Covid-19 - 28 March

A whirlwind of events, this past week. The changes are some that have never been seen in living memory, let alone in previous history. I'm not the most sociable person around, but I am acutely aware of the implications of social distancing. All shops in Stornoway have closed, with a few exceptions. All services have closed too. The town is littered with notices intimating "temporary closure". Even the main event of the year, the Hebridean Celtic Festival, has been postponed. Going round Stornoway on a weekday afternoon is an eerie experience. The town is normally a lively little place, but not these days. A few people bobbing about, as they take their allowance of daily exercise.

Going to the supermarket meant a twenty minute excursion for me, but last Wednesday's once-weekly outing took me over an hour. Queuing in a line with 2 metres (7 feet) between each person, then only being allowed in once another customer had exited. The problems with stock remain, although not quite as bad over the past weeks. I was quite angered to see photographs of litterbins, overflowing with panic-bought goods and foods, which people did not have the storage space for once they arrived home. Schools and colleges too have shut, Laxdale Primary leaving a notice that the better days will return. The ferry is on a greatly reduced service, with the morning sailings reserved for freight, and the afternoon and evening ones dedicated to passengers and cars. Planes have stopped flying to and from the airports in the Highlands and Islands, with only essential and lifeline services remaining.

As I type this, the nadir of the coronavirus epidemic is set to reach the United Kingdom, with helicopters being deployed to evacuate medical emergencies from remote areas. Shetland has a cluster of two dozen cases (as of 27 March), and one person has already had to be airlifted to Aberdeen. The Outer Hebrides have, as of the same date, no cases of Covid-19. Orkney is in the same position. Shetland's cases have arisen after a family returned from a holiday in Italy - a hotspot for Covid-19, in the earlier stages of the pandemic.

There is something to be said for living in a remote island.


Cromwell Street, Thursday afternoon


Queueing system, Tesco Supermarket

Covid-19 - 21 March

It is really strange. Winter seemed to be coming to an end, and spring was about to spring. Except: we seem to be falling back into winter again. Oh I know, the birds are getting excited, flowers are budding and the days are lengthening nicely. Normally, at this time of year, you'd see the first tourists out and about. I have seen one or two. But they appear to be hardly welcome anymore, as we hunker back down into this winter of Covid-19. I am hearing of campervans coming north to escape coronavirus in the Highlands, which has had only 8 cases to date. None in the Western Isles and none in Orkney. We'll want to keep it that way. When this is all over and done with, please come flocking back. Not now.

Corona Virus - 13 March 2020

On 31st December 2019, a new disease emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Its pathogen was a novel virus, eventually named Covid-19. It was present in animal species, but managed to jump the species barrier to humans, who have no natural immunity against the virus. Over a period of weeks, 80,000 people in China contracted the virus, and 4,000 died. A world-wide spread was only a matter of time, and as I type this, the numbers of people known to have contracted Covid-19 in Europe is in the thousands, with Italy topping the league table with over 12,000 cases. Containing, delaying, mitigating the spread of the disease is the order of the day. In the majority of cases, the virus only causes mild illness. Those who are badly affected required intensive care in  hospital, something that is straining the Italian health service almost beyond breaking point. That lies in waiting for countries like Spain, France, Germany - and the UK - in a matter of weeks. The government in the USA has handled the outbreak with a mixture of denial, incompetence and blame laying, with a travel ban imposed to travellers from Europe, except from the UK (which has nearly 600 cases confirmed).

I take the liberty of stating that Covid-19 will prove to be the biggest challenge of our time, and will most likely disrupt society as we know it at least temporarily, if not permanently. Air travel seems to be suffering very badly, as does tourism, with bookings in the Isle of Skye (50 miles south of my position) down 50% from previous years.

Guga

Guga is the dried and salted chick of the gannet. Each year in late August, a group of men from the Ness district in the Isle of Lewis go to Sula Sgeir, 45 miles (70 km) north of Lewis, to hunt the growing gannet chicks. By that time of the year, they have not yet fledged (cannot yet fly) and are still in downy feathers. After killing, the bird is stripped of feathers, singed and salted down. The guga hunt is licensed with a restriction of 2000 birds each year. Each guga, which looks like a bicycle saddle, is allocated to someone, usually from the Ness district. You cannot order guga in a restaurant, but if you're lucky, someone may share it with you if they invite you to a meal in their home. I have not tasted guga myself, but the flavour is, shall we say, an acquired taste.

In case anyone get squeamish about this: most of us eat meat, but very few of us wants to know what happens to that cow in the field before it appears as a steak on your plate.

There is an on-going and lively debate about the guga hunt - check out this article for instance.