Rhoda Meek

IF the mood ever takes you to become the chair of an island development trust, can I recommend that you seriously consider something more relaxing and less fraught, like bomb disposal or crocodile training? I hear that those roles are also paid positions.

THE lights are going off, the swallows have left, the coffee shops and restaurants are closing, seasonal staff return to “civilisation”, and the islands are preparing for winter.

MORE than one southern TV presenter has been seen striding across a “remote” Scottish something. Breathing in the ratings whilst pondering the meaning of life. A drone sweeps across the landscape – just to emphasise the far-away-ness of

GAELIC. It is much debated, much researched and often controversial. It is, by turn, a political football, a national pride, and a confuser of the inattentive driver. To some, a waste of money, to others, starved of cash.

WHEN it comes to one particular grammatical point, I regularly have a running battle with sub-editors. Every time I file a column with “in Tiree”, or “in Harris” or “in” any other island, they change it to “on”.

IN Tiree a few years ago, a planning application from a local family was inundated with objections from people who visit regularly or who own second homes, concerned that their annual view of the sunset would be spoiled by the new house.

ON good days, island Facebook groups are filled with lost phones, missing traffic cones, free pants that turned out to be slightly too small and rants about dogs.

CELEBRITY pilgrimages to the Scottish islands are very much in vogue these days. A sweeping title sequence features breath-taking landscapes and the occasional tasteful ruin before our adventurous presenter is found striding across an empty beach.

SWALLOWS herald the arrival of summer. In Caolas, in the east end of Tiree, there are two types of swallow. The feathered kind, and the kind with a well-feathered nest.

ON the Isle of Harris, the Luskentyre beach car park is gridlocked. A lorry needing to turn at the end of this narrow single-track road doesn’t have a hope.