After we first decided to spend six months in North Uist I started preparing a list of things that I really wanted to do whilst we were up here. A few covered the fishing and mainly centred around catching a big sea trout. I managed a 5lb beauty from Ard Heisker sea pool, only to be topped by my brother catching one of 6 1/2 lbs, a proper beauty that had been in Vallay Loch for about a week and was only just losing the losing the silver colour, but had the most wonderful lilac colour. Suffice to say that both fish were returned – no fish that has attained that kind of weight should be removed from the breeding gene pool.

What I hadn’t reckoned on is that one of the items on the list, one nearly at the top, was to appear rather unexpectedly during Poirot last week. Is it just me or is there always a moment when you realise that A. Christie has rather given the game away and your mind wanders. In this case my mind had wandered as far as looking, more in hope than expectation, at Aurorawatch UK – the must see web site for anyone remotely interested in seeing the Northern Lights. To see the Aurora Borealis, as they are more technically described you need a very dark sky to the north of you and a sun spot derived magnetic storm. The further south you are, the bigger the storm, but with the very biggest storms you can see the Northern Lights as far south as the Scilly Isles (but you are usually thwarted by the glow of urbanity). We certainly have dark skies up here – from the lights of the airport far to the south around a sweep of 180 degrees we cant see one light, except for the distant flash of the Monarch Isles lighthouse.so all we needed was a magnetic storm. We had already missed a fantastic display last month, when it was described as psychedelic. I simply thought it was the moon behind the clouds and gone to bed, which was a bit stupid as it was a New Moon that night.

We have the dark skies, so all we needed was a magnetic storm. And the only way of knowing if there is a storm is to look at Aurorawatch and see what their detector is saying. Most of the time it is rather disappointingly green, but this time I idly called up the web page on my ipad to discover that it was Amber. Possible aurora. Abandoning Poirot (body buried under folly, husband killer) I went outside and was faced with the most amazing light display I have ever seen. Against the inky blackness of the northern sky was an extraordinary veil of green, like diaphanous curtains hanging from the sky being blown gently in a cosmic breeze as they wafted backwards and forwards across the sky. As this was my first experience, i can’t say if this was a great display, but it really was pretty sensational. The light is caused by the magnetic storm exciting the oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere so they actually glow – hence the fabulous green glow. Occasionally the storm is severe enough to make them glow red, but only when Aurorawatch is reporting red status – severe storm. So in aurora world amber means possible green and red means possible red. Wonder if Poirot would approve.