One word? When seven would do…

Its been showery today so we’ve been dodging the rain while trying to get stuff done. This morning we got nine tin sheets up to the static ready for the wood store before breaking for Popmaster. I made a picnic and then we walked down to the village to collect the car before the Shearwater.

Casey came along so I chatted to her lots on the boat. We saw nothing other than birds today, not even a sniff of a porpoise. Actually that’s not true. we saw seals off the coast of Rum. I am so glad that last year was so amazing for wildlife spotting. We’ll definitely do the Sheerwater every week again next year as its a tenner very well spent each week to have that two hours off, literal and spiritual perspective of moving away from Rum and coming back along with the very real possibility of seeing amazing cetaceans. But this has not been the year for it and I am glad we were so spoiled last year with minke whales and dolphin superpods.

Back at home we finished the wood store and changed our original plan to roof it. We need to bring some more pallets up and the rest of the wood we gathered yesterday but I split most of the bags of wood we already have here which has filled a pallet with about four layers of wood. My dream would be to have it filled for the winter – we’ll see.

Dinner was a joint effort of fish cakes. Scarlett has discovered the lure of a new console game and has been awol all day with her head over the tablet doing something while Davies for the first time learns of the frustration of competing with electronics for attention. He made a poster to advertise his birthday cake sharing to put down at the shop

I am feeling the effects of two days of lifting, shifting and hulking things about which is at once both pleasant and exhausting.

I didn’t sleep well as I had two unfinished things on my mind along with another thing playing on my mind last night. To that end once I’d got up and had a shower this morning I decided to head to the village to sort them out. Ady came with me :

The first was whether or not Fliss was taking venison – she had asked for a price for a whole beast to be cut into minced, diced and steaks and we’d quote for it then done it for her. There was considerably less meat than she’d expected and she didn’t really want it. She tried to beat us down in price but as she was already saving over £100 on the retail price and we were making less than £100 on the meat (which just about covers the cost of Ady and Neil’s wages in doing it) we were not able to reduce it further. In the end she has not taken it but it took a lot of humming and hahing before she eventually decided that and took far too much of our morning up. Grr.

The second was a washing machine that Claire had asked me about buying off Richard and Caroline who are leaving. At the time it seemed like a good idea to go halves on a washing machine so I said yes but circumstances have changed for her and actually although we’d not have to pay to use this one I think the saving of buying tokens at £2.50 a time will not account for the hassle of trying to use it so I said we would not use it but I was happy to pay half towards it as I had not let her know in time. She refused to take the money and told me I was being stupid which was good. As in good she reassured me.

That done we came home for lunch.

We have various things on our job list for this week but starting to think about getting ready for winter is top of the list so we decided to make a start on building a firewood stash. Down to the yard to scavange for more galvanised sheets and we found a huge pile we had not spotted before and they were in really good nick. So we took a car roof ful of about 25 and brought them home to unload. That done we went back to the village and filled up 12 bags with logs that Rhys had cut for us and brought them back to the croft. Half is already up next to the static, the other half is on a pallet covered with a tarp to come up. Weather permitting tomorrow’s job is to build a wood store and start splitting and stacking the wood. We reckon that’s about a months supply, we’d like to have about 6 months as despite it only being August it is already cold enough to be thinking about the fire lit so I think we need to assume October through to March will need the fire. It feels good to have made a start.

Back home for cups of tea and some quick bread making for garlic bread to go with dinner, then animal feeding and back to the village to put the car battery on charge and for me to go to my directors meeting. A really positive, constructive meeting for a change which felt like we’d moved forward with things. I had a quick chat afterwards with Sylvia and then got home just before darkness fell walking really fast because I had not brought a torch. I startled two deer just before I got to the croft and that had my heart racing even more!

Home for dinner, chats with Ady and weather forecast watching as we think the Sheerwater may not run tomorrow due to forecast winds.

of everything, but quite specifically wine to post a proper lucid blog post but as I am filled with good intentions I will do something in note form.

Awake earlyish (for me) to feed the animals as Ady was off to the larder to process venison. It is quite literally like a zoo with chaos reining until they are all fed and then blissful peace as they all munch on their breakfast. The pigs need feeding first as they may escape, then the chickens, ducks and geese (ducks need letting out as they are penned overnight so we can collect their eggs), while they are distracted I sneak off with the turkeys to feed them somewhere else in a covert manner – they are eating growers pellets rather than layers but also need to away from the others otherwise they get bullied away from their food. I did some egg collecting and pig watering and then came back up. Scarlett had joined me in her pjs as Bonnie had come back up to the static having got a shot to the nose from the pig fence and woken Tarly up.

Breakfast for kids while I washed up and we all chatted about plans for the day. I made some yoghurt and washed up a load of jam jars which had been kicking around in the kitchen for ages, then sorted out the kitchen cupboard. I had a form to print off and needed to sign up to companies house for directorship of IRCT so headed down to the trust office to do that. I met Ady along the way which I had been anticipating so we stopped to catch up and then he came up home while I carried on to the village.

Various things done I came home and we all had lunch together. Neil popped up for a cup of tea and chat about a couple of things in the afternoon. Ady brushed down the sporran which was covered in turkey and goose poo while I made bread, pastry and got the washing in. I then popped down to the polytunnel to do some watering and pick some salad. Dinner was quiche with our eggs and salad from the herb spiral and polytunnel along with Katy Salmon’s carrot salad. I have this tatty old blue notebook filled with recipes and where I got them from – lots of you are in there along with some recipes we gathered while travelling. Both children have asked me if they can have the book when I die!

Vikki came up for dinner and we had a really nice evening. The nights are drawing in and it’s dark not long after 9pm now which is a real culture shock. I reminded myself at 5pm that in just a few weeks it will be dark by then.

Knackered now so off to bed, but I blogged! 🙂

Bloody blimey the real world is a crazy full on place! And that was just Oban!

Last Monday morning had me at a skype meeting with the architect design team for the community bunkhouse, then home for lunch and last minute packing. In the middle of all that I had an email from the car club to say the car we’d booked was not available so would a smaller one be ok? Not really and for a brief while I thought we had no car booked at all but we made do.

Ady and I went to the pier to meet the ferry as some people were coming off. I had an email from them about 6 weeks ago to say they had been reading our blog for ages (since we were WWOOFing) and were coming to Scotland so thought they’d visit Rum and meet us. I’d said they could wild camp on the croft and use the compost loo and to get in touch when they had dates in mind. I then got an email to say they were arriving on Monday 19th for 6 days. This was not ideal as we were leaving on Monday 19th for two days plus we were coming home on the Wednesday with The Barts. Not really knowing how to put them off I’d explained we would not be here and would then have other guests but that it would be good to meet them anyway and we’d spend what time we could with them.

I walked back with Naomi and Dave while their kids took a ride with Ady up to the croft. We had a cup of tea with them, showed them where things were and then headed off to the pier. It was possibly the oddest feeling I’ve ever had waving off four total strangers stood on our croft as we drove away. I felt very uneasy and just wrong about the whole business.

The mainland was as it has always been on our trips off so far – stressy, busy, expensive and filled with too many logistics, schedules, appointments and duties. One day I’d like to go and not actually have anything specific to do. This was not that time though. Car collecting, drive to Fort William, dash to Lidl before it closed, dash to Morrisons for some food shopping for the morning, to McDonalds for dinner which was considered a treat by the other three, a sufferance by me 😉 then to the wigwam for the night. It was the one we had stayed in the night before we moved to Rum 18 months ago, the day we’d collected Bonnie and the last day of our old life. We were not expecting Corinne, the owner to remember us at all but she greeted us like old friends, had seen me on the telly the other week, exclaimed at Bonnie’s size, asked about our Pajero (she has one too) and was just so lovely and welcomming. It felt really nice to be made so at home there. 🙂

We unloaded everything from the car and had a fairly early night for us. Bonnie was not happy without her crate and was pretty restless and I had a really bad nights sleep on a single pillow, really struggling to wake up the next morning.

Into Fort William for a quick dash to Morrisons (we’d bought a really cheap little tent the night before reduced to a tenner which will be perfect for the odd camping trip here on island plus be emergency accommodation in the summer on the croft and then kicked ourselves for only buying one. We also picked up some lunch to eat in the car later), then a quick look around the charity shops in the town before going to the dentist which was the real reason for the trip.

Davies is fine, Ady is more or less fine, I have some issues with potential gum disease which I was aware of and is hereditary with my Mum having all sorts of dental problems, Scarlett has an issue with her bottom back teeth which have very little enamel. The dentist is considering extraction in the hopes the adult teeth around them grow to fill the gaps but is consulting with the orthodentist there ready for our next appointment.

That done we piled back in the car and drove to Oban. We’d heard it was bigger than Fort Bill which it is and had more shops which it does. It was really, really tourist busy and crowded and smelly and expensive and we hated it, not even lasting our paid 2 hours parking before we gave up. We did Tescos there and Aldi and then drove back to the wigwam to have dinner and a very early night. I repacked all the bags ready and Ady loaded the car up and the alarm was set for super early again for the next morning. Lovely Corinne gave us a huge discount, barely charging us for two nights what it should have cost for one 🙂 We left our email address as she may have some contacts for us for peacocks and a few other crofting things Ady and her were talking about.

We left slightly later than hoped and diverted off to Farm Foods on the way to get some frozen food. The ferry times meant that we didn’t manage to buy any fresh food at all and were very conscious of having The Barts with us for at least 3 dinners so copped out and went for frozen pizzas and sausages! The smaller car meant we had to have the last things on our laps so by Corpach I could no longer feel my thighs thanks to the block of heavy frozen food on my lap!

At Mallaig there was the usual fretting about getting all our freight on the ferry, getting the car swept out and returned to the parking space, the key back in the keysafe on the other side of the pier and then finding tickets to get back on the boat. Kirsty and I had spotted each other but the kids had not seen each other and we got on the boat last so they were all already installed when we got on. Our friend Izzy was also getting on the boat (she worked at the castle last year) as was Abby (castle staff member) and it was a really busy boat. I love feeling so at home on the ferry, chatting to the staff, knowing people getting on. As we were about to get off so Billy appeared – the builder who was so good to us last year lending us his mats to get the static up on to the croft so hugs all round there too.

As always the best part about going off is coming home and as the boat pulled in to Rum pier and Rum friends were waving and greeting us it just always feels so right :). Ady and James headed off in the car with all the stuff, the kids went off together and Kirsty and I walked up to the croft with Bonnie. We learnt that the Lock family had decamped to one of the Kabins after two very wet and windy nights camping in the croft.

A fab time as ever with The Barts. So enjoy their easy company and so proud of them for their fab adventures and travels this year. Very excited at the prospect of return visits and maybe even settling somewhere more northern than most of our other friends who all seem to migrating south these days 😉

Davies and Scarlett got on well with the Lock children and are hoping they may see them again. They left on Saturday morning having spent their daughters birthday here on Rum on the Friday. Off to Eigg to have a comparing the islands adventure over there.

The Barts stayed a bonus extra night til Sunday which was lovely, we did the Sheerwater trip which they’d missed last time they were here as it was cancelled due to bad weather and we saw many porpoises. It was a gorgeous day and the scenery was stunning. The kids managed some fishing and plenty of exploring along with lots of minecraft, dvd watching and a bit of lego-ing I think. Kirsty joined me and some other Rum folk for Crafternoon Friday at Fliss’ and we all got midged a fair bit.

We waved them off yesterday morning and went to Sunday Community Teashop to catch our breath a bit. I’d arranged to meet Emily (newest Rum resident, wife to Mel the castle manager) for coffee so hung on for that and had a lovely hour or so in the sunshine with Mel, Em, Vikki, Casey, Abby and Laura. Lots of laughter 🙂

Back home I started doing some stuff with the herb spiral but it suddenly got midgey and then Claire and her boyfriend Danny came up for a cup of tea so I stopped. I did have about an hour of dirt under my fingernails reconnecting with growing things though and did manage to pick a load of herbs to dry.

Dinner, film and some catching up online made for a later night than I’d planned.

Today has been equally full on and has me deciding to work out all the various things I have committed to do, what I want to do and divide up my time more efficiently so that I am not doing headless chicken impressions, achieving nothing and not doing any of the things I actually want to do like spend time with Davies and Scarlett and get an updated croft plan in place. Lots of venison stuff all done though which is good and I see my article as guest columnist has made it to the Scottish Islands Explorer 🙂

This week I am hoping to knock some of my heavy weighing job list on the head, spend some time bramble picking and actually get to enjoy some of that slower pace of life stuff I bang on about having moved here for!

Over a week? Surely not.

Not even going to attempt to catch up day by day then.

Weather – a mix of sunshine and rain, just like any other ten day period on Rum really. Midges have been having their last hurrah and out in force whenever the weather conditions conspire to make it suitable for them. Overcast, still days are their domain. Bright sunlight sees them off as does a breeze. Fortunately other than being massively annoying to the point it is literally impossible to work outside none of the four of us are badly affected by their bites. Small mercies…

Rum – All well. Sandy is back and laying low, we’ve not seen him at all and our friendship with Fliss is noticeably cool. Her and I locked horns last week over a community tractor purchase, I forsee future horn locking to come over various things but have high hopes that it will be done amicably and with affection even if we are never again as close as we were. I had a mad night with Sylvia last Wednesday when she read my runes. Well most of them… we started at 8pm and at gone 7am I left to weave my way home. I arrived back in the static exactly 12 hours after I’d left and met Ady coming down the croft hill to feed the animals as I meandered up it having only stopped drinking whisky at about 6am. I went to bed for 3 hours and got back up for the Sheerwater which felt very surreal. Suddenly lots more friendships seem to be opening up now it is widely known that we are not as close to Fliss and Sandy. It’s the last Market Day tomorrow and we have lots of venison processing booked with sales so far going really well. I’ve been tinkering with a website for it and sending out lots of emails locally promoting venison. What else? Erm lots of meetings for various things – bunkhouse, directors stuff, visitor management group, crofting things. Very busy. I’ve been foraging for raspberries whenever I can and have about four jars of jam stashed, the trouble is Ady eats it almost quicker than I make it so I need to find more foraging time. Erm not sure when that will happen…Kids are fine, have been spending lots of time outdoors flying kites, playing with Bonnie and I got them to sit for about an hour today in amoungst all the birds and do some spotting cocks and hens in the little chicks from Jinty which are about 4 weeks old now so quite easy to tell apart.

Scarlett had a chick up here for 3 nights, after one of the hens let two of her chicks die we rescued one that she was rejecting. I thought it was past the worst and Scarlett was amazing with it, taking it everywhere with her including down to the shop (very funny – the kids got into a pool match with some random tourists that were here walking, the tourists bought a load of drinks and sweets for the kids as prizes and made a huge deal of telling Ady and I what awesome kids we have 🙂 I think pool hustling may have to go on their CVs). The chick didn’t make it in the end, I suspect because although Scarlett was very attentive and we had it in a box with a hot water bottle we simply can’t replicate a brooder or a mother hen up here off grid. We were very successful at incubator hatching and then a brooder lamp back in Sussex but they need the light and heat and we just can’t pull that off up here. In some ways I think it was a blessing, I imagine Bonnie would have been very jealous of a beloved pet chicken. All of the other chicks are doing well – 12 from our own hens and over 20 from Jinty’s. We’ll keep another cock or maybe even two, fatten all the rest of the cock birds and keep the hens.

Gav and Laura have very reluctantly told us they’ll not be taking two of our piglets. It is for the best for them, they have taken on way too much. It briefly left us with a glitch in our planning for pigs but some research suggests breeding one of the girl piglets with Tom (her Dad) is okay so we’ll keep Scarlett’s favourite, the one she was getting upset about killing and eating. They are now 16 weeks old and should be ready to slaughter between 26 and 30 according to our pig book – between 36 and 40 according to ‘slow food’ sources. I think we will plan to kill the two wee boys first and let the other girl go as long as we can before needing to think about seperating her from Tom. More research needed, particularly specific to our breed of kune kune, Old Spot crosses.

The turkeys and geese are all fine and well and the mother with a duckling is now out and about although she has yet to venture down to the river with it.

We had an excellent night last Friday with a band here called Wingin It who were very good. Only complaint was that they didn’t play long enough but we all really enjoyed the evening and Davies had his first electric guitar lesson afterwards from Ross. He’s pretty good and seemed to pick it up quickly. I can enthuse about this with all the confidence of an off grid parent 😉

I think that’s a fair summary. Good intentions to return to daily blogging renewed once again.

Friday – Ady and I spent the day helping Gav and Laura mostly. We’d agreed to go over to Croft 2 for some concrete mixing at 9ish so having fed our animals and checked on the new chicks we headed over there. The first task was bringing up a big box they have built six of to construct the concrete pads to put the ringbeam on. Laura is now six months pregnant so stuff like that is out of bounds for her so while Gav bailed out water from the hole it was to go into Ady and I fetched the box. It was heavy but mostly just hard to carry because all the weight was on your hands or fingers, none of it able to be shouldered. My hands are still sore now, I should have used gloves.

That brought up we set about measuring stuff and trying to make a water level indicator gizmo work. It did work, perfectly well, it’s just that thanks to an optical illusion of the slope that the crofts are on we all failed to believe what it was telling us and insisted it was wrong. A knocked up beam with a spirit level which somehow we all had more faith in simply proved it to be right. Bonnie and Finn enjoyed playing together while the grown ups talked physics and then we broke for lunch and Ady and I returned to see Davies and Scarlett.

We had lunch and the kids were quite happy staying home drawing and playing lego so I went with Ady to the castle for his appointed meeting with the doctor to have an injection for his tennis elbow. The doctor was not there and it turned out he had gone without waiting for Ady. There are all sorts of problems with the locum service we currently have and we have just learnt that the practise which had pitched for the Small Isle medical practice has not managed to recruit sufficient GPs so is going to advertise again…. any GPs reading who love the highlands and islands…..? 😉

Ady and I hitched a ride with Gav to the pier where our car was as we were almost out of diesel so had decided to leave it there until it came on the boat. It was due but didn’t arrive. The gun from my Dad did though. Hoodies beware….

We came back up with Gav and sat chatting for a while before deciding no more was going to happen that day. Rather a wasted day really but it was nice spending time with Gav and Laura even if not a lot was achieved.

In the evening we all went down for a beer to the shop. Paul is back for 2 weeks to work his notice so was down with his two dogs and there was a good turn out of people including Mark and Doug the two seasonal ghillies from last year who are back now til Christmas. Our resident numbers have taken a real boost temporarily. A really nice evening down the shop with lots of people out. Home for pizza.

Saturday

Rain, rain, rain and rain. I had a very productive morning ticking all sorts of tasks off my to do list, mostly online stuff but all very worthwhile and good to have done and dusted. The kids both had showers and I brushed Scarlett’s hair which took about an hour. Aby sent me a message to say our diesel had finally arrived and was at the pier so after lunch during a dry weather window Ady and I walked down to the pier, filled the car up and brought it home again.

We fed the animals and I spent about an hour in the polytunnel looking at strawberry runners, sorting out the tomatoes and generally tidying things up in there. July and August are write off months in there as it is just too midgey and cleggy to do anything other than a speedy water but it all looks a little less neglected now.

Davies had been making some 3D minecraft characters out of paper so I helped him make them into marionette type puppets with some string.

We’re watching Black Books on dvd at the moment which the kids are really enjoying, adult moments aside, so we watched a couple of those.

Sunday – a rainy morning so while Ady nipped out between showers to do various things including some strimming and I popped out to pick some herbs to dry it was a lot of indoor stuff too. The kids carried on with their crafty stuff they’d been doing and I worked on the newsletter a bit.

The kids didn’t fancy going down for community teashop so Ady and I walked down on our own and sat with Gav and Laura chatting about off grid living and what you most miss (washing machine). The weather had totally picked up by the end so we walked home, collected the car and drove down to put a load of washing on. While it was on we picked raspberries around the village, which I brought back up and turned into 2 jars of jam straightaway. Squirrelling away supplies as we get them for tastes of summer through the bleak winter months ahead 🙂

I hung the washing out while Ady got the roast lamb joint cooking on the barbecue and fed the animals. I then sorted out the herbs to dry and finished crystalising some mint leaves and some borage flowers – very impressed with them, particularly the mint leaves. I also got the vegetables on and then had a brainwave to make a cheesecake for pudding as we had some soft cheese which needed using. I walked down to the shop to buy biscuits for the base and stopped for a beer as a few people were there. Then home to make the cheesecake and serve up dinner.

I managed to explode a half bottle of elderflower fizz all over the kitchen which was most amusing, if rather sticky.

Dinner was gorgeous, I don’t think we’ve had lamb since we moved here and it was lovely with freshly made mint sauce, followed by cheesecake.

It’s been a good week – 12 chicks hatched, all of the rehomed chicks from Ross and Jinty doing well and lots of productive stuff achieved along with TV and radio appearances of course… 😉

This morning Ady was helping Gav move lots of parts of their house that has been arriving over the last few weeks. It alternated between midgey and rainy so the kids and I hung out indoors. I had a couple of pressing things to do online (actually I have more than a couple but I did prioritising as Scarlett had particularly asked me to do some stuff with her). We did some chatting, some breakfasting and some doodling and stuff. I am ever reminded that the times they spend wanting to hang out with me are both slipping away and even more important than ever so try to put everything else aside. I don’t want to have invested so much in the early years only to blow it now, particularly when they are actually at their most interesting to spend time with stage ever.

We packed up lunch and headed down to meet Ady only to find him walking up to meet us. We checked on all the animals (seven hatched chicks so far, soooo cute!) and decided to take the car down to the pier and leave it there – we are almost out of diesel until more comes off the boat so rather than play roulette is made sense to just leave it there til it arrives. Plus it was raining and it meant we could leave Bonnie in the car with a walk at the end rather than in her crate at the static.

It was just us four and a family of three (small toddler) on the boat. They did lots of shy smiling at us and when she sat inside the undercover bit and breastfed the toddler I had a moment of awww-ness for small children but they didn’t chat so we didn’t either. Aside from a couple of porpoise spottings we saw nothing but as ever it is a nice two hours to do nothing but look at the sea and chat and I love it for that regardless of wildlife.

Ady and the kids and Bonnie headed for home while I walked along to Fliss’ to join Fliss and Casey for crochet. It was nice and Casey has picked up both knitting and crochet really quickly. Fliss had guests to feed (the BBC folk actually) so Casey and I left and went to her and Mike’s for a cup of tea and chat which was really good. I feel Casey and I have really clicked 🙂

We walked round to the hall for the RCA meeting which was fairly straightforward this month. Ady had come down too and we chatted with various folk after the meeting before heading for home and dinner time. The internet is crazy slow tonight but we just about managed to listen to me on the radio and watch me on the telly.