LAST summer long, we on the western seaboard and the Outer Hebrides had to suffer week after week, month after month of hot dry weather that left our grass brown and withered and our salmon rivers fit to walk across.

Now for virtually all of the winter we are being penalised again. When the rest of the country has had weeks to enjoy sledging, the building of snowmen and snowball fights we are really only seeing the white stuff on the tops of our mountains.

It's an awfully unfair world that we live in.

Alex Dickson,

Inverkirkaig,

Lochinver.