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The new hall has a name. An Cridhe. It means heart and stuff, as hopefully it be at the heart of the community. As long as we stop calling it the 'Community Centre' I shall be happy, I hate that phrase. There is a meeting on Friday at the Community Centre; I don't think the old hall has ever been called that before! The architects are back next Monday with the detailed plans that I think are already being looked at by Planning. The price has gone up so hopefully they haven't had to make too many compromises at this stage, maybe someone has worked out how to hijack all that lottery money heading south to the London Olympics.

There is also a very swish report (this is a seriously swish, all-colour singing dancing report, I want one just for the maps of Coll) on putting a community wind turbine up. I am a bit concerned at the lack of choice in the report. Apparently 'small' turbines like the ones on Gigha aren't the done thing anymore, they propose an 82 metre high turbine. That is 82 metres from the base of the tower to the top, since no-one puts a turbine at sea-level it will be higher than Ben Hogh (our own little Coll munro, clocking in at about 102 metres). Some of the swish maps show where it will be visible from for each of the proposed 8 sites, although, not surprisingly, the short answer is, very visible! It is unlikely to be near me, the airport has some use (more later) and the turbine needs to be at least 2 and a half kilometres (or possibly miles) away. I remember the report writers coming here back in winter (hard to imagine winter at the moment) and there are some grey, rain-spotted photos of the Achamore road. The cattle grids would need to be removed, some 'minor' road re-aligning would be needed and possibly two lorries would have to pull the turbine up the hill by Highland Corrie. I can't bear the thought of trashing another section of road on another civil engineering project. The meeting to discuss this is Monday 16th and I shall be asking why we can't have something more in scale with Coll. The swish report can be down-loaded, but I don't suppose the maps will look as impressive.

And meanwhile, back at the airport... well, not a lot. Coll, Colonsay and Oban all got their CAA licenses and flights will start very soon, honest! There was a VIP flight and the proper fire engine had to attend as well as the airport one. The parents learnt that flying the kids home at weekends didn't mean flying all the kids home, just the first 8. We did have some motorised gliders buzzing about. I have been up in a glider. It is wonderful, it is so quiet. I appreciate an engine is probably essential if you fancy going over the sea to an island, but it seems to negate the point of a glider. I was told they use 15 litres of fuel an hour. I was still trying to work out if that was a lot or a little when someone said ordinary small planes use 60. I wonder if the fuel sold at Oban airport has tax on it, or whether it could be put in a car (hyperthetically only, of course!).