One word? When seven would do…

Not as in insane, as in frantic 🙂

Monday Ah, so good to wake up again on our land 🙂 We headed down to the village where many claps on the back and congratulatory cuddles were offered. We realised we’d double booked ourselves for the evening so nipped along to Ian and Kate’s caravan. They are the ones renovating the Tattie House and currently living in a wee caravan, so are fellow trailer trash ;). We nipped along to the ferry with them but there was nothing on it for us. We’d had walkie talkie contact with the kids all morning as they had wanted to go up the ridge behind the croft to explore so they headed off that way with Bonnie. Davies then radioed to say Scarlett had hurt her leg and there was panic in his tone really so Ady went back up. Sure enough it was a fairly nasty gash so Ady cleaned it up (and the surrounding area!) and then brought her down to the village where I was trying to blog about the static move. Norman had a quick look at it and reassured Ady it didn;t need stitches but a good clean up and maybe a couple of butterfly stitches. Scarlett, Davies and I then went on something of a wild goose chase trying to find someone with butterfly stitches even though I knew we had some back at the horsebox. Eventually I decided to go back there instead so we collected Ady and headed there where I cleaned it up some more, Ady held it together and I put the butterfly stitches on. You know Scarlett, she is pretty hard and once the initial tears had been mopped up, by Davies, she has been very nochalent about the whole business. Tough cookie 🙂

It meant I was running very late for a 4pm meeting with Fliss, Vikki, Claire and Mike to discuss Midgefest though. We had a good meeting and arranged the same time next week to update on progress made. I will not be reporting much as I’ve slacked terribly on that to be honest, but I’ll try and get sorted on it.

After that I nipped home and then we all came back down for a drink at the shop. Monday is one of our two nights we do have a beer, being veg box collection evening from the shop. Sadly there had been a mix up with the order so no veg had come, but we were celebrating the static nonetheless so we stayed for a couple and bought Fliss and Sandy a couple of drinks each and thanked them once more for everything.

Then we loaded ourselves into Ian and Kate’s car along with Vikki and Mike and headed over to Harris for a lovely evening on the beach. Ian and Kate had brought sausages and burgers, we had loads of beers and just had an amazing few hours talking, laughing, cooking over the fire, spotting birds and seals and playing games. Just perfect 🙂 We left around midnight and all sang all the way home to Kinloch. A fab experience we are all keen to repeat again asap.

Tuesday We collected some wigwam poles and canvas from Sandy and Fliss. We are hatching a plan with them to hire out their wigwam on our croft. Loads still to be thrashed out and we need to get it actually up and check it is sound but it is now up at the croft ready to be put up. We had a cup of tea with them and a chat. They are interesting people, probably the ones we’ll end up closest to here I reckon as we have lots in common. Sandy is an alcoholic, currently clean but prone to falling off the wagon according to the village. We’ve not talked about it with them yet but I am sure it will come up one way or another at some point soon. I’ve been really impressed with his ability to just disappear when the drink comes out, as it has very frequently over the last few weeks with all the static stuff going on and the hard drinking Eigg boys over here.

Back at the static we’d invited Paul, the new mechanic up for dinner so I cooked earlier for the kids and then made a quiche for us. We had a really nice evening with Paul, he’s from Somerset, pretty near Glastonbury so we had plenty of stuff round there to chat about having spent so much time there last year. Paul is newer than us to the island and equally bemused by all the politics and nonsense so it was good to form a solid beginning of a friendship with him. He does love it here and I hope he and Carole get passed all the bullshit and make it work.

Wednesday We’d declared a Family Day as we are very aware of neglecting time with the kids these last few weeks. We had got into a good rhythm prior to starting to move the static and we need to regain that AND start getting stuff happening on the croft. It was the ferry at 1135am though and we had empty diesel cans booked to go off so needed to get DG notes. We met the first ferry and got off a Harbro order (animal feed and supplies) of some china eggs to encourage the birds to lay where we want them to rather than randomly around the croft and river bank, a new collar for Bonnie and a couple of bags of dog treats, an Amazon order (taco shells and a sack of rice) and the replacement strimmer bits which sadly were wrong again, and a Co Op food order which was 100% right and what I’d ordered for probably the first time ever! Then we chased around for nearly an hour trying to get DG notes, finally getting some from the SNH office. Sigh for things being so much more complicated than they need to be sometimes.

Back to the static for lunch and then we walked up the hill in the rain to check out and pace the distance from a higher than our static roof point in the burn where we can start getting our water supply from. We all got soaked doing that as it was pouring with rain AND the grass is long and was wet. My boots are leaking so I was totally soaked and I can’t find any of my waterproof trousers. So more shopping! We have various things we want to find homes for and plot out on the croft but not in the pouring rain! The kids and I walked down to the village to do a few online bits but there was a directors meeting in the hall so we didn’t stop long. Ranger Mike came up for dinner (curry, to say thanks for storing some of our food in his freezer) so we went back and I watched a puppet show Scarlett had been working on using an empty cardboard box our CoOp order had come in that looked like a TV or puppet theatre.

A nice evening with Mike, it’s so fab to be able to have people up to our house for dinner, I’m not at all sure the novelty will ever wear off :).

Today – this morning we did some reading with the kids – Scarlett is under suffrance looking at the Bob books. She could so read if she’d just believe she can. She did well this morning with me though and Davies is flying through reading now. His writing and spelling is doing really well now, still a little on the creative side but the increased reading is definitely starting to show through.

Then off to the Sheerwater. The ford is running very high after lots of rainfall here and I think the car needs to stay on the village side of it rather than the croft side now so we drove down to the pier. It was just as well, lots of people came: Ian & Kate, Fliss & Joss, Morag (the teacher) and Cara (the pupil), Ranger Mike and six tourists, and Ronnie came into the old pier so we all had to jump in cars and drive back there instead.

Another fab Sheerwater trip with a pretty large pod of about 25 common short beaked dolphins all playing around the boat. So magical 🙂

Right, I need to go – it’s ordering veg box day and we have a big load of washing to get done then tidying up in the static before my parents arrive tomorrow.

Where were we?

Ah yes, midway along a very midgey nature trail track and deep in the depths of despair about life, the universe and everything!

I’ve lost track of what day was what, I think I did my slightly more positive post on Wednesday so I’ll assume that’s true and start with Thursday.

Thursday is Sheerwater Day. We’ve been every week since we arrived and been gradually seeing more and more out there each week. This week was an odd one – Ady was up with Sandy strimming on the croft, I made a cake for the teashop (I was supposed to bake every day last week but failed to pull that out of the bag at all thanks to everything else going on, but woke on Thursday and decided enough was enough with all the wallowing and I needed to get on with Normal Life again) and walked down with it. Scarlett came with me and when we got back Ady was nowhere to be found. Davies had seen him going one way but not come back. I’d arranged to collect Claire from the Teashop to come out on the Sheerwater with us so after a bit of deliberation and looking around for Ady I decided to leave him a note and take the kids and some lunch out rather than all of us miss the trip.

In the end it was only the three of us, Claire and Izzy (castle chef, I’ve mentioned her before I think, if not I am about to update the ‘Rum Lot’ biographies on the side bar soon). The trip over was pretty uneventful but just as we approached Soay we saw the Adventure boat coming towards us with a pod of about 10 dolphins all leaping and bow riding around them. It was pretty cool 🙂 Some of them came with our boat for a while too.

We dropped off the post and then headed back and Daniel (one of the crew) called down to say ‘more dolphins coming up’ and suddenly we were right in the middle of the super pod that has been around the Small Isles for the last few weeks. We cut the engines and just stopped. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. No sound other than the waves lapping against the boat and the clicking and whistling of the dolphins. Although Rosemarkie has been the most fab experience for dolphin watching (they are bottlenose, these were common dolphins) this trumped that a million times over for being so close you could actually lean out and touch them if you wished. They stayed around us for about 20 minutes leaping, playing and splashing. We all debated jumping in with them and it was very tempting. It was an eerily quiet and almost spiritual experience which all three of us adults said made us feel tearful. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite so connected with wild animals before, it was as though they were as delighted and enchanted and interested in us as we were with them. My camera battery died with the first shot so I have no footage of it but that is almost better because instead of stressing about the perfect shot or video clip I was resigned to simply living it and committing as much as possible to memory. Izzy has some phone video and all you can hear is Scarlett giving a running commentary on how ‘the sea is alive with dolphins’. Izzy said if Scarlett doesn’t grow up to be a wildlife show presenter she’ll be amazed. I reckon she’ll be keeping that clip just incase (I knew her when she was nine and was with her when she saw her first pod of common dolphins ;)).

Back on Rum (I quite like the fact we leave every week for two hours, even if we never touch dry land. It gives a real sense of perspective to see it as the small island it actually is from a distance) we caught up with Ady. He and Sandy had rung Calmac to check the wheels had arrived and been assured they had and would be on the 2pm ferry the next day.

That night brought heavy rain and our bedroom roof leaked. It all felt pretty bleak and we really struggled to find the energy to even hope the next day would bring anything positive.

We were up early and Claire came up to bring my amber back as the clasp was broken and she fixed it for me. We’d decided me not wearing it last weekend had been part of the bad luck so she got it fixed and delivered for me for Friday. She stayed and had tea and chats with me as I packed everything up again. Ady went to meet Alasdair at the pier and we hoped it would all turn out okay.

However it did not pan out that way as although Alasdair arrived, on a boat, with Chris and Dean also from Eigg the wheels did not. They were not on the 2pm ferry. It was a crushing moment really, there is a manifest that comes in with the boat saying what has come in and for whom and it clearly said ‘Goddard, 1 box’ but there was nothing for us at all. I rang Calmac and was assured it had been put on and nothing had been left behind which meant it must still be on the boat heading for Canna. Two people rang ahead to Canna for us to ensure that if it did come off there it would be put straight back on the boat. In the meantime Chris (who appears to be something of an eccentric genius – he lives alone on his boat, moored off of Eigg and looks like Captain Birdseye) managed to straighten the axle that we’d all been trying various methods on all week and failed. He is slow and steady and thinks things through which there had been all too little of last weekend. I credit him with much of where we are now.

We went back to meet the later ferry incase it had gone to Canna and back but there was nothing on there. We talked to the skipper – Ben who by now knew the story and promised to see what he could find out back at Mallaig but was worried it may have gone on the Eigg and Muck ferry instead, in which case it may be sitting on one of those Isles instead. We came back to the shop and after various phonecalls managed to get hold of the only person at Calmac Mallaig who knows what she is doing – Cat. She went down to the freight cage, opened the parcel to check it had wheels in it and put it on the van ready to be driven onto the Rum ferry on Saturday morning herself, came back the phone and apologised that ‘we employ idiots’. Love her! That done, with an assurance we trusted that they would be with us first thing on Saturday we retired from static business for the evening and had a drink with everyone. We went off to get dinner sorted for us and the kids and then we went down for another drink while Davies and Scarlett watched a film at the static. It turned into something of a session, with Alasdair spending over £100 at the shop. Ady left to put the kids to bed, I stayed awhile but didn’t drink much and headed off at 1130 leaving them all in full swing still. I hear it went on til 3am, ended with dinner back at the castle and was a real party to remember.

We were not in a party place…

Saturday was an early start – Ady and I headed to the boat and sure enough the wheels were there. Apparently they’d even radioed ahead to Neil (on harbourmaster duty) to say ‘the boat contains the wheels!’ 🙂 We gathered them up and headed towards the static. Chris was along the path so we collected him too. Up at the static we soon had a workforce of Sandy, Mike and Ian. The wheels went on and then Sandy went to fetch Alasdair and Dean and the day began. The kids went down to Fliss and Sandy’s to watch a dvd with Bonnie so they stayed out of the way for the duration of the day which made it much easier than last week.

I cannot say it went easily and there were challenges every single step of the way with things to dig out, move and pull straight as we went. The tractor broke down in the middle of the ford so we stopped for half time oranges. The midges were evil so most of us were in midge jackets / hoods the whole time which really didn’t help with the heat or vision but slowly and surely it got there. We crossed various paths, turned corners, navigated round rocks and banks, crossed the river and finally, finally crossed the gate and into the croft. It didn’t go smoothly even from there as we needed the mats all the way up the croft hill and we almost lost it into the ditch just inside the croft. All the animals were freaked out by this massive tractor and static moving alongside them but to cheers, camera clicks and a feeling that it wasn’t quite real we were there. On the croft.
Words can’t quite express what a feeling that is. Our view is stunning, all the more amazing for the length of hassle it has been to get it here. Ian came and helped us level it, Vikki brought up sandwiches and elderflower fizz to toast it and then we headed down to the village. We said goodbye and thank you to Alasdair and Dean – we have not yet settled up with Alasdair, we’ll sort that out later. We were given housewarming bottles of wine from Abby and James (castle staff), Claire and Steve and tonight Mike brought up a card and bottle of whiskey. Rachel came up with a bottle of cava and the whole village is thrilled for us with congratulations coming from even the most surly and grumpy of quarters. It felt like a real community effort yesterday.

We had a drink and then came home for dinner. A really late night but with no reason to be up for anything specific this morning that was fine. Home. On the croft 🙂

Today has been lovely. Ian came up for a cup of tea and chat about hydro power, then Ady and I returned the mats we have borrowed from Billy the contractor on the castle and put a wash on. The kids stayed at the croft with Bonnie and played in the river. We caught up with the castle staff and Abby took us on a castle tour which we had not actually managed to do before – amazing place.

Back at home Ady strimmed round the pigs as Barbara keeps escaping, I hung out the washing and then sorted out the horsebox a bit to get various things out now we are not so worried about weight in the static. While I was doing it Rachel arrived with Sika so Sika and Bonnie had a great hour racing about the croft together while Rachel, Ady and I had a bottle of cava to toast us getting home. We can actually see each others houses now 🙂 We walked down to the village with Rachel along the north nature trail which is probably our quickest walking route to the village at about ten minutes and certainly a smoother walk.

Back for dinner – beef stew and dumplings. And some breadmaking as the oven was on, along with a cake for Teashop tomorrow and cinnamon roll dough for breakfast in the morning in celebration of being here at last. Mike called in with a card and bottle of whiskey and Kate sent a text to arrange to go to Harris tomorrow evening. Suddenly everything feels wonderful and possible again. I know there will be many more challenges ahead and hopefully we’ll face them with more positivity than we managed this last issue but it’s over now and life is good again :).

Writing it all out yesterday was definitely theraputic for me. I did have a little cry and then went and chatted to Vikki. She’s been off on island on holiday for 10 days and had come back on Monday. We’d met her from the ferry and brought her stuff back for her and gone in for a cup of tea and stayed awhile. Unfortunately rather than welcoming her back properly or hearing about her time off we’d rather swamped her with our woe and the full on catch up of Rum during the last ten days which had included a relationship break up, someone leaving, our static adventures and tales of one new member of castle staff who didn’t even last the week and another who probably won’t. Once we got home we realised just how rubbish a welcome home that had been and had been feeling bad about it. So I went and had another cup of tea and shared cheery positive stuff instead which left me feeling much better about life generally.

By the time I got back to the static we just had time to cook and eat dinner and then we dashed back out again to make a talk at the hall by geologist Jim Blair who has written about Rum and the other small isles unique geology. It was pitched more at a geologist than an interested layperson and certainly way above the kids heads but we sat through it and then had a drink at the shop with Mike who had returned home. Good to see him back :).

We left and were home about 11pm, the incredibly light evenings really mess with your head regarding bedtime and I thought I was turning in for an early night only to look at the clock and realise it was 1230am! It is light again by 4am and I slept badly not getting up until the alarm at 830am.

Today was the second craft fayre of 2012 – the first was on April 25th, the day our static arrived so we were not around for that one. This time I had full intentions of sitting behind a groaning table of home made stuff but circumstances have again contrived against that so I had just three scarves (two crocheted, one knitted) and several plates of baking – cheese scones, cranberry and chocolate blondies and some ginger cupcakes (ginger sponge is my new signature cake, I like how it goes with my hair ;)). The kids came down too and had made some bits which sold (mostly to islanders ;)) and then got pound signs in their eyes and were away gathering shells and other beach treasures and putting together bags of precious found things for 25p a time. They did pretty well and are very motivated to make stuff for the next one. I reckon we’ll be trying for weekly fayres through the summer season.

I spent the time chatting to Fliss – I still have not bonded with her properly, we mostly talk business ideas and crafts, nothing really personal although I keep trying and will continue to do so. My closest friends here so far are Vikki, Kate and Rachel but I think Fliss and I could be really good mates if we can get past the fact I am so new and she is so guarded. Ady and Sandy are getting on really well and Ady feels very at ease with him now which is a real silver lining to the whole static moving debacle.

I sold a fair bit of my baking, I bartered some more with Fliss for some lip balm (she makes soaps and other beauty lotions and potions) and sold some more to Claire for teashop tomorrow, so made over a tenner, have some nice baked stuff for us for the next couple of days and some lipbalm too 🙂 One of the students here at the moment came over to say he’s been reading my blog and is from Lewes which was nice. I am all enthused and inspired anew with making and selling stuff again :). I also got some amazon deliveries today and now have some lovely books on permaculture, self sufficiency (including cool projects like earth ovens, solar dryers (for fruit and veg), compost loos and so on) and earth shelter houses. Ahh books and glossy pictures of other people living the dream…

A meeting has been set up for Monday night to get cracking on arranging midgefest, Rachel is coming up for tea tomorrow afternoon and it is Sheerwater day – yesterday Mike saw pods of dolphins and 8 minke whales so I am hoping for a good trip on that.

The wheels didn’t arrive today but having chased them up we are hopeful they’ll be in Mallaig tomorrow so will come on Friday’s boat and all will still go according to plan. Sandy and Ady have been talking about revenue streams from camping up on the croft too so he is feeling more positive today aswell.

Right, my washing should be done (I’ve been sneaking some online time while it’s at the castle laundry) so I need to get back for dinner. Not a full return to normal Nic service and I am still very much in sick feeling in the pit of my tummy limbo over what will happen next but I am certainly back to a brave face and ‘it’ll be fine’ again.

Need to record this all because despite having knocked us for six I know that with a sense of perspective it will all feel better.

It’s been said many times (by us) since we arrived here that everything gets all out of perspective and feels so much more intense than it actually should. This is another of those times I reckon. If we had access to friends and family, the internet and so on then this may not feel like quite such a big deal.

So Sunday morning we were all up bright and early and by 830am we were unloaded onto a trailer and ready to go. The initial plan of digging out the bank a little to create a wider path was quickly shelved in favour of coming down the very steep side of the bank instead from the road above. The benefits should have been that it was minimal damage to the static and we got a straight run at the culvert which was the next big issue along the way.

The trouble (from my out the other side feeling of events) is that somewhere along the way it went from being our home, our everything being moved from one location to another and morphed into some sort of Top Gear challenge with a load of testosterone fuelled blokes in charge of diggers, tractors and chainsaws seeing how far they could drag a static before it all fell apart. The short answer is not very far at all. 🙁 By the end of the afternoon we had me in tears, Ady looking like someone had ripped his heart out, two kids and a dog all having been banished and kept away all day having learned more new swear words in a day than in their whole lives before and a rather bruised, battered and wheel-less mobile home that now truly was a static because it could move no further. Bleak was not the word.

Coming down the bank took out the plumbing and gas pipes from underneath, along with three of the metal bracing bars that form the chassis. The bay window base took a real beating as the tractor didn’t have full operation of it’s up and down bit so a pile of sleepers was on the front of the tow bar to try and keep it hitched but when it crashed down the bank they shot up. How we didn’t lose the window I don’t know.
” alt=”” />

That done we realised one of the wheels was buckled and bent so a sledgehammer was taken to it and it looked a bit better. Next challenge was actually crossing the culvert which is a pipe diverting water from one area into the stream /river but was already a fairly crumbling track over it and not very wide. We used sleepers, planks and steels to brace it but the angles were just too much and further damage was done. The toughest bit was when we realised a tree was pushing against one of the doors and four of us had to brace the van away from it, which meant pushing it towards falling off into the river the other side, while the tree was chainsawed down. Excitement but not in a good way.

” alt=”” />

We thought we were on the way from then on, the two worst bits passed but as it bumped along the killer stones on the track the damaged wheel simply gave up, the bearings came out and the wheel came off. Crunch down on that side of the van with dreadful creaking, crashing and groaning. We all ducked down to look underneath and the other tyre exploded. Ady got a faceful and has a cut on his forehead, I think he’s lucky to have his sight.

At that point I think we realised no one actually had a clue what they were doing and the suggestions that Ady and I had been sitting on because we thought we were interfering with people that were used to this sort of thing felt all the worse for being left unsaid. All the political bollocks of this island and people who don’t talk to each other had clearly had an impact and Ady went to speak to Billy, one of the contractors on the castle to see if he could offer anything. Billy and Ady returned with Billy’s big green machine which theoretically could lift the static onto a trailer so it could be got to the croft that way. Except Billy couldn’t get across the now very broken culvert in his 10.5 tonne machine.

” alt=”” />

The static was then dragged, by digger and tractor back onto the track and everyone called it a day for the night. Leaving us with a wonky static that doors didn’t even close on, no plumbing or heating. Sandy came back and fixed up the gas and water for us. He has been a start although he is currently sober and has a real drink problem so apparently could at any time fall off the wagon and disappear. That feels very scary as he is currently the only person I am really trusting to know what he is doing. I want to shove Alasdair’s digger up part of his own body. I may be unfairly bitter towards him but I feel the need to be really cross with someone…

Rachel appeared with wine, cider and beer and sat and talked to me while Ady tried in vain to cite the static to get it level so we could sleep in it. Without wheels there was nowhere to get underneath to jack it up and with all best intentions Rachel and I were not much help. In the end we took up Claire on her offer to cook us dinner and Rachel on her offer of a free room at the castle for the night. Neither felt like what we wanted to do or had dreamed of being the case for that night but I think walking away was the best thing to do at that stage.

Ady went off to bed, the kids celebrated seven plug sockets in our room and I drank myself into oblivion down in the kitchen with the castle staff. Bad idea – when you wake in the morning all your problems are still there but you are even less able to deal with them thanks to a killer hangover. I have no real idea how I functioned at all yesterday and I’ve never seen Ady so low.

We spent the morning chasing around trying to work out what to do next, spent another £250 on a new set of wheels and used up all our favour asking. The new plan is for the axle to be returned to it’s proper shape with help of a heat torch, the new wheels to be fitted and some tuffmat surfaces to be laid down infront of the static as it is towed along on Friday. That assumes the wheels arrive on time, the axle can be made straight, the wheels don’t pop off again on the track, we manage to cross the ford and nothing else goes wrong. Theoretically we could be on the croft by Friday night. Just as theoretically we could be 10 foot further along with an even more damaged static and my parents arriving a week on Friday.

Sandy came and helped Ady level the static so we are back in it in it’s new location, we can actually see croft 2, but not quite croft 3 and we are theoretically past the worst two bits of the journey. I just can’t pull my usual ‘it’ll be fine’ out of the bag because for what feels like the first time I’ve been proved wrong and I’ve sort of lost my faith. I’m trying really hard to keep perspective – no one got hurt, the static is damaged but repairable, people came and helped and supported and commisserated and I know we have friends thinking of us from afar. No one got hurt, there is every chance it will go smoothly on Friday and I’ll be bouncing around as usual setting up home properly on the croft and waiting for my mum and dad to get here (I can’t even talk about how much I am missing my Dad without dissolving into tears, I’ve not talked to them about what happened yet because we are still in the middle of it all and I can’t bring myself to think the worse but don’t dare think anything like the best.)

I know it’s not, but this feels like the biggest challenge ever and I don’t even really know why. When I think of what we’ve been through – the money woes, the times when we were WWOOFing when Willow was struggling, somehow this just feels bigger. It feels like I’m lying to the kids when I try and reassure them everything is okay, like I’m pushing Ady beyond what he feels happy with, like I am asking more of friends I have only made in the last few weeks than it is okay to be asking. I know perspective will put this all back where it should be and one way or another the uncertainty of what will happen next will be answered by the end of the week. I know Dad will help us with more money if we need it and I know the world will still turn and it will all be okay, I’m just struggling to convince myself of that right now, let alone anyone else and when I’m the one who usually has that role I can’t quite stomach the thought of being proved a liar.

I spent half an hour yesterday sat at the top of the croft looking around and drinking in the view, the air, the atmosphere. We’ve quietly questionned whether we are doing the right thing being here and when we finally sat down to dinner at nearly 11pm last night and I remembered it was Ady and I’s 19th anniversary so the four of us toasted us it was with more than a twist of irony in our smiles as we looked at each other and said as we do every year ‘and they said it would never last’. This is a million miles from where we imagined we might be when we fell in love half my life ago and in just the last 48 hours I feel better and worse has been demonstrated. I’m looking forward to being out the other side made stronger by what hasn’t killed me.

15 minutes

I reckon I may get 15 minutes out of a ‘fully charged’ battery on the netbook so I’m having a quick bash at blogging at the static to upload at some point.

Last night after blogging, finally uploading the photos to moonpig for a fathers day card and walking back up to the static I got in just before Ady served up dinner. We’d ordered some mince from Jinty but it had all sold out (she can be a bit random in remembering to keep stuff by for you that you’ve ordered bless her) so we got some bacon with the intention of making pasta bake, except we had very little pasta! (Reminds me of that saying about we could have ham and eggs if we only had some eggs. And some ham.) So Ady cooked that for the kids and then cobbled together something for us using spaghetti, cheese sauce, a jar of sauce we’d been donated from the students with tomatoes and marscapone cheese and some bacon. It was delicious but I think I paid for all the buttery richness later on 🙁

It was still very light so at 10 ish I decided to walk up to the croft to hang the washing out. The kids were watching something on the dvd player (also on it’s last legs, the hinges have gone and the speaker doesn’t work anymore) but they wanted to come too so we all ended up walking up there with Bonnie too. The chickens, pigs and ducks were most surprised to see us all again! I hung the washing out and the kids rang my parents for a chat. They are coming up in two weeks 🙂 Mum told me she’d been in a car accident on Monday and had 2 hours of dental work on Tuesday – she is understanding of the fact we are only really communicating in emergency situations at the moment but it still felt a bit rubbish to have not talked in a couple of weeks and then got all that stored up angst from her. I doubt we’ll ever bother with a landline here as the cost will be huge in setting it up but we do have pretty good mobile signal up on the croft so hopefully we’ll be able to chat more often soon.

Back to the static for bedtime. I woke in the night with dreadful stomach cramps and was awake shivering and wishing for a flushing toilet for about an hour 🙁 I’ve been fine, if rather fragile today so I am assuming it was a reaction to the rather greasy dinner rather than anything more sinister or contagious.

This morning Ady went to feed the animals and lop down some branches along the route that the tractor is taking on Sunday. I got the kids up, breakfasted and we did some reading / writing / drawing stuff. Having addressed the envelopes of things we walked down to the shop to get some stamps and get a form signed by Ali who is one of the directors. It is also her birthday today so we wished her happy birthday. We called in to see Sandy and Fliss for any more developments on the tractor and trailer and then returned to the trail to do some more lopping. We checked for eggs and found five today 🙂 More chickens had gotten out though so some more fence proofing was required.

Back to the static (looking forward to just saying ‘home’ or ‘the croft’ very soon) for lunch and then down to meet the ferry. We needed to empty the loo and fill up waters on the way and the kids came with us but we had cut it very fine and ended up arriving as the boat was pulling out. Ian and Kate had very kindly started loading their car with our stuff as we had two large amazon boxes, two from the CoOp and 10 sacks of various animal feed (mixed grain and layers pellets for birds, pig nuts and dusting powder for chickens and wormer for pigs) arrived from Harbro, the feed supplier in Fort William. We helped unload the van for the shop, took our stuff from Ian and Kate and headed back up. The Pajero has been really playing up, we think the turbo has gone. It seems to struggle with the 10 miles an hour, barely getting out of second gear driving around the island and has been chucking out nasty smoke, making a knocking sound and not getting up the hills but it seemed to be running okay so with the massive incentive of not needing to hand carry / wheelbarrow 10 sacks of feed we chanced the drive and got all the way to the croft and up to the horse box at the top of the hill too 🙂 Yay! The kids were so happy playing on the riverbank we left them to it and came back with the car. Amazon had delivered a couple of cake cooling racks, 24 bags of pasta and some wheat flakes – am loving subscribe and save which delivers free and has been brilliant for bulk orders of sacks of flour, sugar, loo rolls, washing up liquid, dried fruit and nuts, rice and pasta. Once the static is on the croft we’re planning on shelving out the horse box to become a proper pantry / food storage area and stocking up ready for the winter when boats are unreliable.

Some very friendly American tourists came along the nature trail path at that point so we chatted to them for quite a while. It’s funny how quickly we’ve become used to being islanders and knowing the answers to the ‘usual’ questions. I guess being long term Home Educators is good practise for the same old things being asked again and again ;). They were really enthusiastic and excited about what we’re doing too which is always nice :). We gathered the kids up who were busy creating a little world out of the clay around the beach and making dams and islands. Davies stayed at the static with Bonnie but Tarly came with Ady and I to see Fliss briefly, sell some eggs to Jinty (one box sold while we were still in the shop 🙂 Love seeing Rum Croft Eggs written on the boxes :)) and have a couple of drinks including one with Ali to celebrate her birthday. Ady and Scarlett returned but I stayed for another as I was chatting to various people including Mark, a student who has been here for six weeks studying small mammals. He is really nice, would love a croft himself and is a fellow Hugh F-W and John Seymour fan. He’s back in mid July and has already promised to bring a book along with him he thinks we’d like to read. We get some really cool and interesting people passing through Rum, plenty of them end up staying or returning time and again.

Back at the static I got both the kids showered / bathed (the shower tray is about 6 inches deep so almost bath like for kids) and cooked their dinner and put some bread dough on. Then I prepped our dinner and walked down to find Ady who was doing more lopping. We both had showers, ate dinner and read the latest copy of the West Word (local newsletter) which has us mentioned a couple of times and our welcome pack from SCF (Scottish Crofting Federation) while the kids watched a film.

This time tomorrow Alasdair will be here. This time on Sunday we could actually be on the croft. I’m torn between thrilled and excited and bloody terrified!

Saturday

Well he’s here!

Today has been a little like Christmas Eve, but when you are a bit afraid of Santa….

This morning I woke to my ferry alarm. The ferry comes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, twice each day during the summer and as it comes at different times each day I have an alarm set on my phone for 10 minutes before it arrives each time. Saturday mornings that is at 845am which often is what wakes me on a Saturday. Ady went off to meet it as we are never entirely sure if something might come for us and we have promised to collect Vikki’s washing machine if it comes so we need to meet each ferry anyway. Meantime I got up and baked the bread I had proving overnight. Ady returned with Sandy and they went off to do some chainsawing and clearing the path to the croft. The kids and I breakfasted (on freshly baked bread, is there any better way?).

I made a start on packing stuff up and then walked down to the croft following Bonnie and the kids who had all left separately in that direction. I headed to Jinty’s to get some cash out of the post office and by the time I came back up Ady and Sandy were drinking tea in the static so I joined them. The kids were down at the river – can’t wait until that is within sight of the static 🙂

Sandy left and we had lunch, fully expecting the kids to reappear hungry but they didn’t so eventually Ady went off to do some more strimming and send them back. I fed them and carried on with my tidying. As ever when tidying I got caught up in the small stuff and found myself creating piles of paperwork to categorise into different things and I now have a filing system of sorts; Rum Stuff, Croft Stuff, Money Stuff… that sort of thing.

Ady reappeared with a dipper chick during the afternoon. We are assuming it had been evicted from a nest due to the chainsawing down of trees along the path. He had rescued it from the clutches of some hoodies and we put it into a margarine tub for a few hours but it’s mother still seemed to be searching for it so we returned it and later saw it with her again. Fingers crossed…

The kids have been doing bedroom sort outs as we had assumed Alasdair would stay with us so had planned for Davies to go in with Scarlett so he could have Davies’ room. In the event Alasdair has gone in to a caravan down in the village although after much fussing and fighting about sleepovers the kids have ended up asking to sleep together anyway.

I stuck some jacket potatoes in the oven and after lots of knuckle crushing and teeth grinding (we are pretty stressed about this challenge) we headed down to meet the ferry.

A bad start when the tractor didn’t come off the ferry as it’s battery was flat and it needed a jump start. Which didn’t happen so it ended up towed off. I’d love to pretend I pulled off nochalent at this stage but I so didn’t! We drove round to Sandy’s where Alastair was headed to charge his battery up and then back to the static. Sandy (who has become our project manager ;)) and Alasdair came up and we walked the path. I don’t even really want to think about how it will all pan out tomorrow but it will either be fine or it won’t. And that will be fine somehow. I’ll deal with it if it’s not.

We went down to the shop – the kids were busy watching The Witches on dvd – we’ve just finished the book and had a few drinks. Some new people have arrived to work at the castle. It’s clear to me how much Rum feels like home, everyone expresses surprise at how we’ve only been here 6 weeks or so. We’ve a midsommers party planned at the croft on Thursday – hopefully to celebrate actually getting the static there rather than drowning our sorrows…

But a quick one while I’m uploading photos to make a fathers day card for my Dad on moonpig 🙂

A good day today although not a very productive one. First thing the kids and I did some reading / writing / drawing stuff and then Ady and I walked down to take some library books back and call in on Sandy. He’d been in touch with Alasdair on Eigg and needed some more measurements of the static. I have no real idea what will actually happen on Sunday / Monday but I know people who have a better idea are working really hard on getting it onto the croft so I’ll save my fretting for now. Or at least leave it to Ady who is worrying more than enough for both of us!

We went out on the Sheerwater – we saw some dolphins in the far distance and I saw what looked like a possible minke whale dorsal fin but from a distance and briefly so was unable to be checked. Mike is off island and Ronnie the skipper was not in such a wildlife chasing mood today anyway. We chatted to some tourists and I spent a lot of the trip chatting to Carol who is the newest islander while Ady chatted to Ian and Kate (Tattie house folk). I think we’re all still feeling a bit flat at Georgie going yesterday really.

After that we debated some fishing as the tide was right but then were hungry when we nipped back to the static to collect rods so ended up having lunch and then it rained and then it was midgey so we never got there. Must do better with that, we’re far too slack and would be doing something we enjoy AND getting free dinner too!

We went to the croft to collect eggs / feed animals. Just two eggs today, not sure whether they are laying and getting nicked by the hoodies (hooded crows), are laying somewhere we’ve simply not found or are possibly not reliable at laying daily yet as some of the eggs are still odd shapes and sizes so that is a distinct possibility.

Having chatted to Ian today I learnt we may well be able to get internet up at the croft as we have the schoolhouse in view which is where the signal bounces from. So for £15 a month it may happen. Oh how I hope!

We measured the static and took details back to Sandy. He is liasing with Alasdair for us and remains confident it will all happen this weekend. We’ve taken washing to the castle and Ady is now collecting it, we’ll grab some food from the shop and head home for dinner.

That almost feels boring now I am accounting for every moment 😉
I’ve been ordering various books on compost loos, permaculture, green building and stuff and feeling all renewed with excitement about

Until we are in a place where I can get regular, uninterupted internet access I simply can’t pull off daily blogging. I find that really hard, infact although it sounds really odd and not a little sad it is internet access or lack of it that I am struggling most with just now. Every little thing, from recording my day on my blog, to feeling like I am still keeping a hand in with maintaining friendships, recording our days and weeks on flickr and on the WW blog, getting straight with coordinatiing volunteers and keeping friends up to date on what we’re doing, setting up a proper WWOOF host arrangement, staying abreast of shopping, banking, croft admin and finally just being able to do a quick google to answer the kids or my own questions as and when they arise is bloody hard.

It is pretty much the only thing I’m finding hard mind you, so that’s not all bad and maybe it is remediable (is that a word?).

So where are we? It’s been a really full on couple of weeks. Norman went off island as he got septacemia from the dog fight bite – first time he’s left the island in 3 years so that was a Big Deal. He’s back now and recovering well. We’ve lost Georgie 🙁 Really sad about that. Her and Mike have split up and she has gone back to NZ where she is from. She left on the ferry today after a very teary, boozy goodbye party yesterday afternoon. Lots of tears at the ferry this afternoon. It feels so huge when someone leaves even for a few days or weeks let alone forever. Mike has gone with her as far as Fort William and will be back next week sometime which is when we get to be his friends and supporters. He is struggling with the breakup of a relationship in such a public manner.

We’ve handed our notice in for the Odd Job job, it was a real farce with every job we were given being either impossible, stupid, ridiculously time consuming beyond what we felt we could charge for or something that people looked at us like idiots for turning up at their houses to do (the trust owns all the houses in the village so everyone is a tenant, they come up with really rubbish fixes for stuff needing doing and send us along looking like pillocks to fix things without proper tools). That is a relief 🙂

The static *might* finally get to the croft. Alistair from Eigg is coming over this weekend with his tractor and trailer to get it there. It’s costing us £300 on calmac to get it here and back, plus whatever he charges us for his time and we’ll be putting him up Saturday to Monday but this time next week we might actually be living on our own land. We have a bottle of fizz from Jill ready to crack open on our first actual night on the croft and a big barbecue ready to fire up for a croft warming party for the whole island if it actually happens.

The animals are all well – Tom & Barbara are lovely – really like having pigs 🙂 They are very tame, him more than her and will roll over for their tummies to be tickled. The chickens are slowly being contained – we’ve been given loads of old galvanised corrugated sheets so have been putting them around their enclosure as they have started laying but are all over the croft and surrounding area so every day we spent hours looking for eggs and rounding them back up. Once we’re living down there we might shut them in at night til they’ve laid and then let them back out to free range though as it is nice to see them all over the place, just not when eggs can be sold for 22p each to Jinty’s shop! Bonnie is still lovely, growing fast and persuading me slowly that dogs are not all bad 😉

Davies and Scarlett are still loving it here. Scarlett was pretty devastated to be losing Georgie – they had grown quite close and walked dogs together lots. Claire has offered them drawing lessons and I think Davies intends getting Sandy to show him some woodworking stuff too. They love swimming in the river, have been asked to fill the large community board with a collcetion of their artwork, are making stuff to sell in Fliss’ shop and at next weeks craft fayre to tourists and odd minor wobbles aside are loving it here.

I am loving it too – so much 🙂 I have a special spot on the croft land where I sit on a huge stone and think with all the mountains and rivers and sky around me and not another person in sight or sound. I love the people, the feeling of community (for all it’s frustrations and challenges), the opportunities and pioneering feel. I love my animals and can’t wait to start growing stuff and am looking forward to sharing Rum with family and friends soon. My parents will be here in a couple of weeks and for all my terror at them just not getting it or the weather or midges being dreadful I am still really looking forward to seeing them and showing them everything. I’ve been making stuff to sell at the craft fayre – knitting and crochet. Baking for teashop, selling eggs and trying to read lots about foraging home brew and stuff. There is so, so much to do and the slower pace of life really hasn’t kicked in yet but we are not even 2 months in so I am trying to be the voice of reason being kind to ourselves about what we have already achieved in such a short time. I’m about to start pulling the little library here to pieces, am on the events committee thanks to my brainwave of having an event called MidgeFest where we celebrate the midge and make a proper party out of it – loads to do for that, most of which needs internet or people to bounce ideas off of again.

Croft 2 is being advertised again and I know of 5 people intending applying – all five have asked for my help with their business plans! Which puts me in rather an odd position really!

We’re WWOOF hosts and have already had about 10 people contact us, two are possibles so I’m in the throes of putting together responses to them. My first planned project is the compost loo, for which many hands would be good.

I also want to build a pizza oven on the croft as a fairly early project so that is high on the list and I think would make a great group activity too.

We have hatched a plan to hire the village hall once a week for an evening and give talks about ourselves, We have had such interest from tourists, so many of whom have already read about us either on blog or press that we thought we could put together a 1 hour talk with photos and ask for donations. Hall hire is only £6 and includes use of the kitchen so we could even make some money from refreshments too if we wanted. We need to put together a presentation and get it advertised 🙂 Lots of little ways of scraping cash together should keep us going. Writing simply isn’t an option when I am so unreliable at being online just now.

Ady loves the croft, loves the land and usual worries and frets about whether we can make it work here aside is really happy. He’ll never really manage to let go of stress I don’t think, will always have something to worry about or feel he should be busy elsewhere doing but he looks happier and healthier and company cars, office meetings and the like are now a dim and distant memory. He misses friends and I think all four of us would benefit from more people on the island and time away from each other doing stuff but we more or less manage to get our own space when we need it. I have certainly made the most friends simply because there are plenty of women on the island who I have clicked with and I think women are generally better and finding stuff in common and bonding. He needs a buddy!

We saw a minke whale last week on the Sheerwater trip, along with porpoises, great Skua and the usual seabirds. Our first whale 🙂 Very exciting. Every Thursday I am reminded anew of how lucky we are to live here, we get a two hour FREE boat trip off chasing sealife with rangers, photographers and other experts. I already know way more about seabirds than I would ever have learnt from books just by being out there each week looking.

Overall I think our overwhelming feeling is that this is definitely the right place for us. We are so very fortunate to have our chunk of land, freedom and space and so much choice about what to do next. If the static gets to the croft intact this weekend (not blogging about how scared I am of it getting damaged or just not getting there, will spew that out in relief next week maybe!) and we sort out internet access in the comfort of our own static rather than on public display in the village hall then everything would be perfect!

Argh – all that time unblogged!

I’ve been noting stuff as I go along but it’s hit a point now where trying to catch up properly is all but impossible with time, power and internet constraints, not to mention being rather busy generally!
So, my notes read:

Saturday – up early for the boat – the Saturday morning ferry is before 9am! We had a lovely day planned of celebrating Eurovision together on the croft with a camping evening, sausages on the barbecue, toasting marshmallows, listening to Eurovision on the radio and spending our first night on our land. We set the tents up, moved a goose house down onto the croft ready for our arrival of geese sometime in July and had a really nice afternoon with various visitors coming up to the croft including Rachel and Ian who sat and chat and enjoyed the sunshine with us.

We returned to the static, gathered stuff for the evening and headed up to the croft at about 7pm only to be foiled by midges. It was horrendously midgey and after half an hour or so of sitting in our midge nets feeling really miserable we admitted defeat and retreated back to the static. We still had our sausages and our beer and listened to music instead.

Sunday – A very frustrating day. The sun was shining but I had offered to bake for the teashop so spent the morning getting really stressed with the internet as I couldn’t get online on my blog or emails and then the afternoon roasting in the kitchen baking various things while Ady was on the croft and the kids were swimming in the river with Vikki and Claire. It felt really wrong that we were working while other people were having fun with our kids and I was particularly grumpy when they all came back to ours for teas and coffees! I recovered and we had a nice evening at Vikki’s as we went there for dinner.

Monday – Further internet woe as far too many hours of my life were sucked into trying to sort it out. I delivered the cakes to the tea shop which went down well and we got our veg box on Monday evening. We generally only go to the shop on Monday and Friday evenings now, otherwise too many evenings get sucked into drinking and sitting around with the islanders, which is lovely and sociable but expensive!

Tuesday – I spent some time at Vikki’s and at the Trust office trying to sort out the internet and finally decided not to bother and set up a googlemail account to bypass any more issues. My cakes had all sold so I did some more teashop baking. It was another midgetastic evening but I did call down to Vikki’s for a glass of wine in the evening as she had got one of the builders round for a drink and was wobbly about what his intentions were so wanted me to pop in and check on her.

Wednesday – we did our photoblog day so that is sort of recorded on WW blog. We met the ferry, had a quick glimpse at the new kittens and then Fliss and Sandy popped up for the afternoon. We took them up to the croft for a look round and had a really good chat with them. Scarlett and I went down to meet the kittens – we’d been given the little tom but Lesley was keeping them all til the following day so they could settle down. Vikki came round in the evening and it was another late night drinking too much wine!

Thursday – We went on the Shearwater and saw a pod of dolphins. It turned out later they were part of a superpod that was in the area so where we thought we kept seeing the same ones it was likely we were seeing different ones each time. We collected the kitten and tried to settle him in.

Friday – A very busy day 🙂 It was a year to the day that Vikki arrived so we were celebrating Rum’s Vikkiversary 🙂 Thalassa who had been staying on Rum for a month studying the newts gave a talk in the evening about her studies and findings and then we had some official people over for the small isles consultation which several of us came along to attend. We then drank fizz with Vikki and it turned into quite a session at the shop and about half the island ended up coming up to our static for dinner. It was a very late night 🙂

Saturday – Ady and I met the ferry first thing, lots of walking wounded from the night before! I had a really bad day on Saturday – in the morning there was a really nasty dog fight at the teashop between Zappa and Zara, two bitches who have always not got on and been tussling over Top Dog position. They locked jaws and had to be strangled to be parted despite trying with hoses, shouting and pulling. One of the owners, Norman ended up bitten (and is now in hospital with septacemia!). It really, really shook me up and disturbed me a lot. I’ve worked so hard to get over my dog fear and now actually love a dog of my own so to see all my worst fears and phobias summed up in one big event like that had me physically shaking for about an hour. Horrid 🙁 Still no internet.

Finally after lots of talking and consideration I decided the kitten was a mistake too. Ady had never wanted him, the kids were not as attached as I expected, he was very hissy and unfriendly and I was really worried about him and Bonnie. The lack of space in the static and my general feeling of being unsettled meant I made a rather shotgun decision to rehome him. I went to Ross and Jinty who had loved him when he arrived and they took him, but he is now back with his sister at Neil & Lesley’s as Neil had always liked that cat the most anyway. Right decision, lots of ribbing!

Sunday – We’d arranged with Vikki to walk up Hallival. It was quite epic, we had to carry Bonnie some of the way back down again as it was way too much for her really. I had one moment of wobbliness when I felt a bit dizzy and wondered just what I was doing but soon got past it and was glad to have done it. We look out on Hallival from the croft, it’s a very dominating peak of Rum so to know we’ve stood atop it and added a stone to the stack is a good feeling :). We’d never have done it without Vikki and to be honest I’d probably not bother scaling any of the other peaks any time soon but I’m glad to have done it. The views were stunning, you could see the sea all around with the whole island spread below us – it made it look quite small really. Skye, Eigg, Muck and Canna were all around with panoramic views of the mainland and the outer Hebrides in the background and it was all very perspective giving and gorgeous. I really liked being able to see down to the static and across to the croft too.

We came down and Vikki offered me a bath at her house 🙂 I went round and enjoyed a lovely soak with a glass of wine brought in to me aswell. Love Vikki :).

Back at home Ady had cooked a lovely roast dinner too. It was a good day and the perfect recovery from a bad day the day before.

I’m leaving it here as I’ve left my list behind on which I’d noted the various days but will try and come back to it later.