NaBloPoMo 2025 - #19

 Today, Western Isles Council decided to grant planning permission in principle to build an electricity  converter station on the outskirts of Stornoway. The station will be massive, measuring several hundred meters by several hundred meters, rearing up to 27 metres in height. It is required to convert electricity, generated by renewable energy projects across Lewis for transport to the mainland. A sub-sea cable has already been approved; it will have a capacity of 1,800 megawatts. In the 21 years I have been in the island, I have been vocal in my opposition to such on-shore and off-shore schemes. It will have a massive detrimental environmental impact, for one. And the benefit for Lewis will only be short-term, and even the employment may not be locally sourced. And by 2031, we'll be left with an industrial wasteland. I am very disappointed. 

NaBloPoMo 2025 - #17

 Eight years ago tonight, my uncle passed away, at the blessed age of 90. He had been suffering from pancreatic cancer, and had spent the last months of his life in a hospice. When I saw him on his 90th birthday, the previous January, he was a well-to-do nonagenarian, his usual affable, smiling self. Ten months later, there was little left of him. I was relieved he had been spared further suffering. 

My uncle, my father's eldest brother, had been married, but his wife had pre-deceased him in 1998, also after having cancer. They had lived together in the same tied cottage for 44 years, and my uncle stayed on until he died in 2017. It fell to members of the family to clear out ten skipfuls of detritus from years gone by. I don't think they ever bought new furniture, and the books were of similar vintage. I remember a ginger cat, and, from further back, chickens. 

Although he never had a family, my uncle was very fond of my siblings and myself, and supported our mother when she was in the final years of her life, up to 2008. Following the death of my father in 2022, there is only one sibling left of the four. My father's second brother was killed in a motorbike accident in 1954, when he crashed into an unilluminated American army truck, which did not have permission to be out and about. The youngest, my auntie, remains, now aged 78. 

Tempus fugit.  

NaBloPoMo 2025 - #11

 On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the guns fell silent. Fifteen million lay dead. Just because an archduke got shot in Sarajevo? Because the royal houses of Europe decided to have a family tiff? No, it's never as simplistic as that. But this post is not about the reasons for the Great War. It is about those fifteen million. Servicemen from all sides, civilians from all sides. It was the age of duty, you signed up because you felt it was your duty. Duty towards King and Country. If you didn't volunteer, if you tried to dodge the draft, you were a coward. You could be handed a white feather, oh, the disgrace. But that overlooked the genuine panic and fear that had some 3,000 shot at dawn. Only very recently have these unfortunate souls been exonerated, and their honour restored to them.

I compiled listings of the men from the island of Lewis in particular, and from the Outer Hebrides in general, who went to war from August 1914 until November 1918. When focusing on Lewis, their number stands at roughly 6,200. The number of dead is not set in tablets of stone; I have it at roughly 1,300. It matters not. Of that number, 181 were lost seven weeks after the Armistice, when their transport, HMY Iolaire, sank off Stornoway. Twenty others were Iolaire crew.

We all fall silent at 11 in the morning on November 11th. I have marked the occasion for thirty-fiveyears now, initially listening to the event on BBC Radio 4 longwave, 198 kHz. Not until I came to Stornoway, in November 2004, did I start to actively observe the Armistice. I have photographed the war memorials here, each stating the war to have ended in 1919, unlike everywhere else in the UK, where the end year is 1918. I have photographed over 400 wargraves and war-related gravestones in the island's cemeteries. I have compiled my findings on several websites, for all to see - at no charge. It's not for money that I have done this work. 

Lest we forget.

NaBloPoMo 2025 - #10

I repost the flame for Kristallnacht, as that ran on into November 10th, 1938. It is meant as a warning. 
As Heinrich Heine once wrote, Where one burns books, one will end up burning people. Only too true, as this horrendous prophecy became reality in the gas chambers of the death camps of Hitler's Nazi Germany. Have we learned from the past? 

No. Hitler was allowed to gain the ascendency through fear and complacency of the leaders of countries like France and England. Fast forward 80 years, and we see Vladimir Putin getting away with it. Remember Abchazia, the northwestern part of Georgia, which Putin occupied in 2008. We have all witnessed the creeping occupation of Ukraine, starting with Crimea in 2014, and now this entrenched war in which he has occupied 20% of Ukrainean territory - and no intention of stopping. Had we stood up to this bully in 2014, if not 2008, he might not have proceeded as far as he has now. 

Beware.  

NaBloPoMo 2025 - #09

 It is 87 years ago since the Night of Broken Glass [Kristallnacht]. That night, an organised mob of Nazi forces and sympathisers went on the rampage in towns and cities across Germany, smashing and destroying Jewish-owned property and businesses. It was a foretaste of what was to come during World War II. The extermination of anyone deemed sub-human by the warped mind of Adolf Hitler and his henchmen. Jews topped their league of the unfit, closely followed by gypsies, the mentally ill and many many others. The Reichskristallnacht was a night of infamy, and not just to Germany. Hitler had already been allowed to get away with murder for several years beforehand. In 1936, he occupied the Rhineland which had been ceded to France at the end of the First World War. The League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations, cried wolf but had no bite. On 12 March 1938, Nazi forces marched into Austria to join that country to Germany, an event referred to as the Anschluss. Neville Chamberlain flew to Munich to meet with Adolf Hitler on 30 September 1938, returning with the infamous phrase: "Peace for our time". Six weeks later, the Reichskristallnacht took place. Only a few months later, Germany invaded the Sudetenland area of Czecho-Slovakia, and again, nobody moved a finger to stop. In September 1939, Hitler thought he could get away with the invasion of Poland. But this time, it prompted a declaration of war, signalling the outbreak of the Second World War. The lights have gone out in Europe, it was said at the time. The lights in Europe had already been extinguished in 1914, and had not been relit, not even at the end of the First World War. The Versailles Peace Treaty of June 1919 contained all the ingredients for another war, which duly materialised. After the unspeakable atrocities of the Second World War, Germany was divided into four by the victorious allies. The British, French and American sectors became West Germany, whilst the Soviet sector was turned into East Germany, a communist state. Berlin was similarly divided. Until 1961, people from the East fled to the West in droves. A barrier was erected across Berlin in August 1961, later replaced by a high, concrete wall. Similar barriers were put up along the borders between East and West Germany. Anyone trying to flee from East to West was shot on sight, no questions asked. The advent of Mikhail Gorbatchov as leader of the USSR in the 1980s heralded a start of change. And when this wind of change blew across eastern Europe, it blew away all the communist regimes within the space of a few months in 1989.

The Berlin Wall was torn down on 9 November 1989, and you can see the dilemma. Do we remember the Kristallnacht, and not celebrate the reunification of Germany? Do we celebrate the reunification, and ignore the Night of Broken Glass? Maybe the two can be reconciled. The Berliners remember the Kristallnacht in a very low-key but poignant manner. Every year, in the evening of November 9th, candles are left on the doorsteps of houses that were ransacked that night.

The flame, burning at the top of this post, is my candle of remembrance for Kristallnacht.

NaBloPoMo 2025 - #05

 There are plans afoot for major renewable energy developments across the island of Lewis. It involves an offshore windfarm, a couple of miles west of the West Side; electricity transmission infrastructure (such as pylons and cables etc) and substations. One such substations is pencilled in for an area immediately south of the Castle Grounds, a big grey box, extending for a quarter of a mile and standing 90 feet tall. It would stand out like a sore tooth. Another substation would find itself on the banks of the Creed River, a mile or so to the west - and I'm not even talking about cables and pylons. All that power will be sent down a subsea cable to the mainland and the National Grid. We in Lewis stand to gain the grand total of £4.5m per annum; whereas SSEN and Northland (the developer) stand to make hundreds of millions of pounds. I wonder whether the protests, that are beginning to be organised, will help to thwart these plans. I sincerely hope they do. 

NaBloPoMo 2025 - #04

A delapidated house and a boat. The photograph dates back to February 2008. The location is Valasay [Bhalasaigh] in the island of Great Bernera, 30 miles west of Stornoway. Bernera [Bearnaraigh] is linked to mainland Lewis via a bridge. I mention the date of the picture, because I have been informed that the house has since fallen down, in the face of our customary gales. It had long lain derelict. 

The issue is that although the edifice may appear abandoned, it most likely is not. First of all, there is nearly always an owner to any property in Scotland; it requires a court ruling for an edifice to be declared abandoned. Secondly, people see pictures like this (I run a Facebook group about abandoned crofthouses) and want to buy it and do it up. Not as simple as that, and owners tend to get angry when confronted with unsollicited enquiries towards acquisition. I tend to refer folks to an estate agent, who often have seemingly abandoned properties on their books.