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Nobby (also known as Graham) was killed in a moped accident in India. He was one of the first to come to Coll and stayed the whole summer, just missing the final road and verge repairs. My main memory of him is spending hours in the burger van between boats watching him drive the dumper from the barge to the stockpile unloading type 1 and type B gravel. Below is an excerpt from a blog from April:-
At the moment Nobby is doing the dumper truck hill-climb. If he drives flat-out at his pile of stone how high can he get the dumper before it stops. Today鈥檚 barge is the Nord Star which has a Swedish captain and a Polish crew. They buy their stores here. I don鈥檛 think Coll has ever been the most convenient place to shop before! The other barge has a very Irish skipper, a Russian and two more Nordic crew, I wonder how they chat to each other.
Another memory is the night he thought he could cycle back to the airport, and got as far as the Lodge before deciding he couldn't. He was fond of breaking glass, and particularly good with stobs and rear windows. On show night he was almost the last man standing and I was a bit nervous driving him home but he always sounded fiercer than he really was. I'm sure there must have been sunny days when he wasn't in yellow waterproofs but I can't remember seeing him them.
A stretch of tarmac may be a strange thing to remember a man by, but a vital link with the mainland isn't a bad thing to spend your last summer building.

Had the second lesson in digital darkroom thingys. After the first lesson four of us went away (three and a half, I was a bit late) remembering magic numbers:- 72 or 300 pixels and confused. A picture is a picture, and you look at it on the monitor, but if someone else is going to look at it next you have to decide whether they are going to look at it on paper or their monitor, and then you set it to 72 or 300 pixels, and the picture on my monitor still looks the same.
This week there were eight of us, and I wasn't so late. This digi darkroom is no good for man-hunting, there were eight wimmin in a row hiding behind laptops and hanging on Ming's every word (and Microsoft rant). We aren't beginners any more, so we can't save pics as JPEGs, we have to use TIFFs. We spent a long time selecting areas of sky and making them blue-er. Then we sort of discovered layers. I discovered lots of layers, every time I wrote more text I got a new layer. It got tricky trying to move it about because they wouldn't stay together. We just squeezed in a coffee break before the end, when I needed a beer break to let all this information sink in. I must be early next week and get the chat done before class starts. If there was wireless there we could send messages back and forth.

Yup. Today is a no boat day. In fact, some people are so unlucky they've picked every 'no boat because of the weather' day to try to get away. If anyone is interested they want to leave Coll on 2nd January, so plan on a gale then as well. The only thing worse than not getting away is being woken by some-one who isn't coming back, and they want you to feed the cat, leave the car keys at the pier, paint the living room, and they have to tell you this at 6-30 because they are wide awake and checked out of their b & b and Tescos doesn't open until 8. What did ferry passengers do before Tescos?

Back at the digi darkroom class there were only 6 wimmin this week. We worked our way down the toolbox 'decorating' a piece of 'untitled' artwork. My profficiency with layers meant that when it got too cluttered I opened another one and hid some of the others. I finished up with a garish mess of graffiti; too much practising writing with the paintbrush tool. 2 seats to my right the laptop had a much more pleasing pastel creation. My neighbour was quite amused to see how differently we each used the same tools. We progressed to removing electric poles from a photo. A shame really when you think how much effort goes into putting them up. I rubbed half out quite easily, but then it re-appeared, and again, marching out across the sky. I must repeat the exercise with parked cars and make the village look a bit busier. It is very quiet with half of Coll sitting in Tescos waiting to come back.

Yup. This is the last blog of the year (unless the ferry doesn't come).We're away south to check on all the relatives. Why does it look a short distance on the map when we're on Coll, but expands into hours of driving when we get half way there? I suppose I get fooled into thinking I'll be in fifth gear and travelling faster, and I forget about all the time we spend standing still at traffic lights and roundabouts and other exotic things on the road.
Then there is shopping. At Island Stores either it is there, or it isn't. I want plain yogurt, not today. Butter. Yes. There is butter. But no choice, I don't have to decide whether I want cheap, English, Scottish (always more expensive), organic, unsalted, or a silly half-size pack from Europe. And then there is all the 'spreadable' butters. Those are butters mixed with water! I prefer my water with whisky, not on toast. So shopping is much slower too.
I'm a bit worried about leaving IB for so long, a lot can happen in nearly three weeks. A lot normally happens every week-end. And worst of all, I'm going to be terrified to open my inbox when we get back. I had 63 emails between yesterday and today. You are never alone with an inbox, but the only one I even vaguely needed was the auto reply from Amazon. Good old free-delivery Amazon.