Quite close to us we saw a landing slip for ferries, and found that it was used by the Ulva ferrie. But also used by the private ferrie to the private island of Inch Kenneth, which was named after Kenneth, one of Columba's disciples.
This island used to belong to a very strange, and at the sound of it, a disfunctional family, by the name of  Redesdale, or Mitford,who had close relations, before the second world war, with Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of a fascist group in Brittain called ' The British Union of Fascists, who later married Diana, one of the daughters.
One of the younger daughters, Unity, became quite notorious for her admiration of Hitler, and actually went over there to show her support, and he, it was said was on his part of course again very flattered by the admiration and attention of such a beautiful young girl. Or maybe he hoped to get a foothold in Britain by his association with Unity.
When the war eventually broke out Unity tried to commit suicide, and that with a pistol given to her by Hitler himself. She didn't die then, but she was paralyzed, and was shipped home as an invalid who died on the small island of Inch Kenneth in 1948.
The other girl, Jessica, was a communist, who later wrote a book about her strange family and her strange upbringing, called Hons.and Rebels.She wrote that on all the windows of their houses the swastika was scratched out with a diamond, and that she later did her bit by scratching out the hammer and sickle. Sounds to me like they all had a little screw loose
Anyhow, everybody to his own, and we had a little incident ourselves at little Staffa cottage!
As I said before, I did the cooking, and Liz looked after the fire, and that evening we came home a bit later than usual, so Liz donned her boots, in case the rat tried again to take a bite out of her feet, to get wood for the fire. She was happy to go to the barn alone, of course with the dogs to warn her of danger, so off she went, very happy after her glass of red, and I went on with my job.
I was as happy as a lark, singing while peeling the tatties, as we were having tatties and mince for dinner, with an apple tart and cream as dessert, when once again I was bally shocked to the depths of my core by Liz who suddenly started screaming, putting up a performance fit to wake the poor giantess witch of Loch Ba! I threw down knife and tattie, and legged it outside, sure to find some huge monster devouring my friend, but I was almost ran into the dust by same friend, who passed me like a bolt of lightning, screaming at the top of her voice!
So I went on to the barn, must say with trembling legs, to see what the boo-hoo was about,as I knew there were none of the beasties, the ones that eat people, from Africa around here, so it could only be some harmless member of the fauna group of Scotland! I slowly put my head around the door that was halfway closed, and the next moment something black and screeching came from somewhere above, and the next moment the whole place was full of flying black things, and they all made a dive for my head! I did NOT stop to see what it was, but also put up a good performance, and only stopped my own screeching when I made it unharmed to our door, and slammed it shut.
Both of us was a bitty unhinged, and Lizzy sat trembling, her big brown eyes rolling fearfully in her head, taking huge gulps from her wine, and I sommer poured myself a stiff one too.
When we had calmed down a bit, we tried to figure out what the monsters were, and on thinking it over rationally, we decided that Liz had unsettled a colony of bats that were just on their way to their hunting grounds when she went into the barn!
We decided to get the wood out before we went out in the mornings! Phew!!