Well, I know you will all be worrying whether Dougie our neighbouring farmer has got the barley in, so he can get away to his beloved Iona for a week's holiday. It's O.K., it's in. This was a glorious day when they started cutting, then followed by awful rain, but it dried up again and now the field is full of sheep.

A wonderfully clear night last night and so it's back to star gazing. We have no light pollution at all and looking towards the bay over the months you can get a marvellous idea of the constellations as they drift round. Last night there were lots of shooting stars, and now we are coming up, hopefully, to more sun spot activity we should start seeing the Northern lights.

The other night I was very confused by a large orange globe drifting towards me, but I think it must have been a Chinese Lantern (the huge gangs that book all the houses at Saddell are prone to releasing things like this!!!)