主播大秀

Saturday saw the launch of the sailing club. There has been a long wait while funding and constitutions and insurance and lots of other boring bits got sorted but at last the final hurdle (safety boat training) was jumped and the fun could start. There are 6 small boats, Tazes, and 2 bigger Magnos, except the Magnos have no rudders (lost in delivery) so couldn't be used. Probably just as well, it looked pretty chaotic with just 6 wee boats. The Middle Pier was full of people queueing up for bouyancy aids and red helmets and waiting for their turn and the bay looked lovely with the colourful sails. Even confirmed non-sailors were heard to say they might like a go. The membership probably doubled and every child who doesn't have a wetsuit yet will be hot-footing it up to An Acarsaid today to order one; it is still too cold to fall in the water without one.
There will be a temporary membership for visitors but because the tide has its own timetable (tides are still confusing for someone brought up miles from the sea) visitors will need to keep their eyes peeled for notices saying when the club will be out.

The new hall has a name. An Cridhe. It means heart and stuff, as hopefully it be at the heart of the community. As long as we stop calling it the 'Community Centre' I shall be happy, I hate that phrase. There is a meeting on Friday at the Community Centre; I don't think the old hall has ever been called that before! The architects are back next Monday with the detailed plans that I think are already being looked at by Planning. The price has gone up so hopefully they haven't had to make too many compromises at this stage, maybe someone has worked out how to hijack all that lottery money heading south to the London Olympics.

There is also a very swish report (this is a seriously swish, all-colour singing dancing report, I want one just for the maps of Coll) on putting a community wind turbine up. I am a bit concerned at the lack of choice in the report. Apparently 'small' turbines like the ones on Gigha aren't the done thing anymore, they propose an 82 metre high turbine. That is 82 metres from the base of the tower to the top, since no-one puts a turbine at sea-level it will be higher than Ben Hogh (our own little Coll munro, clocking in at about 102 metres). Some of the swish maps show where it will be visible from for each of the proposed 8 sites, although, not surprisingly, the short answer is, very visible! It is unlikely to be near me, the airport has some use (more later) and the turbine needs to be at least 2 and a half kilometres (or possibly miles) away. I remember the report writers coming here back in winter (hard to imagine winter at the moment) and there are some grey, rain-spotted photos of the Achamore road. The cattle grids would need to be removed, some 'minor' road re-aligning would be needed and possibly two lorries would have to pull the turbine up the hill by Highland Corrie. I can't bear the thought of trashing another section of road on another civil engineering project. The meeting to discuss this is Monday 16th and I shall be asking why we can't have something more in scale with Coll. The swish report can be down-loaded, but I don't suppose the maps will look as impressive.

And meanwhile, back at the airport... well, not a lot. Coll, Colonsay and Oban all got their CAA licenses and flights will start very soon, honest! There was a VIP flight and the proper fire engine had to attend as well as the airport one. The parents learnt that flying the kids home at weekends didn't mean flying all the kids home, just the first 8. We did have some motorised gliders buzzing about. I have been up in a glider. It is wonderful, it is so quiet. I appreciate an engine is probably essential if you fancy going over the sea to an island, but it seems to negate the point of a glider. I was told they use 15 litres of fuel an hour. I was still trying to work out if that was a lot or a little when someone said ordinary small planes use 60. I wonder if the fuel sold at Oban airport has tax on it, or whether it could be put in a car (hyperthetically only, of course!).

I went to the hall meeting last night. There weren't any seats left in the back row, so I moved one out of the middle row and joined the two people at the back. I was followed by someone who took the other chair from the front row and pulled it to the back. All psychological of course. The architect's mate sat in the front row on his own. Beyond the laptop-pretending-to-be-an-overhead-projector were another six people; it wasn't the world's best-attended meeting. However we rose to the challenge and animatedly discussed where the bins should go, and whether the recycling should be just for the hall, or the whole island, and whether there should be more showers in the bunkhouse. And we looked at coloured blobs on plans indicating the various uses of different bits, and there was a discussion on acoustics for the stage, although an acoustics engineer will be consulted (I never knew that might have been a career option) and the kitchen area will be designed by a professional kitchen designer (someone who designs professional kitchens, as opposed to the domestic type) and then given the once-over by our professional chefs at the Hotel and Cafe and I wasn't exactly bored, but I don't know anything about acoustics so my attention was beginning to wander and then we got a picture of the hall from the road, and I think it will be beautiful. The big gable end of the main hall is stone with a large window and a timber sliding shutter so it looks like an old-fashioned barn. Then there is a very modern looking glass bit that joins onto the long, low corridor of ancillary rooms, which will be rendered and painted white. There are some fake chimneys which are actually 'light wells' (just as well I watch Grand Designs, or my vocabulary would be deficient). The whole thing looks perfectly in scale and is neither awesomely modern or boringly traditional. So I still think the hall will be 'a good thing'. We have to raise around 拢200,000 so I am looking for sponsors not to take part in the Coll Half Marathon at the end of August. That kind of physical effort would seriously compromise the amount of intellectual energy I would have available for blogging.
The plans can be seen on the An Cridhe website, and there is probably a list of people mad enough to want to run 13 and a bit miles round Coll not enjoying the views who all want a few more sponsors. And then I was going to go home. I had even turned the car round so it was facing the right way. But the architect asked if I was coming up for a drink, and it would have been rude to refuse, especially when it is going to be such a nice building, and I'm so weak-willed so I turned the car round, and this is getting to be jolly hard work because the power steering doesn't seem to have as much power as it used to and went to the pub for the fourth night in a row!



PS I didn't mention turbine, and nor did anyone else.

Last time I had to go to Oban (a rather pointless visit to the hospital where a man drew round my feet, and no, I don't know why I had to go to Oban just for that) I also visited the optician (or optomotrist, or whatever Specsavers call themselves). They were extremely helpful and rushed me through so I could get to the hospital on time, and recommended I tried varifocal glasses. I had been resisting this move: unlike going grey, which starts at age 18, wearing varifocals is a definite sign of wearing out. But it was getting increasingly difficult to focus on chalking the pool cue, and my short-sighted eye is very short-sighted, so to see the pool cue I had to lift up my old ordinary glasses and hold it about 2 inches from my face, or hold it out at arms length, and both methods were affecting my concentration (and making my opponent laugh).
So now I have a pair of varifocals. I was warned I would fall down the stairs and feel sick and dizzy and it would take ages to get used to them, but I'm not so sure I need them much at all, as there isn't a huge difference between the top and the bottom. Reading magazines at the kitchen table is a bit easier through the bottom section, but reading in bed is much more difficult, the edges of the glasses don't focus at all, so the head and the book have to be in line both up and down and side to side. The computer monitor seems to be at exactly the distance where I could use the top or the bottom half and focus, but constantly switching from looking at the keyboard to the screen is rather confusing. But I have discovered they are a bit like ear defenders. Wearing ear defenders kind of cocoons you away from the real world, providing a barrier between you and the madness, and looking through the bottom of my glasses at distances makes everything go fuzzy and also separates the real world from the world in my head.


Meanwhile, Coll International is open for business. The 主播大秀 flew in (but unfortunately no passengers for Coll), did a couple of interviews and flew on to Tiree. We were all invited down to wave flags and cheer, but I am not that great a supporter so I stayed away, and then had to ask everyone I saw what had happened, just in case I missed something important. It was a pity they picked a day when all the qualified 'volunteer' firefighters were away, so someone had to come in on the ferry the day before to man the baby fire truck. Still, I'm sure it made good economic sense! There still seems to be some confusion over getting the kids home on a Friday; the latest and almost certainly false, rumours say a) only the best-behaved can come home early (surely a recipe for disaster, labelling those who have to stay troublesome is more likely to make them so) or b) if the hostel can't shut, so the staff have to stay, then none of the kids will come home.
However, once mjc has paid a visit I might conclude the airport has its uses.

PS in 2 years I will be half as old as my Gran, that's a lot of life left, but it means I will be wearing varifocals for over half my life, surely that can't be right.

One of my favourite visitors has just left. I have quite a lot of favourite visitors but he would qualify as one of my favourite favourites! Normally he drives a Porsche (I have ambitions in this direction, I feel I can offset the carbon footprint by declaring to be a terminal generation ie no kids) but this time he had a hired nondescript silver hatchback thing, so I didn't recognise him off the boat. But you can't miss the enthusiasm for long.
Once upon a time in the twenties (I think) someone did a survey of Coll's trees (they had more time then). My favourite visitor has a copy of the survey and has visited them all, and marked them on a map. I think that would be a really special kind of treasure hunt; to go and visit all the natural oaks on Coll (I think there are less than a dozen, planted trees don't count). Anyway, we had a discussion about the increase in mountain ash trees near us, as they seem to be heading west against the prevailing wind.
One day I happened to be not quite managing to pass the pub (Do not pass the pub, do not collect 拢200) when I saw him in a greater than usual state of excitement. He had been surveying a grid square on the OS map of Coll (actually a half square near the Meall) and had made two significant discoveries. He had found some Marsh Hawkweed. This looks a bit like a dandelion flower, but grows to about two feet tall, has narrow green leaves up the stem, and tends to grow in wet gorges. It should be right at home on Coll, but this may be the first time it has been seen here. The other discovery was even more significant: Chickweed Wintergreen (Trientalis Europaea). This is common on the mainland, but hasn't been seen on any of the islands before. It hides under bracken, and has finished flowering now, but the leaves were quite distinctive, an untidy whorl of bright green smooth leaves. The flower would have been white. It is actually related to the primrose family (I couldn't see much resemblance). We celebrated with a pint.
And that is why I like Coll so much. There is time to be friends with people who come once a year and to share in their enthusiasm and have some rub off. And because we have so many regular visitors our joy in the place must rub off on them too.


PS the airport solved the kids and planes problem by not bringing any of them home. School has finished for the summer, perhaps they will sort something out for next term, when there will be five shiny new first years. (There have been some passengers, someone has even flown on it twice)