Editorial
 
“THE COLL MAGAZINE COMMITTEE” took over the reins from Mairi on the 11th of December 1989 at a meeting of interested persons in the village hall. We all had particular interests and skills and soon sorted ourselves into a respectable working body based initially on ‘who’s good at this, and who particularly doesn’t want to do that!!’ Very quickly order won over chaos and in no time at all we were functioning committee-wise with Chairman, Treasurer, Secretary, and sub-committees dealing with advertising, distribution, art and fund raising.

We were fortunate in that Mairi, and Pat before her, handed over a tried and tested package, with many contacts and a detailed schedule of the race to copy, print and publish. Although time was short, almost desperately so, the committee has worked as a team with enthusiasm, meeting deadlines, sharing burdens and enjoying the challenge. Now that the bulk of the work is over we can relax for a while, but not for long as we are planning several fund raising events in the summer, including a Grand Ceilidh and a Treasure Hunt, which we hope will be enjoyed by all as much as the Burns Supper, which, as our first fund raising venture, was a huge success.

We are also thinking ahead to next year’s magazine, planning a more relaxed schedule, and generally thinking a bit farther into the future. As a bonafide committee we ought to have a constitution, which in itself poses several interesting questions concerning the raison d’etre of the magazine. Pat, in her first issue of the magazine, expressed a belief that the Hebridean way of life “should not only be preserved and recorded but enriched an encouraged”, the magazine committee is beginning to realise that the potential for preserving and promoting our island culture and tradition, past and present, through the magazine, is not restricted by the number of words per page. There is a great wealth of information from many different sources, from story tellers at impromptu ceilidhs and dusty trunks in attics, to archives in Edinburgh and Lochgilphead. The challenge of seeking, sorting and recording such a dwindling resource is only one of the many possible tangents we could follow.

However, with the committee now settling down with a comfortable fourteen members, the burden and responsibility for that kind of policy decision making can be shared, with the aim of nurturing this our legacy from Mairi and Pat, for which we owe them both a hearty vote of thanks!!