-loves-tea.  My postcard blogs must be hundreds behind now and will never catch up but I shall aim to put a few on when I get home.

That's enough of the real world for now - let's get back to Life on Lewis...

 

Stornoway sculptures

Sammy and Friend
Stornoway’s latest sculptures – a pair of seals – have hauled themselves onto the gravel outside the old Town Hall.   

There will probably be a competition to choose names for them.  One suspects that one name will be Sammy – I wonder what the other will be?



Ravens

These Raven sculptures for West Side Primary School at Barvas on Lewis (2012) were designed by Helen Denerley, born in Roslin, Midlothian, and now living in Aberdeenshire.

The Herring Girls

In Stornoway the work of women in the heyday of the Herring fishery is commemorated by two statues, one on North Beach Quay and the other on South Beach Quay.  

The picture above shows a herring girl working gutting a herring. The girl has a barrel similar to those that were used in the herring industry throughout the 19th and 20th century.

Sepia Sunday

Gneiss

For those who want to know the detail of these rocks on the shore at Barvas - 

Most of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland have a bedrock formed from Lewisian gneissd (pronounced 'nice'). In addition to the Outer Hebrides, they form basement deposits on the Scottish mainland west of the Moine Thrust and on the islands of Coll and Tiree.  These rocks are largely igneous in origin, mixed with metamorphosed marble, quartzite and mica schist with later intrusions of basaltic dikes and granite magma. 

Alternatively, you can just accept that they are attractive and leave the rest to the geologists!