47 days to go

I started the day on Mull, got an early ferry to Oban, drove to Campbeltown, opened the new Campbeltown YES Shop , visited the Kintyre Show with local Cllr John Semple and Bute Cllr and Farmer Robert MacIntyre (whose YES tractor I blipped last week and who knows everybody in Argyll agriculture and who they are related to making a great man to travel around with ) and then went back up the road to Tarbert to meet Cllr Anne Horne and some of the people who have cleared and restored the site of the war memorial overlooking the harbour and Loch Fyne.

This has to be one of the most stunning locations for a war memorial in Scotland but until the last few weeks the area it occupies was overgrown, the grass badly cut if at all and the tree and other growth ( unchecked over many years) all but hid it from view and made appear unkempt and derelict.

But Tarbert is a community that doesn't wait for others and so they have cleaned and opened up the site - and the memorial - in time for this weekend of commemoration and Anne had asked me to come and meet some of those responsible.

I was delighted to do so and to thank them for a job wonderfully done. I also undertook to back up Anne as she asks Argyll & Bute Council to take on the responsibility of cutting the grass from now on, and doing it in a way that allows easy access.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the declaration of war by Germany on Russia. Tomorrow marks a century since Germany declared war on France and on Monday it will be 100 years since Great Britain declared war on Germany.

Then the men of Tarbert & District, like men all over the country, started to gather and would soon be sent to places from which many would never return.