Argyll - Sustainable Oban - at The Wave in Glasgow

Hiya
A few of us travelled to Glasgow (by car-share and with one of the most climate-friendly vehicles, a Toyota Prius) to participate in Scotland's great Climate Change demo. It was great to see about 8,000 people gathered to march, chant, dance and wave. We felt buoyed up by the news just in this morning that Barack Obama will attend the Copenhagen climate summit this December during the period when it matters most, i.e. the second week. (source)

Here are two video impressions from Glasgow:



and



Let's hope this, and the much bigger demo down in London on the same day, will make an impression on the UK government, help the Scottish government push through its very ambitious legislation to mitigate climate change, and encourage everyone at COP15* to pull together for fair, binding, fast climate action.

*COP15 - The official title of the Copenhagen conference which takes place from 7-18 December 2009. It refers to the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). (source)

Fantastic Sunday

Guess what is represented in the photo above.
Hiya again!
It's been a while since I last posted any photos. Just rather busy, I suppose, on all kinds of projects. I'm currently involved in Sustainable Oban, the Oban Plastic Bag Free initiative, one of the three Oban Book Groups (the one that meets once a month on a Tuesday evening at Waterstone's, now the only bookshop in town), and the Oban Bach Choir. I also manage a blog for the Lynnside Community Garden Project, which is part of the Glencruitten Residents and Tenants Association.
My circle of friends and acquaintances has been building up very nicely, indeed.
I may have said this before on one of these posts, but I'll say it again: in the six months that I've lived here I have come to feel more rooted and more integrated than I ever did in the thirty-or-so years that I lived in Bern. I suppose it's a chicken-and-egg thing: I held back, so everyone around me held back, too.
Nice to be in a different situation at last.

Sunday morning, 16 November, I woke to a blue sky. The sun cleared the top of what I call Soroba Hill at almost exactly 9:30AM. After pottering about for a bit, including breakfast with my back to the warm sunshine -- glorious!, I decided the day needed to be celebrated out of doors. So I cycled down/over/up (?) to Oban harbour to take some photos.
The tide was out, probably slack water just then. In the photo above, you can see the freshwater of the Lorne river feeding into the harbour through a culvert. Very peaceful, isn't it?I was delighted to find an old acquaintance moored at the North Pier.
The wheelhouse is a wonderful amalgam of old and new and the captain has installed a kind of organ that is worked with these pull-strings.
I was too shy to ask the engineer's mate to pull on one of those strings -- I think they're the captain's prerogative...