LIFE ON COLL AFTER THE VISITORS

Visitors to the island, apart from holiday home owners, are of two kinds. Some, misguided island-tasters, come only once, and are seen no more. The "summer swallows" on the other hand, return year after year,often to the same nesting sites. But few, if any, ever see the island in winter. In the joys of summer exploration it is too easy, perhaps, to accept the idea that material life on the island isn't so very different nowadays from life on the mainland, even in towns. Apart, that is, from dependence on THE BOAT. That factor of course makes an immense difference, as we find when storm or industrial action' prevents local exports leaving the island, or, arriving in the first place along with neccessary supplies and the mail. How do Collachs manage, when there is no clothing store on the island, no hairdressing salon, no soft goods or hardware shops, no garden centre, no vet or dentist or chiropodist? There is no shoe shop or cobbler, no butcher or baker - not even an arty-crafty candlestick maker! (So far .Ed.) Yet everyone is well clad and appropriately shod, both formally and informally. Gardens flourish. Houses are furnished; bathrooms and kitchens are up-to-date with modern fitments, electric cookers, washing machines. But not everyone can go off to Oban at the drop of a hat, summer or winter, and spend the time and money, and the muscle power, to shop around and bring goods home. So how is it done?
 
F.M.R.