Power to the people ...

...or "Danger of Death". You can't see it, probably, in this photo, but that's what it says on the yellow warning sign on this pylon in the middle of a hillside in Argyll. You come upon it if you walk up the forestry track from the end of Kilmun Arboretum, just after a pretty section where the conifers give way to a grove of silver birches. You say "isn't this bit pretty?" and then you round a bend and there it is. There's another one further up the hill, and the line goes on over the hills in the direction of Gairletter.

It's not as hideous as you might think; in return, of course, we have electricity in all sorts of odd places rather than paraffin lamps and log fires - romantic but trying. Apparently when I was small that's what my mother had to put up with in the house our family stayed in for holidays until I was in my 20s, and though she loved being on Arran rather than in Glasgow, she confessed that by the end of 8 weeks (schools used to get the full two months of summer holidays) she was ready for civilisation again. 

And electricity ...