Top secret - wind to be refused

I was phoned yesterday by Mr Jim to tell me that the giant windplant on Lewis was to be refused, probably, after due consideration and only after giving the applicants another chance to persuade the Government they were wrong. How big a donation does it take for that to happen?

I went out to meet my constituents in Bravas, Galston and Point of Ness were they laid rose petals in my path as I drove through in the cavalcade comprising me in my green 1.4l Micra and Kenny in his rust-brown 1957 Anglia Estate, with optional lights and brakes. Rhona had already sped off in her Mini for a liaison with her special friend, who was visiting from London. The rose petals did look like hay and shredded Dunlin, but Kenny later assured me that this was an old tradition. Apparently the men of the area celebrate good news about the environment by catching, cooking and eating a few Golden Eagles, a barrel or two of red-throated divers and a few hundred brace of other birds; whilst the women of the district carry the catch and the men on their backs for a couple of miles to the Cross Inn, where the men sate their thirst, before the women prepare the feast and sandwiches for the coming year, and then light a giant Wicker man to celebrate the arrival of the subsidy cheques.

We head to our final destination with a triumphal flourish as I put the car into third gear and the massed hordes descend to meet our vehicles. As the horde, Donald Murdo Morrison and his brother Murdo Donald Morrison, unload the cases of Tennant’s Lager with the Tennant’s Girls on the back, from the rear of Kenny’s van. Kenny admits to me that he is smuggling the lager despite threats from the ‘security men’ at the Ness Social Club. I tell him to desist from such improper purposes and help him with a case of export-only Golden Virginia, and a case of Iceland’s famous Guga-flavour profiteroles which have slightly melted, judging by the smell.

As the men finish the fourth case of lager and open yet another packet of roast corncrake crisps – made on site at the Borve minimarket – I finish reading my briefing for my TV interview tomorrow.

Miles driven: 50 (return journey)
Greylag goose sandwiches eaten: None
Gaelic words spoken: 3397