One word? When seven would do…

Yesterday we had arranged to help Big Dave at the cabin, so after feeding animals we headed over there in time for Popmaster. On the agenda was fixing the ceiling panels. We had a cup of tea and then made a start. Predictably it was not straightfoward and before lunch we had just about got the first one up with lots of swearing, bumping heads (up on the mezzanine, literally just a crawl space really) and arses showing (all wearing jeans which slipped down and tops which rode up with all the scrambling around). We came back to ours for lunch and then headed back over and had a slightly more productive afternoon.

Ady was starting to feel unwell so was a little delicate, he is still not right but we are hoping a good nights sleep and an easy day tomorrow may see him right again. Illness here really scares me, we are so far away from doctors, pharmacies and even flushing loos and a nice hot bath when feeling ill. There are so few home comforts and even less emergency medical supports.

Dave came over for dinner and we had a nice evening before he headed back to the cabin.

This morning Ady and I both worked – Ady at the hostel, me at Post Office. It was a busy one for me with lots of people hanging about waiting for the boat to come and take them off – yesterdays boat had been cancelled so all the hogmanay revellers had been stuck here an extra night. I met Ady and the kids came down with Bonnie, having packed a picnic and brought Scarlett’s metal detector. The post has bought everything Ady and the kids were waiting for for my birthday so they are very pleased. It also brought a replacement charge controller for the wind turbine. It has not been working properly and we hoped it was the charge controller which was the cheapest bit to replace so ordered one. Ady has fitted it and it appears to be fine again now so fingers crossed that is that sorted. It’s windy tomorrow so we should know for sure then.

We did some metal detecting along the beach but had forgotten to bring a shovel to dig things up so after about an hour came back home. Ady and I walked along to Dave’s for a cup of tea and chat. Vikki was there having come off the boat. Ady came home to feed the animals and lie on the sofa feeling sorry for himself. I walked down with Vikki and Dave and had a couple of beers at the shop before coming home and cooking dinner. Everyone is knackered so they were all in bed long before 10pm and I am about to follow. Hoping Ady is better in the morning and the rest of us remain okay.

So… 2015 and that.

Think I got up to Monday.

Tuesday… ah yes, we went to the boat, as expected animal feed came off along with some amazon food orders. I know the world hates amazon and anyone with any ethics at all would never buy from them because they are worse than nestle or something. But here, they deliver free, we buy ethical stuff like suma from them and they are reliable with amazing customer service. I’m sorry they are clearly the incarnate of the devil but I think we make enough green, eco, ethical choices in our current lifestyle to be forgiven amazon shopping. So we do. Quite a lot. As in we get most of our dried goods from them on the subscribe and save arrangement whereby we sign up for regular deliveries and get discount for buying in bulk. So we get: flour (from organic direct from the mill suppliers in 16kg sacks), yeast, sugar, hot chocolate, stock cubes, pasta, rice, mixed nuts, dried fruit, gravy, coffee, chorizo, washing up liquid, cooking oil, shampoo, conditioner, hand wash, loo roll, dog food…

We got back for lunch – leek and potato soup and rolls. And then Ady and I walked down to meet Mike in the woods for some woodsman lessons. Ady felled a couple of trees, I got mostly distracted by Debs who joined us with a flask and some mince pies and chatted to me rather than me doing any practical woods stuff. Still learnt a fair bit before she arrived though. Mike is super knowledgable and very keen to share his wisdom. He is rather anal about H&S but still a very interesting person to spent time with and learn from. We left them as it was getting dark, called down to the village to drop the car back off and then brought back animal feed to the croft. Ady took 3 bags in the wheelbarrow and I rather foolishly thought I could manage a bag on my shoulder from the fork to the croft, I guess about half a mile. I did really well until the polytunnel which is only about 200 paces to the croft gate but my shoulder and upper back was really painful by then and I decided it was silly to be a hero and potentially do some damage to myself so I stopped, carried a small way hugging it to myself and then Ady came back and took it. They do weigh over 20kg so I was not being a total wuss 😉

Yesterday we went over to Dave’s cabin for a cup of tea and blether to see how he is getting on. All is well over there and we have arranged to go over tomorrow and help. We came back for lunch and that was us in for the rest of the day. We watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks which always makes me think of my friend Olivia who is Mary Norton’s granddaughter and went off on a European WWOOFing adventure just after we headed off on ours. Must catch up with her online…

We watched the last few of HIMYM. had haggis for dinner and drank fizz. Just before midnight we went outside and took photos, shouted NY greetings across the croft and looked at the aurora which were faint but present.  I’ve been reading about the lights as I keep seeing posts on fb from local places showing displays and it turns out they are often present but not visible to the naked eye. On a dark night with no moon the brighter skies in the north are usually the aurora even if there are no colours like in the classic northern lights displays.

Bed about 130am. All very tired.

Today was obviously a later start. I have not been out as it rained solidly pretty much all day. We de-Christmassed the static, taking down the tree and decorations which always makes it feel huge. Big Dave called over to first foot, bringing fizz and a lump of firewood in the absence of coal. He was practically followed in by Mike and Debs so we briefly had a houseful for tea, coffee and a wee dram to see in the new year. They all left, Ady had chopped some firewood and I had got a roast beef dinner followed by apple pie and cream in the oven so we ate really early, watched the alternate ending to HIMYM  (I still cried!) and everyone went off fairly early to bed. Except me. And I am planning to go pretty early too.