One word? When seven would do…

It’s been a busy week this week and we’ve not managed all that we set out to do either. Wednesday was another early start in the larder processing a beast. We made some burgers and it went pretty well – we were done way quicker than expected.

Home for lunch and then I went down to Fliss’ to make a start on chocolate and sweet making.

Thursday was winkle picking day but that was along with about four hundred other things – Ady and I went down to the post office at 10am, called in to see Neil and helped box up the venison we were sending off to a restaurant in Mallaig, got our washing on at the castle, met the boat to collect some deliveries and send the venison off, back to Sandy’s to drop pff some of their stuff, changed to do a 90 minute stint of winkle picking, then changed again to go to the doctor who was over for an asthma health check and swap the washing over into the dryer. Then back to Fliss’s to do more chocolate decorating and some willow wreath making, then to the shop to collect fruit and veg, then home to cook dinner. I fell asleep over my laptop hence no blogpost.

Today was slightly more paced but still pretty busy. This morning Sandy came up and he and Ady did some sorting out teething problems on the woodburner while I helped Davies and Scarlett mind Joss and made pastry, pizza dough, bread dough and soda bread for lunch. I made a taster batch of mince pies, sang songs with Joss, talked to Davies and Scarlett about kids tv, coping with toddlers and why a 3 year old is far more full on than a 12 year old. Sandy and Joss left, we had lunch and then I went down to finish off the chocolates etc. I bumped into Lesley and Neil on the way and debated some issues with venison processing and got the low down on Richard who has been signed off sick with stress til next year. Broken island, broken people…

Fliss and I finished off all our bits – I have made chocolate truffles decorated to look like Christmas puddings in little handmade boxes, chocolate orange cream hearts, chocolate peppermint cream discs. They all look beautiful, I have no idea if they will sell. I walked home and got stuck into mince pie making and finishing off my crochet Christmas tree decorations. Then dinner and bread in while we watched Fawlty Towers on lovefilm instant.

Tomorrow is the Christmas Fayre and I am looking forward to sitting and chatting, drinking some mulled wine and listening to Christmas music regardless of whether we sell a single pennies worth of anything! And then on Sunday I am looking forward to having nothing at all to do!

which could mean so many things but as a facebook friend correctly guessed was infact referring to putting venison through a grinder and into vacuum packed bags. Odd to have a comment from an ex boyfriend on that post commenting on how much I’ve changed. Even more so as I was only thinking about him the other day. Weird how people flit in and out of your thoughts and then your life.

Today was up at stupid, middle of the night, still dark o’clock to be in the deer larder for 7am. We did get to see Saturn and Venus looking amazing in the sky though as we bobbed along the path with our headtorches past still slumbering animals. We left the kids in bed with breakfast laid out and instructions to feed the animals once they were up. I woke Davies as we left because I know he can snuggle back down to sleep again whereas Scarlett would rouse properly and then not want us to leave.

They had a good morning playing, listening to the radio, feeding the animals and watching films.

We had a productive morning skinning, butchering and processing a hind. We have an order for a saddle and 3kg of venison mince so did that the rest was minced, diced and cut into steaks to go in the freezer. Tomorrow we are hoping to do the second one and sell all of that on island. Neil has done a fair bit of it before so he led Ady while I set up all the new equipment – mincer, knives and saws, vacuum packer. We all then did some butchering stuff off the bone before mincing some and then packing everything up and weighing it. We finished earlier than planned which was great, hopefully we will tomorrow as well.

We cleared up and packed everything back into our car then Ady and I called round to see Sandy. He was the wrong side of a few drinks so we had a cup of tea with him them came away planning to go back later again. Back home at the planned time for lunch with the kids. Scarlett and I washed and dried up and then Ady and I went back out to collect some firewood and nip back to see Fliss and Sandy. Arranged to go round tomorrow to make fudge and truffles for the Christmas fayre on Saturday. Then we came home. Julie rang just after dinner so I caught up with her. We watched Mannequin on dvd which was a film Ady used to love but the kids only classed as ‘ok’. We’ve promised next week will be less out of the house for Ady and I and far more time together.

Saturday We seemed to spent a lot of time backing and fowarding to the village. We met the boat and called in to the workshop to drop off a battery and collect stuff from the freezer, then again to collect some more stuff. The woodburner is leaking a little which was originally rain but we suspect now is condensation which may need addressing. Ady is on the case.

It was Rachel’s birthday and cake and singing was planned for 6pm. We had all intended to go but we are poor due to all the purchasing of logburners and waterproofs and Scarlett’s birthday plus all going out after dark feels like a big production (hell, it is a big production with torches and hikes up muddy hills and stuff) so in the end I went down on my own and Ady and the kids stayed home and sorted dinner. I’d made Rach a scarf and Davies had done her a lovely card, but of which were very appreciated. I stopped for a glass of fizz and singing and had a chat with Fliss, then walked home for dinner.

I decided it was close enough to Christmas to start watching festive films so we watched Nativity on Lovefilm instant which I don’t think I’ve ever seen all the way through despite having caught bits of it when it’s been on TV. It was pretty good actually, we all enjoyed it.

Sunday A trip down to the village to collect stuff from the workshop and drop off some post. Jinty and Leslie were at the shop so I stopped to chat to them for a while. I like them both lots but have not really gotten to know either of them very well so it was nice to stand for a natter for a while. Back at home I went off to collect wood – I’ve been making faggots, little bundles of twigs for firelighting so was very happily collecting bits to make them with Bonnie ‘helping’ in that way that a stick loving puppy can only assist when you are trying to put sticks in piles and sacks and she would rather run off with them 😆

Vikki and Rachel wandered up as they were out for a walk and we are often a good destination for not very strenuous walkers so they called in for a cup of tea on the sporran. Then we got dinner on. Davies and Scarlett both did lots of needle felting Christmas decorations to sell at the fayre at the weekend. We watched the second Attenborough thing on iplayer – cannot believe how old he is having checked online. Scarlett took a deep breath at one point and said ‘maybe one day I’ll have seen as many things as him’. She definitely has wildlife TV presenter high on her dream job list or at the very least someone who gets paid to go and see as many creatures as she can. I suspect the actual being on TV is pretty incidental to her, especially if she’d have to brush her hair!

Today – We went down to the castle as I was hoping to catch Fliss and also wanted to check what time some training I was doing this evening was happening. We’d missed Fliss but did have a cup of tea with Vikki and a quick chat with Neil to make arrangements for tomorrow. We came home for lunch and then Davies did the washing and drying up, Ady went to deal with the toilets and Scarlett, Bonnie and I went wood collecting. Back home for a cup of tea and then Ady and I went down to collect equipment for tomorrow and load it into our car ready for the morning. I stayed down at the village for my training and Ady came home to get dinner on. I chatted to Norman and he bought me a beer, then I went in the hall to help the trainer set up. It was business plan development training for the IRCT directors but I was along as a Rum Enterprise director. I didn’t get a lot out of it to be honest as it’s stuff I’ve covered before in various jobs or learnt about when we wrote our croft business plan but it’s always good to get free training even if you only take a very small amount of new knowledge away from it.

We finished that slightly ahead of schedule so I was home earlier than I’d expected which was nice as tomorrow is an early start – 7am at the venison larder, which is an hour earlier than I am even normally out of bed let alone up and working! It will still be dark and everything. The children will be left in bed with breakfast laid out and will go and feed animals once it is daylight and we’ll be home for lunch.

Yesterday the ferry was like the Goddard delivery express from Mallaig with our waterproofs and the log burner on it 🙂 Oh how happy we were! We collected Sandy & Fliss’ stuff from the boat and dropped it round to them to share the good news. Sandy, who is possibly more excited about progress on our croft than we are unpacked it with us and said he’d come up in the afternoon to have a look at it with us. We went home for lunch and tried on our new waterproofs. Huge but with erm, growing room, or space for jumpers underneath or something.

Sandy came up and did the whole thing in two hours from ripping out the old fire and closing off the gas to installing the new burner. I do love him! We burnt it very low last night as it needs to be seasoned but could already tell it was going to make a huge difference.

We watched Forest Gump which we all agreed was a good story but the kids, particularly Scarlett found a little too sad to be watching so close to bedtime.

Today its been wild wet and windy again. I had to go to the Whitehouse (SNH HQ) to sign the paperwork for the venison processing at 11am so Ady came down with me which was just as well as we needed a witness for the signatures. So he did that. Back home for lunch and then I went down to crochet with Fliss. We had a really nice afternoon and then Ady came to collect me. Sandy had hoped he’d bring the kids so we could stay for dinner but they had stayed at home.

I’d made pizza dough earlier so a quick stop at the shop to buy some peat blocks for the woodburner and then home. Scarlett has been experimenting with old candle wax in making candles including using string to make wicks so she was excited to show me what she’d done. We watched Nativity on lovefilm instant which was perfect for laughs and light hearted entertainment.

Tomorrow is collecting wood 🙂

Either it will all get here and we’ll be warm from the log burner and dry from the oilskins or it’ll be spring.

Ups, downs and all over the places today really. I made both children cry earlier by shouting at them for squabbling. There is a toll now of being in such a small space for days on end with limited access to distraction methods. The need for outside time is apparent in all of us and we need to be better at finding the window to get outside and make the most of daylight. I remember telling people this was my plan to combat the dark winter days, I just don’t seem to be quite so good at making it happen. Today I told the others that I worry they will all end up hating me for making them live here if they are struggling – Scarlett sobbed and begged ‘don’t make me leave here. I LOVE IT so much’. Which is good in that at least I know she is in the right place. Ady also was able to remind himself of all of the things he loves about living here. Davies and I had a chat about the next five years and how he needs to start thinking about which direction he wants to go in so that I can help him with that. I am perfectly happy for him to drift along at his own pace as long as he is happy and fulfilled, I just need him to be aware that the being fulfilled has to come from him rather than anyone else. He said he does miss friends but is very realistic about the amount of time he spent with friends anyway and how scattered his mates were / are. I know this is the toughest winter we will face here and it is fine for us to be hanging out waiting for the next stage in moving stuff forward but it is all too easy to spend a whole life projecting forward looking towards the but stage rather than living in the now and loving that. I know finding joy in mud, wind, rain and damp is tricky but there still needs to be sufficient pleasure in what we’re doing now for its own sake otherwise the testing bits are just not worth it.

We all went out for a walk round the coast road while the washing went round in the machine and chatted to Ben and Margaret who are here for 3 weeks living in a shed doing fencing work. They are very hardcore crazy folk who were all excited about their shed and woodburner and said their shed might be up for sale at the end of the 3 weeks. We are very interested in that and will speak to them more about it, particularly as they think they could get it up onto the croft. It could be a compost loo housing or a shower block or even just a drying room and another space. Maybe more on that soon.

Back home for lunch and further parcel chasing which I can’t even be arsed to blog about now. Then I left the others to collect the washing. Unfortunately it was not dry yet. I found another £1 in the car so shoved that in and went to the library for half an hour but it was still not all dry after that and I had no more money on me. I debated nipping into the castle to find someone to borrow couple of quid from but decided to take home what was dry and either come back down or leave it til the morning. By the time I got home carrying half the washing in the dark I was not really up for going out again so it will need finishing off tomorrow but as we are the only ones using the dryer and it was damp rather than sodden as long as I fully dry it tomorrow it should be fine.

Home for dinner and a good catch up phonecall with Julie who infused me with lots of positivity.

And I think that is all.

This morning I had grand plans to make a little bag for Joss’ birthday present. I cut out the material and got out my sewing machine but it is missing the little foot thing that you feed the material through. No idea if it is here somewhere or go lost along the way but I decided I would probably spent more time trying to find it and potentially not doing so anyway than just hand sewing it, so I did. Davies and Scarlett made a card each and then Ady and I went to meet the boat.

It is super windy and has been raining for much of the day so we got wet on the way down. We stopped at the castle to shove some stuff in the drying room and then to the boat. Our CoOp food shop came off, as did Vikki and lots of her stuff which we’d offered a lift to so we ran her home. Then to check for post – none. Then to drop off the frozen food shopping in the freezer and deliver Joss cards, bag and a comic we’d ordered too which had come. We checked our winkles and one of the bags had come a bit adrift so we secured that more.

Back to the croft for lunch. I sorted out the veg for dinner and then as it wasn’t raining I persuaded Davies and Scarlett to come for a walk down to the village with me as they have not been out in days. Ady stayed behind to do a few things (mostly tidying I think ;)) and we walked down to the village, bumped into Mike for a chat, returned some dvds to the library and picked up a few books and came home again before it rained. Result 🙂 Outdoor time is the key to sanity here definitely.

I made some bread and got the rest of the dinner sorted then checked up on parcels online – The Book People are definitely getting the order returned to them and they can then forward it to me here so that one is in hand. The oilskins are missing in action I think but the man is chasing them. The log burner was not collected by Yodel once again so it now supposedly being collected by Parcelforce tomorrow and delivered to Calmac on Thursday, which now means Saturday delivery to us. Maybe. Please, please let it be worth all this grief when it actually does get here.

No boats tomorrow, but I want to get the washing done and probably will spend at least some of the day parcel chasing :rolls:

All restored. 🙂

Still no refund from Maplins but they promise it is coming, parcel from Book People still out but now showing as being returned to supplier, log burner still not collected from supplier but complaining email resulted in a change in courier if it’s not collected tomorrow. No idea where our oilskins are – they should have arrived on Saturday, will chase them tomorrow if they don’t come on the boat. Assuming the boat comes of course… the weather is dire.

But it’s all back to being able to be taken in my stride again now. This too will pass…

Today I made leek and potatoes soup and soda bread for lunch and did lots of crocheting Christmas decorations. They will be for sale at the Christmas Fayre on 1st December and then go in the craft shop, if not sold then we’ll hang them on our own tree – win:win 🙂

The kids are struggling with lack of outdoor time and insufficient indoor space or stimulation to keep them sane. Squabbles which are so not characteristic of their relationship are tedious for all of us. I think tomorrow may have to be a donning waterproofs and getting outside for a while regardless of the weather sort of day. Tough when we have no where to hang stuff to dry really but necessary for everyone’s peace of mind.

Ady and I got out – we met the ferry (nothing for us) and then Ady did some work with Sandy helping to tidy the workshop. I had a cup of tea with them and then walked home again to do some more crochet with the kids. Scarlett sewed a little present decoration, Davies did some more Christmas cards. They both played with the lego and did some drawing. I bullied Ady into doing some stuff with Davies too rather than just tidying and mopping up condensation.

I had a long phonecall with my parents and Frazer last night and a flurry of email exchanges with Lynda who is being very mother from afar and worrying about me. nice to feel so loved :). Sandy is spending more time planning and researching our house plans than we are at the moment so we’re feeling very supported from here too which helps.

I’ve emailed the local library to see if they can help supply us multiple copies of books for the reading group I am setting up, sorted out on island secret santa and distributed names and am generally ploughing through my joblist. No meetings this week which is nice, they drain so many hours with getting to and from the village.

A tough few days.

The ongoing saga of the returned powerpack from Maplins. The replacement finally turned up after having sat in Inverness for five days. The refund for the returned one has not happened yet despite a flurry of emails back and forth. Hopefully it will happen soon – that’s £50 tied up in something we sent back nearly 2 weeks ago.

The ongoing saga of the log burner. Ady was ringing the company twice daily to get the measurements and weight of the packaging to sort out a courier. Finally they did it on Wednesday so I booked a courier online to collect it on Thursday, deliver it to Calmac on Friday and it should be here Saturday. Except it didn’t get collected yesterday, no reason given. It’s been rebooked for Monday, which means the earliest it will be with us is Thursday next week. Another week without it. And money tied up having paid for it and the delivery.

And then last night I managed to do a Book People order and send it to Sussex. Arse. Fingers crossed it’s been stopped and called back and will get refunded, then I can order it again. Except I am rapidly losing confidence in things getting to be where they are supposed to be and refunds happening.

The ongoing planning permission stuff. I am currently quite happy to ignore the whole business and come back to it next week. But having kicked off about it I am now getting ‘help’ from people suggesting links to look at online, people to talk to and even the idea of a planning consultant has been put forward. I’m being ungrateful I know but I’d quite like to pretend there is no such thing as planning permission just for a few days.

The ongoing winkle picking – another good days picking today – we have 10 part filled sacks (as in put more in we’d not be able to lift them, probably the equivalent of 7 sacks I reckon. Currently they are worth £92 a sack, apparently if we wait the price could increase to £180 a sack) – there are two more days of tides on our side and then it will be 2 weeks before we can start picking again for a week. This could definitely pay for a nice week in a holiday cottage in January. Somewhere with a bath, electricity, TV, lots of space, no condensation. We’ll get Bonnie spayed and day trip to Inverness to get clothes shopping, look in charity shops and generally stock up on stuff. My knees hurt. All three pairs of wellies I have are wet inside, Scarlett cried today because she says she hasn’t seen enough of me this week. I can’t justify it to her as worth it for the money because that goes against everything I believe in about extrinsic rewards! And actually I do enjoy it, if I hated every minute I wouldn’t do it. I’d just quite like a cloning machine.

And while I had a cloning machine I’d get a Nic to do the Rum Venison Processing stuff really well, another to set up a business to apply for the tender for the deer cull next year from SNH. A Nic to come up with a shit hot events plan for next year, another to do a really good job on the IRCT website, one to attend the Rum Enterprise meetings and another to sit on the Rum Visitor Management group, oh and all the things I want to do on the Wondering Wanderers blog and write a book. Another to spend lots more time with Davies and Scarlett helping them with all that next stage stuff I know they are ready for. I’ll have a Nic to get all the croft admin in order, get grants and funding applied for and start planning the layout for the planting next year and working on project planning the house build too. So that’s about seven Nics then. One Nic, when seven would do….. 😉 Vikki said to me this week that she thinks I take on too much, possibly she is right. I think the solution is better apportioning of time to ensure I do actually get everything I want done in the order it most needs doing, putting stuff I enjoy first and stuff I’d feel guilty about not doing next with everything else falling into natural order afterwards.

As soon as I have a spare hour I’ll get that done then! This not working lark is bloody busy 😉

And I’ve got my period so I am utterly irrational, stroppy, ready to hit people one minute and then cry because they don’t like me for hitting them the next.

My final straw though was a text message and load of pictures from Frazer of the new baby. I just know my parents will be being crap at supporting and helping him and Kat. They are so rubbish at being grown ups and I’ve always sort of felt I was Frazer’s grown up when he needed one. Wish I was there to be it now, I have a feeling he could use a grown up at the moment. I think the problem is not trying to do too many things, it’s not feeling I am doing any of them properly. Except maybe the winkle picking, I’m pretty good at that.

So this afternoon I dripped on Fliss a bit and she cuddled me and made me cups of tea and told me if it ever all gets too much we can just all go and live with them for a few days and have baths and watch TV and plug things in. I needed that 🙂 We won’t, but knowing it’s there and getting a real life cuddle from a friend, one who I’ve cuddled when she needed it, meant a lot. It all sort of glued me back together again.

It’ll all be alright, balance will come. Some stuff will fall off the to do list, the wood burner will get here and warmth will happen. Refunds will get actioned, winkle picking will stop and I’ll have a good few days of quality time with the kids. Except I don’t want to be wishing away time, I want to be finding things to celebrate every day. So today I celebrate friendship with Fliss, making pizza for dinner with Scarlett, a conversation with Davies about ways to earn money in which he came up with some ideas for earning cash himself, our new candles that burn for two nights plus unlike the ones we had before which went in about an hour.

Monday – Ady and I cautiously went down to Fliss and Sandy’s waterproofed up and in many layers. We’d not heard from them since Saturday morning despite me emailing Fliss to check everything was ok with them. Fliss came out as we arrived, gave me a kiss for my lovely email and reassured us that all was well.

We gathered net bags and off we went: Learning all the time! Way easier to fill a bucket than a bag, you just log ’em in without faffing about holding the bag open. Bag is good to decant once you get a full-ish bucket. Lots of layers is a bad idea. It’s not cold while you’re moving about and lots of wet layers is way worse than one wet layer. You will get wet. Hats and hoods are a bloody nuisance. Wind is possibly worse than rain if you have to choose one or the other. Nail varnish gets chipped really quickly but wearing gloves hampers your speed. My new wellies leak. Kneeling in water for any length of time will always mean you get a wet knee no matter what you are wearing. Crawling over rocks will result in bruised knees and aching backs.

So, winkle picking – educational and fund raising!

I suspect two mornings at it is not enough to form a proper opinion but so far we’ve quite enjoyed it. It makes us very grateful for our warm shower, fire, dry clothes and hot cups of tea, cheese on toast, home made soup etc. It is mindless, mundane stuff but kneeling next to someone else to chat to and laugh with and having that amazing view to look up at every time you pause for breath makes it worthwhile. Plus it will be cash in hand – Christmas hopefully paid for in full. Our plan is to earn £1000 which will buy the kids the couple of things they want each for Christmas and give us a chunk of money for a mainland visit in January to get Bonnie spayed and stay somewhere nice (with electricity, baths and TV!) and have a bit of a shopping trip to Inverness and stock up on stuff. With a goal like that in mind this feels like perfectly acceptable work.

So we did that until the tide started to come in, had a cup of tea with Fliss and Sandy and then met the boat which was supposed to be in early because it didn’t go to Muck but came in late due to weather. This was the only down side of the winkle picking as we were both soaked to the skin and having stopped for over an hour were starting to get shivery and chattery of teeth. Also there was nothing on the boat for us anwyay (despite us expecting lots of things) so we came home a bit fed up.

Good humour was quickly restored with showers, dry clothes, cheese on toast and cuddles with children.

We have two other ongoing things winding us up just now which are chasing a replacement delivery of a powerpack from Maplins which had been sat in Inverness for 5 days according to the live tracking and getting a refund of the returned one sent last Monday and getting dimensions and weight of boxes of the woodburner we want to buy so we can arrange a courier to collect it as the company do not deliver to the highlands and islands. Neither was proving straightforward and with limited internet and phone it was all getting very frustrating.

After a fairly unsatisfactory afternoon trying to sort that out we went down to the hall to meet a couple of representative from the planning department. We’d taken a few images of the house we are hoping to build along with a map of the croftland to show where we were thinking of building. We wanted to know if those all looked acceptable and then what issues might face over materials, ground works, power and water. We were utterly unprepared to be told that actually the croft sits outside of the designated development area so we may not be able to build at all and if we can then it would all be subject to various constraints including possibly needing to have vehicular access. Argh! We came out feeling hugely pissed off at the world in general but specifically the IRCT for once again doing a halfarsed job of things. Crofts should have been let with outline planning or at least the agreement that they would be eligible for building on. The access track should have been investigated further to check if it would pose a problem or not. Sigh.

We came home fairly pissed off but had a very nice curry which helped and we watched Attenboroughs Ark which also helped. Lovely, soothing David 🙂

This morning was an even earlier start but further rain meant we left the kids home. Fliss and Sandy have lent us their oilskin waterproofs and what a difference they make. Am now investigating the price for a set each for Ady and I – oh for car boot sales and charity shops rather than ebay. The tide was not low enough to start so we had a cup of tea with Sandy before we got going. We only did an hour or so today thanks to tide times and ferry coming in. Sandy did offer to collect our stuff from the ferry so we could carry on but we’d promised the kids we’d be back for lunch so we did our hour and then went to meet the boat. We still did about half a sack between us, definitely getting quicker. Tomorrow we should get about 4 hours at it so hopefully an even better haul. We’ll do it again Thursday and maybe Friday depending on weather and tide times. If we can manage to work in a couple of hours each day without it impacting too much on the children then we will do so.

The boat was far better today with our powerpack coming, my ebay salopettes which will be no good for winkle picking but were fantastically warm and cosy and dry for walking down to the village in later, my new headtorch and some more business socks for everyone. Also our animal feed from Harbro. Phew. We stuck the powerpack on charge and came home for lunch.

I got an email from Vikki asking for some proof of ID to send off for my directorship of Rum Enterprise so as there was a break in the rain I took the opportunity to try out my new trousers and walked down to see her and drop off the paperwork. I had a chat and she reassured me that they’d spoken more to the planning bods and been told that actually there should not be a problem with building on the croft aslong as we adhere to certain guidelines, that they are going to turn a blind eye to the static not having planning permission but that we would be well advised to speak to Building control regarding what they would say about stuff like the access track. I got home to find an email from Lesley saying much the same thing. Being gobby at the shop about how pissed off I was last night certainly paid off with lots of people jumping to try and sort stuff out. Word had got all around the village (and I’d not even been THAT angry in public, wonder how much people would jump if I really lost my rag here) and Mike came up to check we were okay this evening.

Oh swings and roundabouts. So lovely emails today from Gav and Laura (new crofters), Maplins power pack turned up and they are now looking for the returned parcel. Winkle picking went okay, log burner people finally got back to us with weight and size and I’ve found a courier for about £20 which is nowhere near as scary as I’d feared so we may even have that here and fitted by this time next week alleviating the while damp and mouldy issues. Planning stuff will no doubt be a further headache to deal with but we are at least being supported and backed up here and the leaping to our aid when we kicked off a bit was very heartening. Let’s see what tomorrow brings – I know it will include winkles and a meeting with various people in the afternoon as I attend my first Visitor Management Plan steering group which I am a new member of.

Saturday – Sandy rang us in the morning to apologise for the night before which we assumed meant all was well with them down there. He checked we were still up for going walking on Sunday too. However I met Fliss and Joss walking an hour later and she knew nothing about him ringing and all was not well after all 🙁 I’ve let her know we’re here for her as and when she needs us but we’ll keep a distance until we know what’s happening with them down there.

The kids made a card each for Frazer and Kat (still no name yet) and I wrote out a card then walked down to post them. Jinty was closed but I met Dave and Lynda outside the shop and a tourist who wanted to book into a camping cabin so had met Jinty and she’d said she’d be 10 minutes. Somehow I’d totally messed up the ferry time for the day and was convinced it was due in at 2pm so had been working to that when infact it was in at 1135am. Davey appeared with our jerry cans and said Jinty had collected our parcels. So I walked home quick (I had Bonnie with me) and collected Ady and the car and we got back there to gather parcels and post (dog food, flour, Scarlett’s 3ds which I have ordered in plenty of time to stash away for her birthday) and Lovefilm and we posted our cards too.

Back at home we had some lunch, I made some bread and some cheese straws and looked at the Hawkins catalogue with the kids that had arrived in the post. We had a really early dinner as I was going out and then I left the others watching Ghostbusters on lovefilm instant.

I was off to Jinty’s to watch How to make an American Quilt – an idea of Sylvia’s that the women (and men if they want to) should get together to weave all our individual stories of ourselves and how we came to be on Rum into a collaborative quilt to display in the hall – the story of the people on Rum. It’s such a gorgeous idea 🙂 Sylvia has got it from watching the film so got a copy and we all got together to watch that to get inspired before we start. Not everyone made it – Fliss had stuff happening at home, Ali didn’t come but apparently she rarely comes to anything anyway, Lynda was busy packing as she’s away for a month later this week, Rachel didn’t come due to still recovering from excesses the night before but there was me, Jinty, Sylvia, Abby, Lesley, Coryla, Vikki and Ross who lives with Jinty hung out with us and watched too. It was a really nice evening. I was home just before 12 so not too late either and the stars were amazing – I spent about 10 minutes stood on the sporran star gazing before I came in to go to bed.

Davies had waited awake for me, he always does 🙂

Today – Davies and Scarlett spent lots of time playing lego. Ady and I walked down to the village to collect some bits from the freezer. When we came back we walked some of the croft trying to work out the best route and material for a footpath from the static to the nature trail for the winter. Mike appeared while we were doing that so he came up for a cup of tea on the sporran. Ady got dinner on and the kids had some time playing outside and making films on the 3ds. I fed the animals – all the birds eat out of my hand including the ducks and geese which is really lovely – I so enjoy hanging out with the animals.

We had dinner and watched Hugo which had come from Lovefilm and was really good. Then we watched an Attenborough thing on iplayer. I rang my parents as they had made grumbly noises about lack of contact on Friday.

Yesterday was a trying to be efficient but still chasing our tails sort of day. Ady and I went to meet the boat at 1135am, taking down one of the batteries (we have 4 batteries; 1 on the pig fence, 1 on the invertor that runs the internet and 1 running the lights and water pump plus a spare to be on charge) to put on charge, collecting something for dinner from the freezer, putting a wash on at the castle and collecting our milk direct from the boat to put in the freezer (10 x 4pinters, should keep us going when boats don’t run or we’re broke). The plan then was to swap the washing over into the tumble drier and come home for the soup I’d made earlier but when we popped back to the castle we bumped into Lynda who I’d invited up one afternoon this week for a coffee asking if it could be today, in about 2 hours time. I said yes and so we didn’t wait the 15 minutes or so for the washing machine cycle to finish but headed home for lunch instead with the plan of Ady heading back to swap it over after lunch. We left the car at the castle and walked home.

Except after we’d eaten lunch it started raining and carried on for the next 2 hours. So Ady didn’t walk down and Lynda didn’t walk up after all. Instead Ady and I eventually walked down and swapped the washing over into the drier then came back to the croft to feed the animals. I had a look at the house site that Ady and Sandy had plotted out (very exciting 🙂 ) and we collected the kids and went back down to collect the now dry washing and get our veg box from the shop. Fliss was there so we stopped for a drink before coming home for dinner.

We watched Arietty which had come on Lovefilm and Ady cooked spaghetti bolognaise for himself, Scarlett and I and spaghetti and meatballs for Davies which proved very popular with empty plates all round.

Today – I’d been really surprised yesterday at the boat when Derek asked me to come to meet with Richard from SNH with him. The stalking concession goes out to tender for the deer cull from next year and there have been rumblings about various ways of keeping it within the island including setting up a community interest company and getting a grant to fund the first year, making it an offshoot of the venison processing company and various other options. I wasn’t really sure why he wanted me to go along but I did. It was an interesting meeting in terms of learning a fair bit and feeling there is a definite opportunity there while remaining very protective of the things I want to do with my life and not overstretching myself for something that doesn’t quite fit my dreams. More thinking required there I think.

I got hailed on walking home but a fantastic double rainbow ending on the croft made the sogginess worthwhile. Home for lunch – left over soup, leftover pizza and then back out again to go down to Fliss’ for Friday crochet and chatter. We had a really nice few hours including all sorts of chatter with Fliss asking me to go into business with her! Clearly what I actually need is a cloning machine, wonder if I could get crowdfunding for that or build one out of pallet wood…. 😆

Ady and the kids joined us and we ended up staying for dinner. Sandy had a few drinks and it got a bit fraught between him and Fliss for a while which could have been our cue to leave but Ady decided to talk to Sandy a bit and I stayed with Fliss and we left them in much better form. In lots of ways this is a broken island filled with broken people. We know it won’t break us though and I think although we can;t fix it we can certainly be part of the papering over the cracks and finding new ways forward.

We got home to lots of messages from my parents so I rang back to hear the wonderful news that Kat had their baby today. A little boy, all fine but yet to be named. I’m an auntie 🙂 Frazer texted me a couple of pictures and I can honestly say it’s the first time I’ve felt the tug to head back south since we’ve been here.

I slept in this morning which was not deliberate but I turned the alarm off and rolled over and the next thing I knew it was way later than I planned to be getting up 😳

I showered, Ady and Scarlett had fed the animals. We all listened to Popmaster and then I went to the bedroom to make a phonecall which was the first on a long list of jobs to get done today. My phone rang in my hand though and it was Sandy to say he was on his way up and could Ady meet him halfway. I got the kettle on and the kids made the house as Joss-proof as possible (imagine full on toddler with whirlwind tendancies in a small static crammed with precious lego creations!). Sandy and Ady took off the panel over the gas fire to look at what is behind to further plan log burner installation and then went off leaving Joss with me to mark out our proposed house plot. I’ve yet to see what they did there but Ady tells me it is huge and very exciting :).

That threw all my plans of soup and home made rolls for lunch into disarray and meant I had time to make a hurried phonecall before scoffing a quick lunch made by Ady. Then dashing off to a meeting at the white house with SNH for the venison processing. That went well – it was Neil and I, Richard, Marcel and Sarah by phone conference link. She was supposed to appear on a VC monitor which was all very James Bond but it didn’t work. Ady had put a battery on charge in the workshop and then collected me.

Bonnie had eaten a big pile of layers pellets earlier (we think Scarlett may have fed her quite a handful) and she had been very quiet before throwing up copiously all over the gear lever and handbrake and drivers seat. We tried to think of a worse place to vomit given the amount of crevices and couldn’t. She did perk up after that though.

Back at home I made the pizzas and bread I’d planned to make earlier and did stuffed crusts for the kids to try having heard them mentioned on Despicable Me. They both said they were too rich and would not have them again. Guess there is such a thing as too much cheese! We watched Groundhog Day while we had dinner. It was good, I’ve not seen it in years and it was funnier than I remembered, despite the annoyingness of Andie McDowall!

And so to bed.

I could have sworn I’d blogged some of it!

Sunday – the weather was much better. I can’t remember what else we did but I know we had Sunday lunch at lunchtime and I baked some bread. Everything else has faded into the mists of time. At 3pm I went down to the village to hang out with Rachel and Abby for a couple of hours pre-bonfire as arranged on facebook the previous night. It was nice, I like them both a lot. I notice the different camps on the island and know that we don’t fit into some circles just by virtue of lifestyle – we are not available to stay up til 5am drinking and smoking so there is a whole swathe of stuff that we are just not a part of. This is fine with us, gone are the days I’d feel the need to be part of everything going on regardless of whether it actually was something I’d want to be doing. I like the afternoons popping in for a cup of tea and maybe a couple of early evening drinks before coming home with the rest of the family type socialising these days.

Ady went to help Sandy chop some kindling for the fire and then came back to the croft to feed the animals and collect the kids, then we all met up at the bonfire. Ady and I both took our turn at cooking stuff on the barbecue and chatting to people. The fireworks were a bit feeble but we learnt later that the promised fireworks had not arrived so Paul had stepped into the breach with a small selection he’d bought for himself. It was a nice couple of hours, about half the community came out, people brought cakes and soup to share and we watched the moonrise over the sea which was quite magical. Scarlett totally overdosed on coke and felt ill after much running around and I was very mindful of not getting home too late after the excitement of the night before so we came home about 830pm. It was such a gorgeous night though Ady and I sat on the sporran with a brandy and stargazed for about an hour.

Monday – Ady and I walked down to catch the post office in the morning to send back a faulty powerpack to Maplins. It arrived last week and we are really pleased with it for size, charge held etc but the invertor, plus and USB ports don’t work. Back at home I decided to make the Christmas cake which I’d been planning to do for a while but never seemed to be planning to be at home for long enough to cook it without needing the oven for dinner or bread or something else. The kids were happily lego-ing, Ady was busy with something outside so I put the music on and got mixing 🙂 I also made pasta bake ready to just shove in the oven later for dinner.

We all had lunch, I finally ticked a couple more adminny things off my perpetual job list and rang the tax credits people to tell them we are now self employed and change our address. The address had already been done thanks to me registering as self employed – funny how they do manage to do joined up databases really despite needing to have stuff told to every singled different department officially… turns out we’ll now be eligible for working tax credit which we’ve never had before (or maybe we have, we’ve only ever qualified for one form of tax credit before thanks to either earning too much or not earning at all, now we’ll get both. That’s an unexpected bonus I’d not even thought about! No idea how much it’ll actually be mind you, maybe I’m getting excited about a tenner a month!

Then it was time to head down to the shop for the next lot of fireworks! We walked all the way this time, leaving Bonnie in the car where it was parked as she has more room in there than in her crate at home plus she gets a wee walk there and back with us. The fireworks were good, there were a few people at the shop and it was a good atmosphere. We left about 7pm and got home to shove the pasta bake in the oven and have it while watching Despicable Me.

Today – Davies and Scarlett had J Ranger with Mike – they are doing rocky seashore stuff. We dropped them off and then I spent nearly an hour on the phone to the bank and the Co Op – after 6 months of it being fine the Co Op rang me this morning to say that my big food shop had the card payment declined. Further trying using Ady;s card and checking with the bank as to why this might be determined it is actually because they have stopped accepting Visa electron cards. Argh! Our only method of payment. I’ve struggled with a few other places that don’t accept it (including Tescos when I tried to sign up for wine deliveries) so I rang the bank to see if we could sort out different cards. Thanks to 6 years of squeaky clean banking we were able to upgrade our most basic of all basic bank accounts to a current account. I refused all offers of upgraded super accounts and free overdraft facilities but we will now have a proper visa debit card which should make life that wee bit easier. I had to do some photocopying at the post office too by which time it was close to ferry o’clock so we headed down there to wait. Various people joined us and there was quite a crowd down there chatting, I like moments like that 🙂

Our four boxes of shopping arrived safe so we unpacked them and took all the stuff for the freezer (the main reason for the mega shop, starting to stock up our freezer) straight there, then collected the kids and went home for lunch.

Davies and Scarlett are in full on legotastic moods just now so they carried on building cities and making animations. They’ve got into youtube and have been looking at lego animations on there and have a new hero – a guy who does make very good stop animations and must have a HUGE lego collection given all the props and scenery he uses.

Ady and I walked down to the village to drop off some meat which had arrived as a massive joint so we’d cut into three ready for freezing. We walked the circle of the top road home as we want to get more familiar with it incase of further flooding on the low road. The culvert has been properly fixed today though by the contractors who are over. Apparently the trust were quite wobbly about how dramatic our trip home had been on Saturday night so decided they needed to get it fixed. Bloody right too!

I’ve been looking at a draft proposal between SNH and the venison processing company for which I have a meeting with SNH tomorrow afternoon. Had almost forgotten that was happening. Guess we’re about to be busy getting blood on our hands! An evening at home which was nice after all that wandering around in the dark for the last few evenings!

Pancakes for breakfast today, might be the last for a while as all the birds have stopped laying now. Jinty will buy in eggs so there will be some on the island but I’m not sure we’ll bother. It might be nice to view eggs as seasonal produce 😉

Then down to the village. Claire caught me and asked for a quick word then dissolved on me as her and James had split up. Gave her much cuddles and sympathy – poor kid 🙁 She was away on the ferry to stay with her parents, sure she’ll be fine in a week or so.

Sean dropped Eve off and me, Davies, Scarlett and Eve made the guy. Eve’s a funny little four year old, I like her but suspect she gets sat infront of far too many Disney dvds…

Sean came to collect her – a load of insulation had come off the boat so they’d all been a while helping unload that, Ady included. We went round to Fliss & Sandy’s to empty the stuff we’d got in their freezer into our new freezer which is now up to temperature. Looking forward to doing a big CoOp shop to start filling that up.

We stopped for a cup of tea and then left to come home for some lunch. A couple of hours at home and then waterproofs on to go back down for the fireworks. We sat for a while in the camping shelter and then Sandy came down to say it had been postponed due to the weather and did we want to go back there for soup. We went back for a while but were conscious of the weather being dreadful so headed for home at about 730pm.

Just as well. The culvert was so flooded it was over welly height with a rushing current. We debated turning back to do the north trail but had no collar and lead for Bonnie and were not sure what condition that might be in either. Ady stood one side, I stood the other and we passed the kids and dog across feeling rather helpless to be good parents. Once over that we hit a very flooded part of the path and it occured to me that the bridge may be under water. It was not quite and we did cross it but it was less than a foot below the bridge. The river had burst at one point and the path was more like a river than a path. The other side of the bridge was the same, flowing very fast, burst drainage ditch which in daylight would probably have been exciting to witness but in the dark with kids and dog just felt scary really.

We got home and were all so buzzed up sending the kids to bed would have been pointless so we watched Lovefilm which had arrived – we bought a zoo. It was a really nice film but with a dead mummy in it both kids were effected having brushed close to danger already this evening. Davies snuggled on my lap and Scarlett cried at bedtime at the thought of me ever dying. 🙁

Knackered now, it’s been a very long day, infact it’s been quite a long week. Fingers crossed for a dry day tomorrow and a nice firework night too.

Wednesday – Halloween. In the morning the kids did pumpkin carving with very minimal supervision. Scarlett wanted to do the ‘original jack o lantern’ while Davies did an angry pigs design from his angry birds annual. Both were excellent :).

Meanwhile I made some bread and some gingerbread biscuits which I turned over to the kids to decorate and made a lasagne for dinner which just needed heating through later.

The kids made themselves up as zombies and we headed down to Fliss and Sandy’s. We had a cup of tea and chat with Fliss while Ady did some stuff with Sandy (helping with something up in the bathroom of the B&B and then helping try and fix Norman’s car), then we went to the party at the school. They (as in Fliss and Coryla) had tried really hard to create an event catering to all comers but meeting the very different needs of 2 3 year olds, a very highly strung 4 year old, a nearly 10 year old and a 12 year old with collective parents is always going to post a challenge. We did some Simon Says, some sticking your hand in bowls of gruesome feeling stuff, a pass the parcel which was a bowl of green spaghetti with sweets buried inside and more. All of the little ones cried at least once due to something, Davies was a superstar, helping to calm the fractious toddlers, Scarlett went into total sugar overload and was just loud and boisterous. I was just feeling twitchy about being in a school at all! The autumn leaves collages made me feel a bit militant about formal education 😆 There was lots of nice home made spooky snack food so I managed to overcome my feeling of being trapped in a pushy middle class toddler group and remind myself these were actually my friends and fellow islanders who I like lots.

We left there and went to the shop for the pumpkin growing competition results – Fliss was clear winner with a HUGE specimen so she got her prize. The kids had brought their carved pumpkins down so they lit them and did a bit of trick or treating around the village netting a huge haul of stuff. They then offered the last of our cookies out and were given cash by the contractors over here for them so made about £7 and got bought more sweets and coke in the shop. The clear advantage of being the only kids out in the village in nice contrast to me feeling they were a bit like that sketch in Sorry I’ve got no head being the only kids in the school earlier!

We stayed for a drink and then headed home to cook the lasagne and watch Escape to Witch Mountain on dvd.

Thursday – boat in the morning. We’d been told our freezer would be delivered to calmac between 7 and 8am so rang to check and it had been delivered. We didn’t really expect it to be on the boat but it was :). So we got a lift to the workshop with it from Neil and managed to manhandle it in to position then leave it to settle. We put a wash on at the castle, transferred it into the tumble drier, popped round to see Sandy and got shown how to find winkles for winkle picking which may be a money spinner for us in the coming weeks then came home for lunch. I’d prepared pumpkin and sweet potato soup which was ready to go.

It rained in the afternoon loads so Ady and I had to don waterproofs to head down and collect the washing. We left it in the car, wrapped up in plastic bags as getting it up to the croft in the rain would be impossible. We would have been very happy to stay in for the evening but had been invited to Steve’s yurt for dinner and there was the monthly RCA meeting so we all dressed up in waterproofs and braved the rain to head to the village. The RCA was not very busy but a few thorny issues got resolved. We chatted to Fliss for a while and then headed down to the yurt with Claire for dinner. It was a really nice couple of hours and all the better for ending nice and early – we were back home by 1030pm with the walk to the village, drive to the crossroads, walk to the croft all in a break in the rain too.

Today – Scarlett had a disturbed night with a couple of nightmares so ended up in bed with us for part of the night 🙁 This morning the kids played with lego while I did some knitting and Ady did lots of mould and mildew cleaning and preventing. He’s moved our bed away from the wall along with Davies’ and Scarlett’s mattress is now raised up with a bit of ventilation beneath it to help the air circulate. We’ve been bringing bedding into the lounge to put infront of the fire to really dry it out too but we had totally underestimated how much of an issue condensation and therefore mould is going to be. With us still having a full five or more months of cold weather ahead we will need to rethink how we deal with it and I think a log burner is the only real answer. It will provide a dry heat which can be left constantly low to prevent the swinging temperatures through the day and night. Cold I can cope with by using more clothes, hot water bottles etc but damp and condensation is out of our control and none of the suggested measures of bowls of rice, constant wiping of windows etc are making enough of a difference.

We had lunch – leftover soup and soda bread – and then the kids elected to stay home and watch dvds while Ady went to help build the bonfire with various other blokes and I went to Fliss’ to mix up burger mix to marinate for the barbecue and then to sit and chat and crochet / knit. We talked about Home Ed and parenting and then Sandy and I chatted about log burners and tin roofing on wooden houses. I walked round to the shop and Ady and the kids came down to meet me having fed the animals and put dinner on. We stayed for a drink and then came home for dinner.

It’s been a really busy week with stuff happening every day and several evenings which is great, I so don’t want to end up stuck up here not seeing anyone for days on end all winter. It’d be nice if the rain stopped mind you…