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Bleeugh!! Came home on Tuesday to wet and wind and I’m wondering if I did the right thing. It doesn’t help that everyone is telling me it was lovely over Hogmanay. Actually I don’t think staying on the mainland for 3 weeks is such a good idea, the madness starts to seem more sensible, and the weather is so much more likely to get me outdoors.
Anyway, I’m back now, and my planned next trip away is looking doubtful. It took half an hour to catch up on events:- people falling out of windows, houses being sold, boats on the rocks and the West humping the East at shinty. (8 or 9 – nil I believe), although I can’t be sure as I can’t find anybody who played for the West. You would think the goal-scorers would still be bragging. I think the whole team must have been abducted by aliens.
The village is relieved to learn their water supply is now safe from terrorists. A team of three came over for a two day stay (lengthened to four because Thursday became a ferryless day) and made new hatches to the water storage tanks so now the supply can’t be tampered with. I can just see terrorist cells sitting in cramped rooms opening their ‘Atlas to Great Britain’ at random and choosing a place to target. Somehow if Arinagour got picked I think there might be a redraw. Anyhow, now it is too late. The luckless people trying to get a connection to the water supply probably don’t think this exercise was money well-spent!

The new sea defences around the pier car park are finished and the boys went away today. Their ears must have been burning as the general opinion was they were ‘really nice lads, very polite and considerate’ and ‘a good thing’. They certainly worked, and it isn’t their fault the wall is a hideous grey concrete lump and the ‘matting’ (rocks on concrete blocks) make the shore look as natural as a motorway bridge.

Coll is an ‘Initiative at the Edge’ place (which means it gets priority over funding) and there is a meeting next Wednesday to look at where ‘Development Coll’, the company running the scheme, is going. The usual outside bodies will have their say but there does seem to be an opportunity for something to happen which will be pushed from here, rather than being imposed from outside. There even seems to be some people prepared to attend the meeting. Unfortunately I’m working so can’t go, but I might have, Andrew from SNH was very persuasive!

We signed up for broadband on Sunday. I forgot to time it, but it didn’t take long. We should be fully connected on 23rd. I announced this in the pub and was told the telephone tower has been condemned and will have to be rebuilt before broadband can happen. This was an unofficial source, and I had heard it before, but it was still a bit worrying. Then a BT man came over from Tiree, except they aren’t BT now, they are Openreach, and did whatever needed doing in the exchange to enable broadband, and rang to tell us everything is fine here. He has put ten houses on broadband so far, and expects to be back very soon to do some more. This is still slow old internet because the hardware bits we need are somewhere in the postal system. I’m counting down to the time I can see the pics on the blog, instead of running out of patience and just reading the words.

Yup. I type this on broadband. Thanks to Duncan and John on Tiree and everybody else, and it was easy. In fact the instructions were so basic I could probably have followed them (but I wimped out). So now there are pics on the blog, instead of huge gaps between the writing. John from Tiree came back today so there must be more people signing up.

There was the big meeting last night with 52 members of the public. Add in the directors, all the junior school kids, and the kids away at Oban High (although I still don't understand why they were included in the attendance), and you get a very impressive turnout. And it seems like it was a positive meeting and therefore 'a good thing'. Which is almost unheard of.

Seriously, this is the start of the 'rest of the Initiative on the Edge', and although it has mainly involved Coll residents so far it (hopefully) will make a positive difference to the part-time summer swallows as well. So keep in touch, stay informed and make sure your views are heard too. End of party political broadcast.

My 'persuasive' expert wishes me to expand on his qualities, so I would like to add he has charm, looks, is an excellent listener and likes mozzarella. However the crisis must have passed as he was no longer being persuasive.