I had hoped to put up some pix of the weekend's festivities, which included both the official opening of the new pontoons and the Lewis carnival procession. It all happens here. The former involved a visiting Canadian pipe band - six times world champions, no less - whilst the latter included some tractors, a fire engine and people dressed as the famous Viking chessmen but with a twist - they were on all-terrain segways. Unfortunately the wifi has gone down and I am posting this via my very slow Vodafone connection (there is no 3G here), so no photos. I will save them for another day.

We had a bit of a storm last night, and it rained right through into this afternoon. When I ventured out again, two very knowledgeable locals advised me that, "the whind was noo in the north, there'l be nae more rain". If the met office is reading this, don't employ them. It is now pissing down.

I wonder if that's why, after three days of exemplary service, the local internet is off? That happened at home. A very nice chap in Bangalore explained patiently to me that I was obviously an idiot with no understanding of the internet or computers. Although quite insulting, he tried really hard to be very nice about it, having done the training. Clearly it couldn't be a BT fault, the computer said so, so it must be our computer or just me. Eventually I managed to speak to someone in the UK who sent an engineer round and funny old thing they found the big junction box on the corner was full of water and all the wires had rotted. The man was amazed that we'd even been able to ring up with our complaint as technically there was no way the phone should have worked.

If you haven't seen the pictures on the Beeb of the flooding and water damage round these parts it's worth a look. I can't give you a link as I can't get onto the BBC website (it has pictures, which bring the Vodafone thing to a halt).

More storms to come. I can do a bus tour of the islands but have to wait a few days until the ferry comes. If I catch the public bus I can go round the main island in two hours if I don;t get off. If I get off at the Callanish standing stones I may have to wait three hours for the next bus. There's a limit to my interest in standing stones, particularly when it's pouring with rain. If it was a sunny day it might be different, but they are forecasting the next sunshine for sometime in 2015.

I am thinking I might hire a car, but, based on my experiences so far,  I think I can predict that they will only be available on Thursdays between 0545 and 0715, and then only if you passed your test in Scotland.