Christmas 2021

 Christmas Day in Stornoway is a quiet affair, with very few people stirring out on the streets. Only to attend church, if any services are going ahead with this threat from Covid still very much about. The ferry is not sailing at all today. Even the Castle Grounds were not busy with walks as they customarily are over the weekend. Darkness comes early, after 3.30pm, by which time dinners are being prepared, served and consumed. It was a bright day with plenty of sunshine. I hope you had a bright day too. 

Merry Christmas. 

24 December 2021

I happened to look back over pictures from Christmas 2019, and it seems like a lifetime ago.

No pandemic, coronavirus, self-isolation, lateral flow tests, PCR tests or travel restrictions. I had previously only worn a facemask in a laboratory.

Delta was a synonym for a river estuary, and omicron was another letter from the Greek alphabet, and one that hardly anybody had ever heard of. The Christmas tree in this picture dates back to 2019, and it's up and glistening again.

The world seems to have grown more dull, grey and hard, if only because some people that were close to me have passed on.

I was watching the start of the Watchnight service from the church in Holland I would go to at this time of year in the past. It was a sad echo from the past, with only the elder, the vicar and the cantor in evidence, as was the organist playing along the hymns and psalms. Although it celebrates the birth of Christ, the atmosphere was a distant reflection of one of joy.

Nonetheless, from Stornoway:

Nollaig Chridheil.
Merry Christmas

23 December 2021

Glancing across to the Netherlands, I'm agog at the full lockdown that has been declared in the country. In past years, I would be there for Christmas, and as many of you know, sing in the church choir on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Like last year, the Christmas Eve service will this year be held with only office bearers and the vicar present. The service has been brought forward to 4pm (before sunset), and can only be viewed online. I remember last year's service, with the vicar being visibly moved at the sight of his empty church.

Until then, I associated the Watchnight service there with a packed out church, sometimes having to decline people entry. Mulled wine by a brazier outside would follow. In spite of the late hour, children would join in and we'd all belt out the Christmas Eve hymns to express our joy at the birth of Jesus Christ.

This time, it will be half a dozen people, with only the choir director singing by herself. Like last year, I'll probably end up playing the video of the St Peter's Bell in Cologne Cathedral - a mournful sound echoing across the miles.

33 years ago tonight

Wednesday, 21st December 1988. 7.03pm. Flight PanAm 103 was en-route from London to New York, when it disappeared off air traffic control radar, substituted by several fragments, which fell to the ground. One piece slammed into the town of Lockerbie. All on board the plane were killed, alongside eleven townspeople from Lockerbie when houses were destroyed by falling debris and fire. The plane had been brought down by a bomb, planted by terrorists allegedly linked to the then Libyan government of Col Ghadaffi. The full chain of command for the attack has never been fully clarified, in public at any rate, and there are questionmarks as to why security services didn't manage to foil the plot. One man was put on trial, convicted and sentenced. In 2009, he was released on compassionate grounds and repatriated to Libya.

All that is immaterial to the relatives and friends of those killed. They are remembered in a memorial on Sherwood Crescent in Lockerbie, which was flattened by the downed plane. We remember them all. 

Image courtesy BBC

 In 1981, I was driven along the A74 road from Carlisle towards Glasgow when a premonition struck me, of something terrible that was going to happen. When I recovered, I asked where we were. Lockerbie. I glanced up and saw the roadsign, indicating the turn-off for the A709 for Lockerbie and Lochmaben. Was it a premonition for this disaster? I'll never know.

80 years ago today

On 7th December 1941, the Empire of Japan attacked the United States' Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It was to bring the US into the Second World War, after more than two years at the sidelines of the conflict. This move signalled the beginning of the end for the Japanese Empire: one of its leaders observed that we have wakened a giant. Three years and eight months later, an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and another one on Nagasaki prompted the surrender of Japan. The war in the Pacific was brutal, and indescribably atrocities were visited upon those under Japanese occupation, not to mention upon any prisoners, or prisoners of war.

The Japanese emperor was stripped of his status as a deity in exchange for not having to face war crimes charges. Japan has never apologised, for whatever good that would have done, for its actions during WW2; and its neighbours, like Korea and China, still regard the land of the Rising Sun with suspicion.

World AIDS Day

December 1st is World AIDS Day.

It is now more than 35 years since AIDS first appeared on the scene. The Human Immunodeficiency Virus HIV was initially detected in Uganda in 1959 in monkeys or apes, and has somehow jumped the species barrier to us.

In 1984, this novel disease appeared among the homosexual community, but it very soon became clear that it also spread among heterosexual. Safe sex became a by-word for the mid-80s, whilst science scrambled for a treatment. Nowadays, there are medicines that will mitigate the effects of an HIV infection, and an infected person may even have a near-normal life-expectancy.

Nonetheless, the safe sex message remains pertinent, as there are plenty of other sexually transmitted diseases about.