In the news

I was intending to blip a photo of a tiny frog, the size of my pinkie nail, which proved to be but one of hundreds on the Loch Eck track this afternoon - once I had spotted the first one, which I mistook for a beetle, I kept seeing them (or not, as the case might be, in which case I stood on one or two). But I was overtaken by events, it would seem, so here is a photo of Loch Eck itself - one which I've taken before, even blipped before.

But this evening we have the bizarre tale in the local paper, suggesting a lurking menace in the loch to which two dogs had already fallen victim, an algae poisoning the water so that dog owners shouldn't let their pets swim in or drink the water. And this, of course, is the water supply for Dunoon - my water supply, dammit. And we're finding out via Twitter and Facebook, those of us who do these things, while the rest of the town dies quietly overnight after their evening cuppas?

So we rang Scottish Water, just to see. Next thing I knew, I was dictating the story over the phone. It was, apparently, the first SW had heard about it. The chap on the end of the line was pirouetting in his attempts to reassure us of the constant testing of the water, and that nothing - nothing at all - had come up on the system about the water from Loch Eck. He thanked us for letting him know, and hied off to do whatever he would have to do next.

I await with interest the outcome of all this. If, like the two unfortunate dogs, I do not survive the drinking water, then that would be one answer. The other could be that people have rushed into online publication before checking the facts, or that hearsay and conjecture have triumphed over proper procedures.

And I rather liked the sky in this photo ...