May 30 - 6am

30th May 2006 Kitchen Decca Cottage, Lewis, Scotland

I do some of my worst thinking when I'm drunk or early in the morning before conventionality has a chance to settle down upon my shoulders like a mantle of lead. This is one of those mornings I think, so bear with me. It's a fine soft day (as are most days here) and the sheep are grazing outside the window as if all the fine softness in the world couldn't seep into their heavy coats. Most of them have bits of wool dragging along the ground like streamers. Though I never thought of sheep as shedding a winter coat I guess they do. Ok, honestly when have I ever thought much about sheep? There's a few of them around here that are really in a bad way. There's this one poor guy who managed to get out of the fenced area and seemed quite distressed about it. He looks very much like someone TP'd him. I have to say it makes them look kind of nutty, with the stringy wet wool hanging down and dragging through the wet grass. There are two in the garden behind the house that I've named Mutton and Haggis. Apparently they are headed for the abatoir later in the season for particularly bad behavior.

So I was sitting here looking out the window and got to thinking about all this wool just lying around on the machair (fancy scottish word for pasture one of the few we can pronounce - it refers to the composition of the soil for you Jones's out there. High shell content) and it occurred to me that since the grass is kept fairly short by the sheep you could run a mower across it and collect all the wool in a bagger. It would have to be dry though or the wool might get caught on the blade. I think if it were dry it might be chopped up a little but it still might work.

As for what we did yesterday. Well, Meg and Terry tried to go for a walk in the morning but it was raining too hard and it was cold out. Hannah was out of clothes, having had them confiscated by the laundry lady the night before and I was seriously thinking about walking up to St. Moulags before I discovered from Meg and Terry that it was too cold and too rainy to make the attempt. Instead we drove around to a pottery shop (left my purse there - clever that), then into Stornoway where we found wifi as we sat in the car parked across the street from the lifeboat station.

Hannah and I went into a proper Fish and Chips take away place to buy some water and Hannah was nearly run over coming out of the place by an enormous truck that was driving down the alleyway. It literally had wheels on both sidewalks it was so large (or the alleyway was so small - more likely).

In the meantime Terry and Meg were off looking for the tourist office and for a post office. Once they returned we headed back for Lional (Gaelic for Lionel - where they don't have the toy trains) stopping by the grocery and the post office on the way.

Terry stopped at the gas station where we puzzled over an indicator light on the dash it was squarish and seemed to have some kind of a spout sticking up, with an exclamation point which made it seem rather urgent to us but we never did figure out what the car was crying about. We checked all the fluid levels and clicked the cap on the petrol door (fancy scottish word for gas - 'course you watch bbc America don't you. You probably knew that one) shrugged our shoulders and headed off home. Nothing fell off or blew up so we think maybe it was time for an oil change. Anyone knowing the purpose of the aforementioned indicator light can insert a comment in this blog which we will read next time we can find a connection. By the way the car is a Ford Scorpio. (For you Jones's out there - no we don't have an owners manual).

Later we went to dinner at the Cross inn and tavern. It was Lovely, Quite nice actually. We had a that's fine lovely thank you time, a waitress named Suzanne who apparently could do without the rain and cold living on Lewis, has exceptional hearing and punctuates everything she does with "that's fine, lovely, thank you". The food was good, the single malt excellent ("Highland Park"), the service remarkable and the company extraordinary. We had a wonderful time and then a really drippy wet couple wandered in from a four hour walk in the rain.

They were from Reading (outside London about an hour I think) and we sat talking with them for quite a long time. Had a good bit of Bush bashing, Blair bashing, compared notes on what's wrong with our leaders, speculated on who the next ones might be (on both sides - though it seems much more certain on their side. A Scot named Smith is apparently a shoe in for prime minister). These two really were so much fun. They showed us on their maps (that were of course better than our maps - who knew) where they had walked, suggested where we should walk and just enjoyed ourselves. Margaret and I had several glasses of single malt, Terry played it cool. It's tough enough driving on the SIDEWALK SIDEWALK DITCH! side of the road without being schnockered, Hannah of course rolled her eyes.