One word? When seven would do…

Boring as it may be I am adamant I am fighting this cold off properly and not wearing myself out. Sleeping in a very cold, very damp room with no bath and other home comforts means a simple cold can turn into something more sinister here really easily.

So I’m heading to bed early every night, which means waking early every morning but I’ve been staying in bed and reading for an hour or so before getting up so still getting plenty of rest. Ady was off to meet Ross as he was going to Harris (other side of the island) to feed the SNH cattle and ponies today. They ended up gone for way longer than expected and didn’t get back til gone midday.

Meanwhile I got up, drank tea and answered loads of emails, read lots of online stuff and did some general volunteer organising writing when people are booked in on the calendar and creating different folders in my inbox to keep track of things. Then I went out to chop some firewood which was my fresh air and exercise for the day.

This afternoon has been showery and very cold so I didn’t venture out again but instead cut up three old pairs of jeans and crocheted a rug for the kitchen – Ady had taken up the the old coir mat from the kitchen to sweep underneath and give it a bit of a beat and clean as it was looking grubby but it disintegrated as he lifted it and the kitchen floor is really cold on bare feet if you are standing in there cooking so I decided to make a rug for it. 3 pairs of jeans doesn’t go very far…. need to find some more.

I made pizza dough and later pizzas for dinner but there is a Rum cheese crisis so they were not as cheesy as we usually have them. We started rewatching Friends and the kids spent ages looking at optical illusions on the internet thanks to the whole black and blue debate…

All yesterday afternoon I was dreaming about home made soup and freshly baked rolls so this morning that’s what I made. And it was good. So good I had two bowls of soup and three rolls. So, so medicinal! 🙂

Ady and I went to meet the boat which came against all odds – we had some amazon orders arrive and collected post from the Rangerover in the village. Back at home we had lunch and watched all the Junior Masterchef episodes we had missed while we were away right through to the final. Funny what shows we deem worthy of downloading and watching 🙂

Then I was feeling ready for some fresh air so I did a couple of hours of wood chopping and sorting out the woodstore. Hopefully we are coming to the last few weeks of fires lit all day and only another month or so of fires at night. Worth chopping it all up though as we’ll need it for the pizza oven and campfires for volunteers. I did over exert myself though thanks to the magical properties of the soup and had to sit down and drink lots of tea while shivering a bit after that.

Ady meanwhile brought up more firewood and did some general tidying up around the croft. I made dinner – in the week we have been back everyone has been hankering after our normal food which we all seemed to miss when we were away – there are only so many fast food restaurant fries you can have before you crave real food I guess. We have no Lovefilm to watch just now – finished Eureka which everyone likes and waiting for the next disc, only Ady and I liked The Middle so that is going back. so we watched some Will & Grace.

See, I told you it was boring.

Friday – erm… I genuinely have no idea at all what we did. There would have been some firewood processing, I have no idea what else. I do recall heading down to the village to get pepperoni for pizza and beer for Ady and collect the keys for the shop ready for the following morning.

Saturday – back to work! Post office for me, so a good catch up with Bad Neil, Ali, Trudi but a quiet morning generally. Ady was at the hostel and went off to the ferry to collect Big Dave and Mairi who arrived. They walked along to me, we said our hellos and then they headed up to the cabin while I went to meet Ady from work. We went to the shop for beers and I cooked ridiculous amounts of cheesy pasta bake for dinner with sufficient leftovers for the following night for Davies and Scarlett who were unlikely to eat the curry Big Dave was cooking for us. A fun evening at ours.

Sunday – Mairi had brought us up a load of croissants and pain au chocolats so we had lovely Sunday breakfast. The weather was abysmal for most of BD and Mairi’s visit this time so we didn’t manage much outside stuff at all. I think there was more firewood processing and definitely tea drinking and chatting. I’m fairly sure Ady was coming down with the Mainland Cold by then so we caught up on some iplayer stuff in the afternoon too. BD and Mairi went to the shop for a beer then came up to us and cooked dinner for us – chicken curry which was very lovely. Other than Adam the WWOOFer no one has ever cooked for us in the caravan before so it was a real treat. People on Rum don’t do a lot of eating at each others houses somehow so dinner made for you feels very special. I think that was the latest of all the nights – I recall watching lots of music videos on youtube and being very silly.

Monday – Ady and I went over to the cabin for breakfast and Popmaster, except Dave’s radio wasn’t working so we didn’t listen to Popmaster. The breakfast made up for it though – red onion, chopped up bacon, haloumi cheese and eggs all fried up in one pan and served with toasted pitta breads. Due to lack of furniture or crockery we all ate straight from the pan sitting in a circle on the floor 🙂 After that we went along to Vikki’s house as we had various lent items to retrieve from her and Dave was collecting a few bits for the cabin – Vikki is leaving, not sure I have mentioned that on here. She’s off back to the mainland, which is a little sad as it’s someone who has been part of Rum for all the time we’ve been here but also exciting because it frees up a house for movement on the island and means changes are afoot which is always good in my opinion (for Rum and for Vikki).

I went to the shop with BD and Mairi for a beer and to put in my veg order – we stayed for a couple and it was good fun down there. Ady got a roast pork dinner on (I had made an apple pie earlier) then we all came back here. Another late one with me starting to come down with the cold too.

Tuesday – Ady went over to Harris first thing with Manager Mike as he is being trained to feed the cattle and ponies over there on his zero hour castle contract while SNH are short staffed. In the end I don’t think he will do it because the landrover is not running and he’s not covered to use the polaris (covered quad bike vehicle type thing) so can’t get there anyway but he had a nice ride out to Harris. I made some cheese scones and had a failed attempt at some honeycomb which didn’t set (not boiled long enough I think but I used too small a pan really so couldn’t let it boil up, will try again another time). It was Vikki’s work leaving do which had been combined with the postponed work Christmas party. It was Vikki, Em and Mel, Nicola, Ross, us four, BD and Mairi and we’d all taken various food contributions so ate and drank tea and then Mel had done one of her famous quizzes. We split into four teams of two and answered the 30 questions and amazingly Ady and I won 🙂 The prize was a bottle of fizz which we rather unsportingly took away with us rather than opening to share 😉

BD and Ady went back to Vikki’s to help carry some heavy things down the stairs, Mairi and I went along to Fliss’ for Crafternoon, tea, cakes and chat with Fliss, Ali and Deb. We called at the shop on the way back for ice cream and came home. I made venison pie for dinner which was very lovely but the gravy had not thickened so the pastry was a bit soggy bottomed. A slightly earlier night all round. Mairi and BD had been hoping to go off but the boat was cancelled – an amended timetable was due for the next day though.

Wednesday – The cold has fully kicked in 🙁 I made bread dough and flatbread dough this morning, then Mairi and BD came over for final Popmaster and tea. We went down to Vikki’s for the men to help carry her bed downstairs and then along to the pier. Loads of Rum folk were heading off – Sylvia, Andrew, Sean, Vikki, Mike, Deb along with BD and Mairi plus Jinty’s Dad and Dave’s Mum so it was a busy boat with lots of folk there to leave or wave off those who were leaving. Our animal feed arrived which was good as we were running low – people always over feed the animals when they are croft creature sitting for us and then the delivery we expected last week was delayed. Back home for a late lunch, showers for the kids and hairbrushing for Scarlett who may finally be accepting that doing it twice a week means it takes five minutes whereas doing it fortnightly can mean well over an hour. Mostly I sat infront of the fire and dreamed of home made soup though which is what I think I may plan to do tomorrow morning.

Am now feeling grumpy and intolerant of the world in general so probably need to come off the internet, have dinner and go to bed early!

Really need to catch up otherwise I’ll be catching up on Rum stuff too…

Sunday – having ascertained that there was NO public transport at all on the Sunday we were rather scuppered for collecting D&S from Outward Bound. We had gotten a quote from a taxi for the trip (6 miles) and it was £25!!! Our plan had been to walk there to collect them and then see if there was any chance of a lift back.

Lynda and Stuart offered to take us out for breakfast in the morning so we gratefully accepted and then as they offered to run us along the road to the OB centre leaving at the same time as we’d have had to leave to walk we took them up on it – a five minute car journey versus a two hour walk, no contest really! Which meant we were there with over 2 hours to spare. We sat at the station for a while and ate polo mints but then got bored so went off for a walk. We had spotted two of the groups doing stuff on the loch and came across another group doing climbing. We looked from a distance at the kids on the ground and decided Davies and Scarlett were definitely not among them so it was safe to walk past. Only to get closer and be hailed by the leader – we thought he was holding up a hand to stop us coming closer but it was a hand raised in a greeting wave and then he said ‘come over, it’s fine’ at which point two of the four children actually doing the climbing yelled out ‘Mummy!’ and there were Davies and Scarlett :). We went to walk on so as not to distract them but the leader beckoned us over to watch so we did. We were eyed with curiosity by the other kids and when they came down Scarlett dashed over to cuddle us and say hello and was followed by another girl who introduced herself and chatted. She reminded me of Megan Sambrook – a really lovely, charming girl with beautiful manners and a great way of talking to adults. She said she had made friends with Davies and Scarlett and has lots in common with them, then listed the ways which included love of animals and having moved up to Scotland from West Sussex 4 years ago 🙂 Having since accepted a friend request from her Mum on facebook I see we share several mutual friends in Sussex from Home ed circles although Jenna and her younger sister are schooled. Small world.

The girls were called back to their group to carry on and one of the other course directors came over to introduce himself and offered us a cup of tea back up at the centre so we headed off up there chatting to him. He also offered a lift back to FW when he heard about our plight. We were installed in the staff lounge with tea and coffee and had a steady stream of visitors including Emma the contact from the school, a lovely instructor who later was the person who ran us all back to FW and someone who Ady didn’t understand at all thanks to his very broad accent but I gathered drove lorries for a living. We were invited in to watch the kids given their attendance certificates and then they said goodbye to everyone before we were given a lift back.

They both enjoyed it and had plenty of stories to tell. They had made friends with Jenna and Davies had been rather taken aback by the laddishness of the other boys on the weekend. He is so not a lad. He did get said goodbye to by several of them though and said no one had been mean to him, he just had nothing in common with any of them. They were both utterly knackered – the Friday had entailed a jump into the loch and swim back to shore, the Saturday was packing up their kit and then hiking up to a campsite, setting up camp and sleeping out overnight. The Sunday had been coming back to base and then the climbing. Pretty full on. Davies said the week long events had the same activities but interspersed with loads more down time and low key team building stuff. They both said they’d go again next year.

We went to Morrisons for some lunch – they had not enjoyed the food which had been all boil in the bag stuff for the camping expedition. Back to the room for baths and then McDonalds for dinner.  We met Marcus, Michelle and Chloe from the train at 10pm and despite best intentions of early nights all round it was about 1am when we finally parted company I think.

Monday – a lie in for us. Davies seemed to suffering a cold caught from his tent mate. We had reserved a rucksack at Argos so walked along to collect that and then headed to the dentist. Everyone was fine except me – I had lost a chunk of tooth on a toffee a couple of weeks ago so knew I would need that sorting out, sure enough it was a drilling out of the old filling and a new one to fill in the extra gap. As always the worst bit is the freezing up which had me dribbling and not talking properly then not able to eat or drink for hours.

We had debated various food options and decided on McDonalds that night again. Davies was feeling rough so declined to come instead heading to bed and actually was fast asleep when we returned to the room. Chloe was also not feeling right so it was an early night all round which was probably most needed.

Tuesday – Ady and I did Easter egg shopping and bought a drill from Lidl while the kids slept in again, then we met up with M,M & C and went off charity shop shopping. I did well getting a couple of pairs of jeans, we tried to stop for coffee in a Wetherspoons and a McDonalds before ending up back in the Premier Inn. All the adults went back out in the afternoon – me for bra and toiletries shopping, the others for various things. Ady and I bought battery toothbrushes. That was picnic food for dinner night so the men and kids went off to get that while Michelle and I hung out in the room. Another late one.

Wednesday – Ady and Marcus were off to the Nevis Distillery for a tour, there was a plan to walk with them but actually it was raining and not terribly nice so the kids and I decided that crap TV and a bath was far more attractive a proposition and lazed around in the room. Michelle and Chloe went on the walk and came back so we had tea with them and then parted again so I could have a final long bath with a glass of wine. We were out to the Premier Inn adjoining restaurant that evening but ended up eating really late as they claimed to be full so we went back to the room. We had far too much to drink before the food so were quite rowdy but very happy. Not a crazy late night but late enough given the early (for us!) start the following morning.

Thursday – Home! We walked into FW station and saw Lesley and Bad Neil. Sean the Rat and Nicola were also on the train so it made for a lovely journey back catching up on everything. I dashed back across to the CoOp for bread, milk and doughnuts and saw Sean, Ali and Eve in there too so all 11 of us sat on the boat together like a sort of Rum field trip. It was lovely. I am sure I have blogged before about loving being on the boat with fellow islanders as you feel part of a special club. We took over half of the top of the Calmac and there was lots of banter and chatting. It was a pretty rough crossing and as we pulled into the loch of Rum so Nicola sat up (having been prone for the whole journey) and announced ‘I was not sick!’ to which we all cheered, then Sean came back inside with wee Eve as they had been outside the whole time as Eve gets very seasick and Eve shouted ‘I was not sick!!!’ so we cheered some more 🙂 🙂

Back on Rum we were very warmly welcomed home by Bonnie dog, everyone’s cars started – we’d been debating on the boat who might have to jump start who – and away we went home. We got back to no real dreadful surprises and all animals present and correct. Scarlett made lunch, we unpacked everything and put it all away and then Ady and I headed down to the shop and stopped for a beer with the folk who were down there. Another lovely welcome back with more than one person commenting on how it was lovely to have us home. A splendid curry cooked by Ady and a blissful nights sleep back in our own beds.

I got to Wednesday didn’t I…

That was Zoo Day. I’m sure I’ve blogged before over the years about my feelings on zoos. I like the conservation work they do and as the parent of a child who is all about the animals I do love the opportunity that UK zoos have afforded Scarlett particularly to see animals in the flesh if not in their natural environment. I think we have probably done a large percentage of the zoos on mainland UK – Marwell, Drusillas, Port Lymphe, Chester, Longleat, Knowlsley, Africa Alive! British Wildlife Centre and now Edinburgh. Notable exceptions that spring to mind include Colchester and Whipsnade. My favourites are Africa Alive!, Knowlsely, Port Lymph and Longleat as they are more safari style and tend to focus quite heavily on natural enclosures and conservation work so you feel far more that you are getting a privileged peep into the animals world rather than them being on display for your benefit.

We walked up to Princes Street and caught the bus along to the zoo – super convenient and a bargain at just £1.50 each. Actually the kids should only have been 70p each but it was exact change only and the driver didn’t tell me a price just smiled and nodded at me so I paid £6 anyway and only realised when I collected my tickets with a price printed on. The zoo had the off duty air of any major tourist attraction in the UK in February with most of the catering places shut and keepers more likely to stand and chat with you as they had so much time on their hands compared to peak season.

Edinburgh Zoo’s main draw is obviously the pandas and the enclosure standard reflected that with loads of interpretation, signage and keeper always on hand to talk about the pandas while much of the rest of the zoo was a bit tired. There was a newly opened chimp enclosure with loads of good interpretation and interactive stuff but we just walked through there at the very end and thought the chimps looked a bit sad anyway. The big cats area was very small and the tigers (always my favourite, such beautiful, beautiful creatures) did lots of caged tiger style pacing and looked uneasy. We only saw a male lion who was also looking a bit edgey but rather amusingly eyed up all the children who walked by and barely stopped short of licking his lips :). The saddest bit was the sea eagles though – a pair in a very low ceilinged enclosure with a sign all about Rum and the release project. We spend so much time here watching them soar overhead, high in the sky amazing and free it was really sad to watch these two in their cage. The male sat and flapped his wings for ages as though he knew he was supposed to do more. I don’t know the history of the pair there, presumably they have been captive since hatching so have probably never flown. Surely eagles above all else are just supposed to fly 🙁

All of that said the keepers we chatted to were amazing, clearly proud of the zoo and very knowledgable and caring of the animals in their charge.  It was fantastic to see the male panda, we went back several times during the course of the day and he was very active and looked just like a man dressed up in a panda suit :). The female was close to in season and was staying put in her sleeping area off show. It was also great to see the koalas, again the only ones in the UK including the only UK born koala who very obligingly sat and ate eucalyptus infront of us. I also liked the wallabies who were in a great enclosure that you could walk through and one of them had a joey in her pouch. There were pygmy hippos, rhinos , tapirs and red river hogs all of whom were good to watch. The penguins were fab, Five came out for the daily penguin parade and there was a hilarious episode with a black headed gull who tried to nick some of their fish at feeding time and thought he’d got away with it only to have the penguin mob close in on him and reclaim it.

The sunbears were also quite sad, one came out and paced lots doing lots of standing up on hind legs and looking mournful.

In all though it was a great day and we enjoyed it a lot. Scarlett loved the level of keeper interaction and spent ages chatting to them about various things, particularly a penguin who was poorly and separated from the group and the rhinos who she noticed were both male rather than a breeding pair so wanted more information on the dynamics of.

Both the kids spent some of their money in the shop at the end – Davies bought Scarlett a panda toy which was rather sweet 🙂 Big Dave picked us up as arranged and took us along to his flat in Queensferry. He lives right on the beach of the firth of Forth between the road and the rail bridges with spectacular views. We had a cup of tea at his, then walked along to his local pub for a drink before getting a cab back into the city to meet Mairi. Dave had offered us dinner and we went to the Hard Rock Cafe, via The Dome  where Mairi was waiting with a bottle of fizz on ice :). Even the loos were posh! We had a drink in there before heading next door to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner where the kids got to pick all the songs for the evening – they chose several classics including American Pie and various Beatles songs, Dave and Mairi ordered cocktails and the kids and I spent ages wandering round looking at the memorabilia on the walls and in the gift shop talking about Hard Rock Cafes in Vegas and Niagara that Ady and I had been to. A slice of a previous life a million miles away from our current one!

Poor Scarlett was feeling the effects of the mainland finally catching up with her along with too many car and cab drives and ended up being sick 🙁 She dealt with it really well and felt almost instantly better but I did feel sorry for her. We all went back to the flat where Mairi had restocked the fridge with loads more fizz. Mairi stayed the night and we had breakfast with her in the morning before she headed off to work leaving us to pack up before our taxi arrived to take us off the station.

Thursday – was the train back up to Fort William. Another gorgeous train journey although Scarlett was exhausted from being ill so slept lots of it and I was mildly hungover from excesses of cocktails and fizz the night before so also slept a bit of it. We got in just after 4pm and Lynda and Stuart who had driven up from Glasgow met us at the station. They were ready for dinner when we arrived so after hugs and hellos they headed off to eat while we settled into our room and hit Morrisons for picnic food for dinner. We went up to their room for a cup of tea and chat but everyone was tired so it was an early night all round. We did indulge in baths though – such luxury 🙂

Friday morning we met up with Lynda and Stuart again before it was time to head off to the station to take the kids to Outward Bound. There is only one train a day (weekday) so we were super early but planned to have a look around and orientate the kids a bit. We took them in, showed them how to use the payphone incase they wanted to call us and were then ushered out by the course leader who obviously felt that two children an hour or so early was far preferable to a prolonged family goodbye. So we hugged and left. Scarlett had been pretty wobbly about the whole business but we’d had a good pep talk the day before and in the end they were both far better at the slightly hurried farewell than I think either Ady or I were.

We sat down the bottom of the lane wondering what to do with ourselves and feeling a bit bereft! Lynda and Stuart had insisted on picking us up rather than us waiting for the train to bring us back four hours later (it goes to Mallaig and then comes back past again) but we had no phone signal to let them know we were ready early so ended up sitting and chatting and waiting instead. At least it wasn’t raining! Lynda and Stuart took us for a late lunch / early dinner which was very nice and included wine and beer so felt most holiday-ish.

They went off for a nap while Ady and I had a wander round Fort William for a bit before getting picnic tea from Morrisons and heading back to the Premier Inn. We met up with Lynda and Stuart for a couple of drinks in the evening which was nice, before making the most of a hotel room to ourselves with TV and bath.

Saturday – we were broke and waiting for rent money to come in on Monday having splashed out in Edinburgh and blown our budget so we walked lots and planned what we’d buy when we had money back in the bank. Very odd to be without the kids even though we spend a fair bit of time together on Rum without them these days. I had applied for a writing job one day a week which I was fairly hopeful about so we talked about that too. In the end I didn’t get that job (I heard on the Monday evening). We also talked about Rum, house builds and general stuff for the future. It’s good to get off the island every so often to gain some perspective.

We met up with Lynda and Stuart for tea / coffee and arranged to have dinner at McDonalds later. More crap TV, leisurely baths and fast food later and we realised it was Valentines Day 🙂

all of which brings me back to bedtime for today again, so this will definitely be at least one part longer before we get back to Rum.

Saturday – up early ready to head off on the 1135 ferry. We had packed everything on the Friday night and done all last minute preparations. We planned to leave home at 10am incase of non starting cars or last minute glitches. Davies and Scarlett set off with Bonnie on the lead, Ady and I followed with our stuff in the wheelbarrow, then transfered it to the car. We had to call at the hall to get some venison from the freezer for Steve the Man (Development Officer) and I bumped into Jinty who said she needed me to leave my shop keys so she could pass them to Ali who was covering my Saturday morning shifts, which made sense but I was a bit pissed off she’d not thought to mention it before and I’d just not thought of it. So Ady dashed back while I caught up with the kids. We’d not wanted to take Bonnie in the car as she had muddy paws and couldn’t go in the boot as that was where all our bags were so I lugged her sack of dog food along to the castle while Ady took the car back to get the shop keys. We struggled to rouse Mel & Em at the castle who then said they had just got up but would meet us at the pier to take Bonnie. So the kids started walking to the pier, while I walked back towards the croft to meet Ady. Keys collected, dropped off at the shop and finally we were on our way, passing the kids and Bonnie just before the pier where we finally all met up. We were still super early with half an hour before the boat was due!

There was quite a gathering at the pier – Chain was there being harbourmaster, Mel, Em, Deb and Mike had come to wave us off plus Steve the Man was heading off on the boat with us. We’d been watching a seal for a while when suddenly Chain said ‘there’s an otter!’ and sure enough there was – my first otter sighting on Rum :). It swam all around the pier watching the crowd of people all pointing and exclaiming and then got out of the water and walked up the slipway towards us. It ducked into some rocks but Steve and the kids walked down and saw it from just a couple of feet away. Really magical 🙂 Steve said when he left Rum the first time after his interview there was an eagle soaring just before he got on the ferry and he has several times seen large pods of dolphins near the pier and reckoned it was a Good Sign 🙂

Finally the boat came and we waved, hugged and said goodbye to everyone. Davies and Scarlett watched something or connected on tablets, Ady plugged into his phone and watched something too and I sat and chatted with Steve for most of the trip. We did go and have bowls of chips at one point as it was quite a long old journey heading around to Eigg and Muck before going to Mallaig. We got in at 330pm and had just enough time to dash to the CoOp for some food for the journey. The train was just two carriages and the front one was filled with a huge group of rather inebriated folk in kilts and ginger wigs on some sort of group party. They were very loud and got drunker as the afternoon turned into evening but were not objectionable and were actually pretty entertaining, particularly as the evening progressed and they got quieter and more subdued… there was a lovely atmosphere on the train actually, totally different to trains down south where everyone avoids eye contact and never talks to each other.

The journey between Mallaig and Fort William is stunning, heading through some amazing scenery and over the viaduct which was in a Harry Potter film so lots of people were taking photos and videos along the way. It was a gorgeous sunset that night too with the sky turning spectacular colours and the air seeming to go pink and light everything. Very pretty. It was dark not long after Fort William and there was loads and loads of snow on the ground for lots of the journey south. We got into Glasgow just before 10pm, then caught a connecting train across to Edinburgh. That was much busier but still friendly and with a bit of a party feel by that time on a Saturday night. Big Dave met us at Edinburgh Haymarket and it was so good to see a friendly face in somewhere so unfamiliar and far from home. He gave us a whistle stop tour of the area before heading to the flat.

The flat is lovely, two bedrooms, large lounge / kitchen and only three streets down from Princes Street which is the main hub of Edinburgh city centre. It is an uphill walk to the city but a down hill walk back which is undoubtedly the best way round. Mairi had very kindly filled the cupboards and fridge with food, beer and fizz so we were able to stick a pizza in the oven and crack open a bottle which was very welcome after 12 hours traveling. The flat was very cold having just electric heaters in the rooms which were large which high ceilings and large single glazed sash windows so I didn’t sleep too well that first night but I bought a hot water bottle the following day and was fine after that.

Sunday – we had planned to do the boring shopping and explore a bit. The plan had been to have two days shopping / relaxing and two days doing more culture  day trip stuff so with an eye on the weather we decided to alternate shopping, museum, shopping, zoo. We’d been telling the kids only the week before about Ben’s Cookies, a shop we used to go to in the Lanes in Brighton which sold the best ever cookies, all still warm and melty with huge chunks of chocolate. I knew there had been a branch in Oxford but thought they were closed down now. I didn’t realise they were part of a large chain, have now googled! So we were stunned to be walking towards Lush and then realise there was a Ben’s Cookie shop. We bought one to share and it was just as good as we had been gushing about :).

We spent about an hour in Lush – all four of us ended up talking to the staff and a women collecting signatures for an animal cruelty petition, all separately. I bought a very modest amount of stuff considering 🙂 The woman on the petition stand had chatted to Ady first about the island, then said to me ‘your daughter is so lovely, really friendly and enthusiastic, I’ve been watching her chatting to people’, then realised I was the wife of the man from the island so we chatted about that a bit too. It was all very smile inducing 🙂 and nicely scented!

Then we hit Primark. Everyone needed underwear, the kids needed T shirts and pjs, Ady and I needed general clothes. We did really well in there for Scarlett – have now decided it is much better to ignore childrens clothes for her altogether and move straight to womens clothes. She is in size 10 pants, size 10-12 jamas as she likes them loose anyway and after trying them on went for size 14 in their fitted t shirts which mean they are longer and looser but still have a shape. And hopefully will last her many years! She may well never hit size 14 for real! So she selected about 10 of the £3 t shirts and that was her sorted. Davies did pretty well on jeans, T shirts and underwear. Ady got a new coat (reduced to a tenner!). I managed just to buy pants and a pair of pjs as it was getting so hot that we had all had enough. So we retired to KFC for lunch. After lunch we did Poundland, Sports Direct (where both the kids got trainers) and then worked our way back via all the games stores that Davies could find and Sainsburys for a few food supplies.

Monday was museum day. We only really covered about a third of it concentrating on the animal bit. I walked round with Scarlett while Davies and Ady went ahead and ducked into some of the other areas. There was loads of taxidermy and Scarlett got me to test her on what everything was. That child’s knowledge on animals is encyclopedic! She identified creatures I hadn’t even heard of, knew loads of facts about that, was amazing on birds particularly and also really good on skulls and skeletons. It was fab to see some of the antlers and skulls of Rum red deer and a bit about the Kilmory Project there 🙂 It was a real pleasure to walk round with Scarlett 🙂

We stopped for lunch and then Davies was really hankering after the exhibition on gaming so we went to check out the price – it was not cheap at £10 an adult and £6 a child and I knew it would have been wasted on me so after some debate we decided that Ady and Davies would return the following morning while Scarlett and I would do some more shopping, hopefully finding some charity shops. Scarlett thought about going with them to the museum but the lure of charity shops was stronger. We looked round the Scottish bit of the museum but it was a real labyrinth and we lost Scarlett for a while which briefly scared all of us I think. Particularly as there was something going on with security and an upset young woman which had me really worried when I couldn’t find Scarlett. We found each other and then headed back to the flat via a couple of charity shops and some book shops.

Big Dave had invited the kids out to the cinema and as they’d been wanting to see the Shaun the Sheep film they went off with him to see that and got fish and chips on the way home. Ady and debated food options and in the end went for an Indian takeaway which we walked along to collect and bring back to the flat. In the end Dave and the kids were only a few minutes behind us arriving back so we all ate together.

Tuesday was museum again for Ady and Davies who had a really good morning at the gaming exhibition which mostly seemed to involve playing on all sorts of games through the ages including early arcade stuff like space invaders and pacman down to the modern stuff such as consoles and minecraft. They really enjoyed it, I would have found it utterly tedious I suspect 😉 Scarlett and I had a disappointing charity shop quest which found us just two shops with very little in either. There was a gorgeous knitted purple hooded jumper which I would have been thrilled with in my size and fitted Scarlett but she didn’t like it so that was the basis for most of our conversation during the morning. We ended up back in Primark where more things had been added to the sale so I got a few bits in there and Scarlett got a couple more things. We went to Boots for toiletries for their Outward Bound weekend, then met Ady and Davies. We had debated lunch plans but ended up getting some stuff from Sainsburys and going back to the flat. We decided that some time just watching TV and enjoying some down time was in order so had a nice afternoon and evening doing just that. We played Trivial Pursuit which was in the flat and while very entertaining initially became lengthy and had us all being silly as we got bored with the game. We are definitely not board game people 😉

It’s 1am and I really need to go to bed, so this will be a catch up of more than one part…

Venison processing today. I had plans for the morning before I followed Ady down (Ady and Neil skin the beast first, I get there an hour or so after them once there is meat to start processing and packing) but internet related stuff got in the way. There appears to be a problem with my chromebook constantly uploading *something* but not sure what. Presume it is some cloud storage thing supposed to be happening in the background but it is slowing everything up.

So I walked down, chatted to a few people along the way and arrived at the larder. Lesley followed me in with a kettle as the larder has no hot water which makes life rather difficult in there. So we chatted for about half an hour before I actually started doing anything. We were mostly mincing the beast for the venison company as we want to make burgers and sausages so that was easy enough. The rest was diced and steaks so I minced 12 kg and vaccum packed the rest. Then I drove along to put that in the venison freezer while Ady and Neil skinned the second beast. This one was for us – we have bought a whole beast – a lot of meat but we have freezer space. We wanted diced, minced and steaks, we also did one roasting joint. It took longer than I’d been expecting and it was nearly 5pm by the time we came out. We were so cold – the larder is refrigerated and it was a cold day anyway. We cleaned down, dropped the meat off at our freezer and headed for home.

Ady fed the animals, I made pizza dough, we had a quick cup of tea and were then back out again for the monthly residents meeting. There were some contentious things on the agenda but it was a good productive meeting.

Home for yet more chromebook wrangling before dinner. We watched Doctor Who which arrived in Lovefilm today and the first Town Called Eureka which we hadn’t appreciated would be an hour long so should probably not have started after 10pm -oops. We all enjoyed it though.

Tomorrow is packing and trip off preparation.

Three more sleeps…

We were interrupted during Popmaster this morning, the first we’ve listened to live this week by Bad Neil arriving. He came in for two cups of tea and 90 minutes of chatting – I guess we won’t get to do that on Saturday morning so it was probably nice to do it today instead 😉 He had come to arrange the venison processing tomorrow, which means no houseplot digging obviously.

He left, we had a fairly hurried lunch and then I went down to the village for two meetings and some ranting. Meeting one was fine and straightforward, meeting two I was possibly rather strident at, I then did some ranting and have since had validation that I was correct to be pissed off and ranting so that’s good. Then round to Fliss’ for tea, cake, knitting and chatter. Much more relaxing 🙂

Meanwhile Ady did the laundry and moved the gold car back from where it had been moved to which was another cause of consternation earlier in the week so was good to have sorted out.

Hmm, another short and rather boring blogpost. At least they are regular I suppose.

It’s been a stressy few days thanks to some director stuff which has been endlessly debating, whirling round my head, discussed in emails and generally distracting me.  This morning I walked down to the post office for some shopping and to post a parcel, caught up with Lesley for a quick chat, had a chat with Trudi and then went up to Ali’s for a pre-meeting cup of tea. We were joined by Fliss and Steve, had some lunch and then spent an hour or so debating various stuff. It was a fair bit of going round in circles but I think we reached some resolutions.

Ady came along after finishing at Foxglove so he stayed for a cup of tea and a chat too and then we all left.

Tomorrow is more meetings but it is at least followed by Crafternoon for some knitting and chatting. Thursday is monthly community meeting in the evening but other than that a free day – I think… maybe even some houseplot digging.

The moon is so bright this week it has been like daylight outside every night. It’s weird, night falls and it gets dark but the moon then rises and it gets light again.

Ady has been cleaning Marcel’s old house today (and will be again tomorrow). It needs a good old clear up before the trust lets it out to Jed and I said Ady would do it – for a price, obviously. It will be a good earner for 2 days work and he loves cleaning anyway so he is very happy with the arrangement :).

I spent the morning mostly working on a 500 word application for a job. It’s one day a week working remotely for Lowimpact.org – I know of Dave Darby, the director and brains behind it as he is very involved with WWOOFing in the UK and runs the WWOOF forum. We have been facebook friends for ages and I know he has read my blog at times, although not sure he reads all the time. He is a little extreme in his views but is quite an inspirational guy and the job would not only suit me really well but sounds like just the sort of thing I’d love, good money and a focus away from Rum which would be good. 500 words is very hard, particularly for me so I have already utterly discarded the first attempt and started again, I think I have got the tone right this time but need to really pare down the word count. Will have another go in the morning before the kids get up.

Davies and Scarlett got up, breakfasted, got dressed etc and then we walked down to the village for Ranger Trudi’s Imbolc event. I like the idea of celebrating all these tied to the land and old traditional festivals, it feels so appropriate living here in the lifestyle we have and Trudi had been keen to check we were on island for this event so I felt obliged to go along anyway. Trudi’s events always just leave me with a feeling of faint dissatisfaction though and the kids feel the same. I am not sure if we were just spoiled with Ranger Mike who taught us so much, had an encyclopedic knowledge of the wildlife of Rum plus a great love and passion for the island, whether we know too much ourselves now to enjoy being given facts from someone who is still learning them herself, whether Trudi is still finding her feet after only 8 months here or whether there is some other reason but they always feel under prepared and I’m never really sure whether she is pitching them at me or the kids because she doesn’t seem to encompass all of us.

Trudi wanted to look for signs of spring on a bit of a walk and I mentioned that Vikki had said on facebook that a snowdrop was out at Mike and Debs house so we walked down there to spot it, looking for further signs along the way. Trudi pointed out great tits singing, some buds on an elder tree and talked about how Rum’s mudflats never freeze so we get such great waders and seabird life during the winter. We talked about the herons and then I remembered something we’d read or seen about birds working with fishermen to catch fish. I thought it was herons or pelicans but Trudi correctly said it was cormorants. We looked up gorse and broom as there are always some flowering on Rum as we have about five varieties between the two. We found the snowdrop and then wandered back to the hall to make brigid crosses to protect and bless our hearths. Scarlett quickly lost interest, I made one and then helped Davies, it was really a two pairs of hands type activity. Tarly went to check on Bonnie who we’d put in the car as Zara was around although I should really have thought to get her out to walk with us, never mind.

Davies, Scarlett and Bonnie headed back to the croft, I walked along to see how Ady was doing, catching up with Fliss and Ali along the way and arranging a meeting tomorrow afternoon at Ali’s. We took a car load of rubbish along to the skip and then came home, stopping for a chat with Nicola on the way. I had gotten really, really cold and took ages to warm back up again. I had a shower – and tried natural shampoo of bicarb and water with a conditioner rinse of vinegar and water. It is super shiny (and does not smell of vinegar) so I’ll see how it is tomorrow, although online reports suggest it will stay that way for four days or more so I may have found the answer.

I made tacos and fahijas, which was a real faff as I had to make the tortilla wraps from scratch. Ady felt guilty (I was grumpy about it) and so chopped all the chicken up for me which was lovely cos I hate doing that :). We watched Saving Mr Banks which was just lovely – the biography story of PL Travers and Walt Disney / the Mary Poppins film. We all thought it was good and it made me cry.

A lovely day here, there were flurries of snow, but loads of sunshine, beautiful blue skies and a real feel of the promise of spring in the air.

I spent hours chopping wood, which is quite my favourite thing to do, second only to planting out seeds or bimbling around in the polytunnel, or feeding the animals, or building stuff. Ok, I love all of it, but I have always enjoyed chopping wood. Ady had various things to get on with including the compost loo regular maintenance, an oil change on the genny and other such things.

So I played my music and sang along and created heaps and heaps of chopped up firewood. Enough for this week hopefully, although I will do another couple of hours before we go on Saturday to make sure we have a day or two supply for when we get home. Ady came over and we sat and chatted looking out at the snow capped peaks and blue skies for a bit. We’d had Vikki up for dinner last night and we were debating how we’d feel if we were just a couple of weeks away from leaving Rum.

We came in for lunch and Ady made pancakes for the kids and cheese on toast for us while I made some more peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies which went down really well this week so we needed more. I did a few rows of knitting and the kids were playing with a box of toys with Doctor Who stuff in it as they have been watching loads of Doctor Who recently. Ady said ‘look Davies’ childhood is all over the floor’ and sure enough there were characters from everything he has ever been madly into – Toy Story, Brum, Doctor Who, Wallace & Gromit, Peter Pan, Primeval, Harry Potter, Ben 10. It was very poignant seeing them all in a heap like that. I do love that Davies and Scarlett still spend hours every week playing – with lego or geomags, or figures. I remember desperately wanting to play still with my Sindy dolls when I was about 13 but somehow feeling embarrassed even to get them out and dress them up alone in my room. I am glad that they are extending this period of childhood, imagination and games beyond what most kids their age would do.

Then back out for another hour wood chopping. I finished and headed off with Bonnie for a circuit of the croft, lingering in the top right corner where I almost never visit. You can see the sea and have a lovely view across the bay and over to the mainland from there. It is not suitable for a house plot but could one day make a nice spot for something else to linger and catch your breath.

Back indoors I got dinner prepped and in the oven super low, made bread dough and an apple pie. The kids were having showers and then I brushed Scarlett’s hair. We are experimenting with different shampoos and conditioners and the one we have just now leaves both our hair really tangled then greasy within a day. Although I have been reading about good organic natural shampoos sometimes doing this because they strip all the chemical residue from normal shampoos and start to let your hair be natural which can take a good while to get used to but is worth persevering with. Not sure, but it took bloody ages to brush the tangles out of Scarlett’s hair.

Ady came in and we had a fairly early dinner, watching Martian Child which was good.