Even the snowmen have been driven to drink!

This is a sculptural representation of my lovely sister, sculpted largely by her daughter. Her husband in his snow form is sitting across the picnic bench from her with a pint, but I liked this shot. We headed into Brodick to remind ourselves of what grass looks like and to do some shopping, before heading back and building snowmen (3), snowwoman (1) and snowdog (1). Lots of fun had by all involved. The football team doesn't look like happening, so we went for replacement customers at a local pub!

Latest news from the island - almost everyone is on generators now, except about 100 customers on Arran (Kintyre is now all connected). Many of those who have been on for a few days have been having a few problems, Catacol now seems to be the only village (being generous with the term, hamlet might be more appropriate, although also might be a bit of an exaggeration!) to not yet have tripped the generator/lost power.

Lochranza were doing okay, though the engineers were encouraging people to use the snack bar (which most folk thought was a bit superfluous to requirements now the power was back on) due to the worrying spikes in demand at mealtimes (the snack van has its own wee generator) - which made accepting free food an act of public service! There was an attempt this evening to put them back onto main power lines (first in the queue), which didn't work, and the engineers had to get their generator back up, so they went down for a short while, but just switched back on.

In the pub this evening we were making sure the newly arrived holiday makers understood how precarious the supply is, I hope they didn't feel too guilty about having come down! There is a fine line between the economic impact of not having the expected visitors and the reality of life with limited power, and Brodick and Whiting Bay have both felt the impact of people coming down and not limiting their power use, leading to the generators tripping. The locals are not speaking with one voice on this one!