One word? When seven would do…

Work for me this morning. I’d tried to get hold of Jinty as I had heard she was back and wondered whether she wanted me to do post office or whether she would do it. I went down anyway as Neil & I needed to do various Rum Venison paperwork tidying and posting off. Jinty was already there but very happy for me to do post office although she ended up hanging around too anyway, doing orders and catching up with stuff. Jed & Neil were around for most of the morning for tea and chat too, it was all nice and sociable. Good to see Jinty back.

Ady came down to collect me and loads of us ended up at the pier early for the boat so stood around chatting. We were not sure if our latest WWOOFer Emmanuel from France would come off or not but Calmac (who are being arses at the moment in the post strike days, Rum appears to have lost loads of parcels including about £100 worth of Amazon subscribe and save grocery deliveries for us. I know we can sort it out with Amazon if we have to but it’s stuff like flour and loo roll that we actually just really need!) had been mean to Jinty about her delivery and tried to send it back to the supplier this morning so loads of us were there to help unload it. In the end it was on a van after all and they left the van on island between boats so it was all a fuss over nothing. Emmanuel did come off the boat – hurrah!

We came home for lunch, chats and the tour of the croft for Emmanuel. Then the weather changed to rain so we came back in for another cup of tea and he ended up sat on the floor with Davies and Scarlett playing with lego. So he will be one we don’t lose to the craziness down at the shop! 🙂 He is happy to feed the animals while we’re off this week too which is great.

The rain showed no signs of stopping so we walked down to the shop, showed E the hall and village centre and stopped for a beer and some chat at the shop. Jinty’s dad had managed to duplicate most of the orders and got random extra selections of some things including 48 packs of bananas (he thought he was ordering 4 bags, it was actually 4 outers of 12!) so Jinty was doing bargain 2 for a £1 sales on them which had us all competing to see who could sell the most to all the customers who came along. Very funny 🙂 These are the sort of in jokes that I would miss forever if we ever left here I think.

Emmanuel is tasked with bring wood up the hill tomorrow morning while we’re at work, Ady and I are at the hostel I believe dismantling bunk beds. We seem to have worked a lot this last couple of weeks but it does mean we tend to be super productive in the afternoons on the croft, so no bad thing.

Friday morning was a stressy one. I’d left the post office open and asked Ali to come and give me a hand doing the end of week process from Wednesday. It took us most of the two hours to do so and while I was fairly que cera cera about the whole business Ali was very stressed and shouty at everyone who came in. We did it though (I think!) and I came home for lunch.

I spent some time in the afternoon doing directorly emails and then made pizza dough and spend some time down on the plot / in the polytunnel. Friday night is pizza and Doctor Who night and we watched both of a double parter. The kids are really into Doctor Who and have rewatched all of Primeval on netflix.

Saturday was post office again but back into my comfort zone with it. Neil and Jed came for tea and chats and then just as I was about to close Fliss appeared so she came in and I shut the door but made her a cup of tea and chatted too. It meant I was later leaving post office but that was fine as I was meeting Ady at the end of his hostel shift anyway. We got various stuff up the hill including loads of clean and dry laundry which I sorted and folded while Ady made lunch.

The weather was odd, really low cloud which looked like threatening rain and not very warm but actually not raining so I went to do some weeding. It was pretty midgey so I kept stopping and waiting for the breeze to lift again but it was not particularly relaxing down there. I finished weeding a bed though, so that is now ready to be netted and have stuff transplanted from the polytunnel in the next few weeks. I fed the animals with Ady and collected some wildflowers from the croft.

We had a really nice curry for dinner.

Sunday – Ady and I had both slept really badly. I woke at about 530am and got up to go to the loo finding Ady asleep in the lounge and the bed soaking wet as the ceiling was leaking and it was pouring with rain. I assumed Ady had been woken by that too and gone into the lounge but he said that actually he’d been really fidgeting and I’d sleepily shouted at him twice that he was disturbing me so he’d come into the lounge. I don’t remember! I covered the duvet with a sleeping bag, read for a while and then found a dry bit of bed and went back to sleep. This does not bode well for winter….

The weather today has been dry (although as I type it is tipping down with rain again) but the same as yesterday threatening rain all day. It has been windy though so the kids have had access to the internet all day as the wind turbine was whizzing round with loads of power. They went to the village to collect the post after lunch and drop off a thank you card and gift to Sean and Nicola who looked after the ducklings while we were away. I did lots of knitting – I have another three scarves all ready to be labelled up and taken down to the craft shop and am part way through another – tunisian crochet is super quick! Then I went and did some more weeding for an hour or so. I would have stayed down there longer as I was very happy singing and weeding with my two favourite chicken helpers who I pass worms to but Scarlett came down to say Neil had come to visit. He needed some bank stuff for the venison company as Neil and I are standing down and Steve is taking it on but there are some final admin bits to sort out. He stopped for a cup of tea and chat by which time it was late so Ady went to feed the animals and I carried on with my scarf. Ady cooked dinner and we watched a Doctor Who and then the latest dvd of Eureka which had arrived. Very disappointingly it only had 2 episodes on it plus a longer length version of one of the episodes which we only realised after we’d watched the short version. Grrr.

Sheerwater boat trip today. We saw quite a few porpoises which is actually the best we’ve had in weeks and weeks. Pretty poor generally though. It’s so cold here still that there are not even sea birds really let alone cetaceans. We’ll keep going but it’s definitely been the worst year so far for spotting stuff.

When we got home I went straight to the polytunnel to do some more seed sowing. I got loads more in, moved some stuff about, watered and pottered. I love it 🙂

Then off to an on island directors meeting – the usual debating, chit chatting and back and forthing. All very tedious and boring. I keep debating with myself whether to stand down and part of me would love to as it would remove a burden of stuff which I dwell on and get frustrated by but the other part of me knows how lucky we are to have the ability to shape decisions and be involved and I know I would miss that. I can’t imagine being here and not being involved really…

Back home just after 930pm. Ady had got dinner ready and we watched some Modern Family and some Friends. Ferry strike tomorrow and post office duty for me again.

I worked this morning. Jinty left Rum on Sunday with various things the matter with her and was admitted to hospital. She is okay and is hoping to be back on Friday but as the ferry is looking cancelled due to strike action it will probably be Saturday instead. So I did post office. I’ve not done a Wednesday before as it is the end of week and I am not sure how to do that; it involves various stocktaking, reports and stuff which I have not got my head round.

I had a nice catch up chat with Bad Neil though before Ady came down to meet me and I got all stressed about the post office. Loads of post had come for us on the ferry so we got all of that home and had lunch. It was ridiculously midgey so although Ady had had a productive morning strimming, scything and trimming I didn’t get outside this afternoon. Instead I did some crochet and then Ady came in and we all watched a film.

I made dinner, had a shower and we watched back to back Modern Family which arrived today from Lovefilm. A relaxed, if not particularly productive day.

We all slept in a bit this morning – 8am for Ady, 9am for me, 11am for Scarlett and midday for Davies when I woke him up.

We listened to Popmaster and debated tasks for the week and the day ahead. We had planned to do stuff in the fruit cage and walled garden but today was Midge Hell with no wind and no sun so we decided working close to the ground close to the trees would be foolish. Instead we took the car battery and some stuff to be frozen down to the workshop to put the battery on charge / food in the freezer. Back to the croft via Dave’s cabin as the door had blown open on the porch. When we got there we realised the door had actually blown off so we rehung it before coming home.

There was enough of a breeze to sit out for fifteen minutes and chat before lunch about whether we were glad to be home or missing the mainland. We decided we were glad to be home and made some plans for winter prepping to help preserve that feeling.

Then in for lunch. Scarlett was already up, we woke Davies and ate some of our mainland food. We watched Horrible Histories and then the kids headed down to the village for a walk. I made some comfrey tea and Ady did some scything. It seemed a little less midgey so I decided to bite the bullet and do some seed sowing in the polytunnel. All in containers for now and just starting off seeds to transplant anyway. I managed 10 different seed trays with assistance from midges and chickens, got it all watered and then had to give up as it was too midgey.

By then Davies and Scarlett were back so Scarlett and I did some egg collecting, moved the fake eggs (which encourage the birds to lay in certain places, they like to lay their eggs in with other eggs) around to different places, picked some wild flowers from the croft to bring into the caravan and gathered a bagful of assorted feathers as Scarlett and I have a plan to do something crafty with the various bird feathers to sell having seen various cool feather things at the show including painted feathers and feather brooches and hat pins. We also harvested some more strawberries.

I decreed it too midgey to go back out so made some cookies and got dinner sorted. Ady did a bit of strimming around the wind turbine where there are too many cables for scything and fed the animals.

Tiredness has caught up with me now. Off to bed.

Thursday – we were up and out, Ady woke everyone, enthusiastic about the novelty of a toaster making breakfast for everyone. We were out of the flat by 9am and at the show by 930am. We did the big machines first so weighed ourselves down with all the free stuff early. We did the food halls and caught the last of the sheepdog show which is Davies’ best bit of whole show. We had loads and loads of free food and at about 4pm decided to call it a day early as we had planned to head to Ikea after the show and were all pretty tired.

We sat in traffic before getting to Ikea and then spent a good couple of hours in there. We didn’t buy that much, tealights obviously. A new tin opener, some new wooden spoons all stuff we had planned. The only unplanned purchase was a solar lantern reduced to £9 which is really good and was worth buying. Ady and I dashed into Asda next door for a few bits and then we came back to the flat.

Some of us had baths, we had dinner which Dave had cooked for us and left in the fridge of bolognaise. It was a later night than we planned.

Friday – we all struggled to get out of bed – well Ady didn’t, but the rest of us did. Then Scarlett called me into the bathroom because she had started her period. Wow. I knew it was fairly imminent but not quite this soon and annoyingly didn’t bring off any of the cloth pads we ordered and have had ready at home for months. We used loads of loo roll and headed out to the pharmacy in the village. It took ages to find it and we’d actually given up and were heading back to the flat when we spotted it. They had a very poor selection so we grabbed what they had and decided to find a supermarket later to stock up. It did give us the chance to walk around chatting a fair bit about it all though which was good. So far she has been fine with it all, coped incredibly well and aside from a few early tears about the whole thing has been typically stoic. I adore that girl, she is going to be the most amazing woman. There is almost nothing in her personality that I don’t admire, respect and feel proud to have played a part in shaping. She has dealt with the whole thing so well, being away from home, asking for help positioning the first few pads til she got the hang of it, taking me with her to the loo to clarify whether it needed changing or not and then dealing with it all herself. She is utterly non plused by it, not embarrassed, not taking the opportunity to grab attention or act disabled but also aware of the rite of passage that it marks. I have told her that I would like to buy her some sort of gift to mark it and she loves that idea so we will choose something together for her to keep.

Anyway, off to the show. Another good day, this time punctuated with lots of trips to the loo for Tarly and I. More free food samples, looking at demonstrations, watching the falconry and this time we spent the afternoon walking around all of the animals to look at the cows, horses and sheep on show. We finally left and then headed to Tesco for various bits including pjs for Scarlett (which didn’t actually fit so we took them back the next day), proper supplies of sanpro and various other bits and pieces. Then to KFC for our fast food fix, followed by a quick visit to Krispy Kreme donuts because it was next door to KFC. They had a really cool window on the behind the scenes bit where you could watch the donuts cooking, being flipped and cooking the other side, being QC’d and then decorated. Which was genius because despite being stuffed full of nasty processed chicken products watching donuts cruise past your face for ten minutes means you are never going to leave the premises without purchasing them. 🙂

Back to the flat for baths, crap telly and bed.

Saturday – We were meeting Dave and Faye at the show. The day before we had realised that if we parked just outside the showground on a little side street we would have to walk another half a mile or so but would not have to pay £8 a day to park so went with that option, saving the price of our KFC and donuts over the three days 🙂 Kerching! And also probably walking them off too! We were actually starting to tire of the show a little. I think knowing the rough layout from the year before meant there was less wonder in walking around discovering things plus we had arranged to meet people on two out of the four days and we were all pretty knackered too. Four days actually felt a bit too much this year and we have decided to probably give the show a miss next year in favour of maybe something smaller and more specific to our interests. We really like the sheepdog and falconry displays, the gundogs and the rural cratfs. The smallholder stands are of interest and we like the cooking demos, poultry and crafty stuff. We are less interested in the big farm machines, horses (showjumping, dressage and stuff) and shopping for tweed clothing and countryside brand names like Hunter and Joules.

We finally caught up with Dave and Faye and had a couple of hours sitting in the sunshine with them before we parted ways – them to head back to Faye’s and us to head back to Dave’s flat via Tesco for food supplies. We tried to be clever and buy ready meals and frozen pizzas but all four of us have ended up just desperate for ‘normal’ food. The annual junk food assault!

Sunday – was meeting up with Mairi day. She sent me a text to say they were running late and it would likely be midday so we watched some falconry and then headed to the food hall. We finally caught up with Mairi and Patrick and they bought us lunch. There was really no need given the amount of free food on offer but they were keen to sit in proper chairs and chat and we were happy to oblige! Davies and Scarlett got restless so they headed off and we arranged to meet up with them later. One of the benefits of spending so much time at the show I guess, feeling able to let them go off and knowing they would fine their way to our meeting place no problem. We moved from the cafe to the countryside area and Mairi bought everyone ice creams while we watched the gun dogs, the fox hounds and the Drakes of Hazard (Davies’ absolute favourite part of both years shows – a sheepdog farmer and some of his dogs rounding a flock of runner ducks around a duck assault course with hilarious commentary). It was nearly 6pm by then so we kissed M&P goodbye and headed off back to the car and then onward to the flat. I had a voucher for a free bottle of fizz from CoOp and some vouchers for money off too and knew that we’d not be able to collect that this morning as you can’t buy alcohol til 10am by which time we’d be on the boat so needed to collect it that evening. There is no Sunday trading restrictions in Scotland so most supermarkets are open til 10pm and we found the nearest CoOp. Thanks to all the vouchers we got a bottle of fizz, a 9 pack of loo roll, a thank you card, a huge bar of chocolate and some soap for £1.19 🙂 Then on to Tesco to fill up with diesel and return the pjs which Scarlett didn’t like. I had a money off coupon from Tesco from the day before so bought some pretend Baileys and another bar of chocolate (thank you gifts for Dave for the flat and Mel& Em for Bonnie sitting) and then finally home to the flat.

Davies, Ady and Scarlett had baths, I talked to my Dad on the phone, we all had pizza and I think were mostly asleep by midnight. I didn’t have the final bath. The three I had had had not been as special as I’d hoped so I passed in favour of bed and book.

Monday – today – I woke up at 330am and lay for a while semi dozing and half watching the Forth Bridge out of the bedroom window and listening to the trains. Ady’s alarm went off at 4am and so we dashed around packing up, loading the car, clearing the rubbish, chivvying the kids and finally getting out the flat. We drove along to Lesley’s hotel to collect her and were on our way by 5am. It was a straight clear run of 183 miles which took exactly four hours. I sat in the front for the first 2 hours and swapped with Scarlett who does not travel well for the second two hours, Davies slept a lot of the way and Scarlett slept once she was in the front. Lesley, Ady and I chatted.

At Mallaig Ady dropped us and all our stuff off at the Calmac office then took the car back to Morar Motors, the kids stayed in the office with all the bags while Les and I went to the CoOp, Ady came back and we all boarded the very busy boat. We sat and chatted for the 2.5 hours on the boat, finally getting home to Rum at 1245. Em met us at the pier with Bonnie who was very delighted indeed to see us 🙂 We collected the ducklings from Nicola and finally headed up to the croft. It was dry enough to drive all the way up to the caravan  – the first time this year!

While Ady cleared up the chicken in the caravan debris Scarlett and I walked round to spot all the croft creatures and check they were all OK. Goslings, ducklings and piglets all grown loads and doing really well. A bantam chick had hatched but by the time we went egg collecting a couple of hours later it had already been taken by  a crow 🙁

We brought everything in and slowly unpacked with the aid of several cups of tea – we always call it the Chris French style of unpacking, much admiring as we do his method of setting up and striking camp which involves stages of setting up or taking down and then stopping for a while to take stock 🙂 Chris – you taught us well! 🙂

Once everything had had homes found for it Davies was lost to a new SD card for his tablet and transferring things across to it while Scarlett came out with Ady and I to check for eggs, feed the animals and check the crops . All doing well, plenty to get stuck into this week which is great.  Scarlett and Bonnie went in while Ady and I went to the village to collect veg and the duckling run.

Ady cooked dinner, we watched some Modern Family and are all very tired but very pleased to be home. The midges are properly here now but we must have missed Rum because we’re almost glad to see them!

Wednesday was a crazy long day. We were all up early and ready to go well on time. Except at the last minute I realised Scarlett was wearing a pair of trousers that had tea stains on them on the front and mud stains on the back. All her decent trousers were already packed, the only other pair she dug out were too small. So I quickly stitched up a hole in a clean but ripped pair just as we were supposed to be leaving the caravan. Which meant it was me who left last and locked the door behind me. We never used to lock the door and still don’t if we’re on the island but when we are away we tend to these days. The theft of stuff from the wee shop on Canna at the weekend has made everyone a bit cautious, not that I expect for one second that anyone would bother walking two miles inland to rob our caravan, but a quick lock of the door means we won’t even fret about it being a possibility. We leave the keys in a boot inside the horsebox so I dropped them in there and Scarlett and I caught the others up.

We met Mel & Em at the pier to hand Bonnie over. Scarlett did her now traditional falling over at the pier (I think this is the third time she has managed it as we wait for the ferry to leave the island :rolls: ) She was fine aside from a scraped thigh, knee, elbow and ego… We got on board the calmac and headed off to Canna. When we go off on a Wednesday it always seems a good idea to head to Canna as the boat stays there for just over 2 hours before going back to Rum and then on to the mainland. We always spend the morning of a day when we are going off all stressed about going off so leaving on the first boat and then relaxing seems a good idea.

On the way to Canna we chatted a bit to Steve who I had arranged to have a bit of a catch up meeting with and were joined by Alistair the film making man too which was all very sociable.  We handed over 6 duck eggs to Gina who works in the kitchen as we’d been promising them for months. The boat was filled with OAPs doing the non landing cruise and reporters and papparazzi there to interview folk on Canna about the theft. We wandered along the shore road, said hello to a few folk we know there, chatted to Julie in the shop between TV interviews, bought some lip balm from the new Hebridean Beauty shop there and then went back on board the Calmac. Steve rejoined us for a bit more chatting and we may catch up with him tomorrow as he is bringing his in laws to the show. At Rum Steve got off and Lesley got on, along with various other Rum folk. We chatted to Josephine for a while – she is the deer project leader and before we knew it we were pulling in to Mallaig.

A quick pop to the CoOp for various things and then we were off. Scarlett, Davies and I all took it in turns to sit in the front as both of them feel car sick. I don’t travel super well in the back either and poor Lesley at 7 months pregnant was just wedged into her seat! We stopped just once at the Green Welly Stop where I turned my phone on and got a voice mail from Mel to say that they had gone to feed the croft animals and realised there was a chicken trapped in the caravan! After we’d all stopped laughing – that must surely be the funniest voicemail ever – I rang her back to tell her where the key was hidden. She safely evicted the chicken later that evening…

We got to Edinburgh by 10 which was good time, and dropped Lesley off at her Travelodge, then stopped for a quick McDonalds as we were all hungry before getting to Dave’s. He showed us round the flat and then headed off leaving us to it.

I had a failed bath as the water was not hot enough but I had already got my hair wet so had a shower instead. We were all knackered after 12 hours boat and driving so were in bed not long after we arrived.

Weather has been poor today, windy and rainy with short breaks of midgey inbetween. Makes it easier to head away tomorrow though.

I did manage to get down to the walled garden and plant out the peas though so that is all I had wanted to achieve before we go off done 🙂 Yay. I have ordered some more netting which should hopefully be here when we get back or soon afterwards and the polytunnel is now ready to start working in so plenty to get busy with once we come back. I think we have a WWOOFer due the week after we get home, then we are off for a couple of nights and I am pondering taking the kids down to see Mum & Dad, Frazer, Kat & Robin and my granny for a few nights, maybe in late July or August. Scarlett has never flown and so I am thinking maybe we could book some super cheap flights to and fro, stay with Mairi or Dave in Edinburgh / Glasgow and catch up with family in a slightly more normal environment than them visiting us. Not sure yet, will chat to my Dad and see what he thinks about the idea.

The rest of the day was spent making some cookies, baking bread, making dinner, Ady made some meringues with the separated egg white leftover from yesterdays quiches which we had with some harvested strawberries – if only self sufficiency always tasted so good ;). We packed ready for tomorrow which meant the usual fussing over which clothes to take.  I trimmed Davies’ hair, everyone had showers, I finished the monthly community newsletter and emailed that to the school to print.

Scarlett and Ady took the pet ducklings down to Sean and Nicola who are duckling sitting for us, along with dropping off Bonnie’s food with Mel & Em who are Bonnie sitting so that we don’t have to do anything in the morning other than get up, do last minute packing and get ourselves and Bonnie to the boat – Mel & Em will meet us there to take Bonnie from us as they think she settles faster with them if she sees the ferry taking us away and then bringing us back. I’m not at all sure I believe it but they are happy with that arrangement so we run with it. Not at all sure what will happen about Bonnie sitting once they go next month as in theory there is no one here who would take her for us. I guess we have to start taking her off with us and finding suitable accommodation. I know the wigwam camping place we stay at south of Fort William is happy to have her there and some Travelodges take dogs for a surcharge too.

I’m bringing my chromebook off with me so there may be updates while we’re away but certainly not tomorrow. I think we will arrive at Dave’s at about midnight and will then be up fairly early to be at day one of the show on Thursday.

Work for me this morning, an extra post office shift as Jinty had headed over to Eigg for their anniversary ceilidh. It worked well for me as I’ll be missing my Saturday shift this week so meant I was not actually down on wages for the month. It also worked well because my usual Saturday morning cup of tea and gossip with Neil didn’t happen on Saturday so we got to do it today instead. The world is back on track 😉

Meanwhile Davies was having a bit of a teenage moment taking some time to himself to ponder on some of life’s great mysteries while Ady and Scarlett made wraps for lunch. Davies came down the croft to meet me while I was greeting Bonnie and finding an egg. We all had lunch and watched the first bit of an iplayer show about enchanted islands and wild places alongside human habitation in Japan. Interesting.

Then I snatched the opportunity to finish weeding and netting a large raised bed ready to transplant pea seedlings. Scarlett came down and let her ducklings do some swimming in the bath in the walled garden which they love and then Davies came down for a chat about stuff. I’m not altogether sure we covered what was actually on his mind but we chatted a few things over anyway which is always good. Ady is inclined to write off changes in the kids mood or general dynamic with ‘oh they are just being teenagers’ whereas I am more likely to at least try and unpick things and support if possible, while accepting that they need privacy and don’t always want to share all the details of their lives with me any more. Tricky to balance, particularly when we all live so very closely with each other here.

It started to get midgey so I didn’t actually get the peas planted but it will only take 15 minutes or so so I should find time tomorrow between midges and forecast rain showers to do that before we head off on Wednesday.

Ady and I went down to the hostel as it was the official closing day today so all the staff left – Mel, Em, Ross, Claire, Nicola, Ady & I gathered for tea and cakes in the hostel kitchen. Em had also brought a bottle of fizz so we cracked that open and ate cake. Weird to think that in a month or so half of those people won’t even live here any more. I wonder what Rum has in store next…

We called into the shop on the way home and then Ady fed the animals while Scarlett and I made quiche for dinner. Davies doesn’t like quiche so he was excused from learning how to make it but he did make the bread dough instead.

Internet continues to be pants so struggling to do anything online which is very frustrating. I did hear from TV producer Kate that Channel 5 love the show and this is her last week putting final touches to it before it is finished.

There comes a day every spring on Rum when I fall back in love with life here. It’s late coming this year, nearly midsummers day but it’s arrived at last.

Winter seemed to last forever this year, coming hand in hand with the crashing realisation that we would not be spending the winter ahead in a newly built cob house after all it hit me rather hard. Instead of being galvanised into action and coming out fighting and ready to prove everyone wrong I simply stopped really. I felt disillusioned and helpless and flat.  That we had only just come out of the film crew visiting and being so full of everything we had achieved almost made it worse rather than better.

The loss of the polytunnel and the never ending winter meant there was no chance of getting any seeds sown and it all started to feel rather pointless. Instead of  finding ways to make things worked I just didn’t bother. So all credit to Ady for finding ways to kickstart things for me again. He made a polytunnel and coaxed me back outside to the croft again and suddenly life is productive again, the sun is shining and we are making things happen. The joy has returned 🙂

This week we have dug over and weeded most of the raised beds, planted up most of the seedlings that I had had to sow after the packets of seeds got wet and ruined being left out in the rain after the film crew were here, netted the beds and made the whole area look like an allotment again rather than the graveyard of one. There is still work to do but another week or so of that level of productivity and it will all be done leaving us motivated and ready to crack on with the next challenge. Today Ady got a door on the polytunnel and moved the hose which had been to the old polytunnel to the walled garden / new polytunnel area. The kids painted the sporran so that all looks bright and waterproofed.

This morning I worked on weeding, making willow arches and netting the beds and transplanting seedlings. We broke for lunch and then the filmmaker guy came up with his friend to record us talking. Ady and I spoke first and then I hung around while he recorded Davies and Scarlett. He brought us up wine, beer and cake which was very kind and stayed for a couple of hours chatting. Then I did a few more hours in the walled garden and Ady came and did some too while the kids went down to the village to check for post.  Ady came up to get dinner started and I carried on, only coming in when the kids came to tell me it was 730pm and time to come in. I had a shower, we had dinner and watched Doctor Who. Scarlett’s ducklings managed their first night out alone just fine, all the other baby birds are doing well. Working outside on the croft all day meant we collected all the eggs rather than the crows getting them and I think we put about 24 eggs in the fridge for sale today, must be some kind of record 🙂

Work this morning – post office for me and Ady’s last ever hostel shift. I did mine on Monday. The hostel closes forever this Monday coming and those of us here will be celebrating with tea and cake in the kitchen. It’s an ugly building, really expensive to run, poorly insulated and leaky. It’s been politically fraught ever since it went up and remains so as it is due to come down. But we’ve had some excellent times in that hostel – both working and socialising with various friends who have been staying there. I feel quite affectionate towards it and all it’s quirks.

Post Office was very quiet, a couple of tourists and a handful of locals. Loads of folk have headed over to Eigg today for their anniversary ceilidh celebrations – 18 years since their community buy out. A coming of age for Eigg and while it can be frustrating at times to have comparisons made it is heartening to look across at our neighbouring isle and see how far they have come and how much they have achieved. There are some amazing characters on Eigg, far more so than here on Rum, people who have dedicated so much to their island and making it work. |They will be partying hard this weekend.

Bad Neil, Ross and Jed all appeared at the same time at post office but I made teas and coffees and had just sat down to chat with them when Fliss arrived so I ended up chatting with her inside instead and they had all gone, Missed my regular catch up chat of the week, particularly with Neil. I walked along to meet Ady and we came home. We had lunch and then there was a knock at the door and it was a guy who is over making  a film about Rum’s landscape and people’s relationship with it for his masters. He was a solicitor and gave up to go back to uni and become a film maker. A nice guy with a similar story to our own, if a little less extreme! He is taking lots of stills and camera footage of Rum and then will set audio from interviews with people over it. We said we would all be prepared to be interviewed so he is coming back up to the croft tomorrow afternoon to record us. He spent an hour or so roaming around the croft filming and photographing this afternoon.

Ady and I finished the polytunnel plasticking. Just the door to sort out now. We will probably create a roll up / roll down door with some heavy duty plastic we have and then dig it over and put in some raised beds, a path and some shelves to put seed trays on. We’re also planning a little tool store on the north side and a cold frame / bed with plastic over on the south side to further extend the growing space. Inbetween helping Ady I finished weeding the bed I had almost completed yesterday and turned over the earth in another one. Tomorrow we’ll cut some willow to make hoops to net those two and one more and get them filled with the seeds I have sown (cabbages, radishes and one other tray of seedlings I can’t recall). Then we need to net the rhubarb and asparagus beds and construct a frame around the big long bed which we’re planning to transplant peas (which have already germinated and are ready to plant out) into. If we get even half of that done before we head off on Wednesday we’ll have done really well, particularly as I am working Post office again on Monday and we have the hostel closing party in the afternoon.

Of this, on the days when I wonder quite what we’re doing. Remind me that when we just do what we came here to do – grow crops and look after our animals I could not be any happier…

This morning Ady got distracted looking at the solar panel which had not been putting charge into the battery. We had pretty much decided it had come to the end of it’s life (they do have a lifespan and our panel is not just old but was cheap anyway and gets a real battering here) so were planning on buying a new one next month but last night the battery it is hooked up to ran out of charge altogether which was strange. Ady spent some time tracking back and testing various bits of the set up and concluded that it was putting charge into the charge regulator but nothing was coming out into the battery. So he has bypassed the regulator for now and we’ve ordered a replacement – turns out both the solar panel and the battery are ok after all – the two pricey bits of the kit and the regulator which is under  a tenner is what needs replacing. Hurrah!

The next job was some maintenance on the flushing loo – I won’t go into too much detail but one of those jobs I am very happy Ady is prepared to do… After some consultation on the best way to approach it I went off to do some weeding and left him to it. Fliss wandered past while I was digging away and stopped for a chat. Ady came to say he had finished and had rung Calmac and our animal feed was coming off the boat today so I came back up for lunch.

We went down to the boat, collected the animal feed, transferred it from one car to the other and I carried on with weeding while Ady unloaded the animal feed and did a fix on the caravan roof he’d been waiting for a sunny day to do. The kids went down to the village for a walk and to check for post and then Scarlett made pizza dough for dinner. Ady brought me down a cup of tea and we fitted the plastic to the polytunnel. The drill ran out of charge before we finished so the last few bits of that are still to finish off tomorrow. It’s going to be awesome though, totally made of reclaimed bits and pieces and screws aside was free 🙂 Next to install raised beds around the edges, fill in a path down the centre, put some shelves in and start sowing. Yay!

I more or less weeded and dug over a raised bed, doing it properly takes forever! Loads of chickens came to help though, they sit and wait for you to break apart chunks of soil so they can nab the worms, they are good company chickens 🙂 Work tomorrow morning at post office and then another afternoon of outsideyness. Good for the soul 🙂

Wednesday – Ady went off to work again in the morning – racking up those last few shifts before the hostel shuts, just as well as we’ll be spending money next week so it’s good to feel it’s been earned before it’s been spent.

I woke the kids up, we all had croissants for breakfast and then we released the ducklings with the mama duck. They took quite a while to actually come out of the pen and infact she dashed out a couple of times on her own, to drink water, to eat food, to just delight in all that space and freedom! Before encouraging them to come out too. Davies and Scarlett took the pet ducklings down to the river for a swim and I chopped off the excess netting from the fruit cage roof to use in netting over the raised beds. I watched Scarlett and the ducklings for a while in the river.

All that done we came back up for a cup of tea and Ady arrived home. He had lunch – the rest of us were not hungry as we don’t usually eat breakfast so were still filled up with croissants. Then he and I went out to the walled garden and he fixed some beds and made hoops over them from various bits of pipe we had kicking around while I weeded them, cleared around the sides and fixed netting to them. We have 18 raised beds altogether (3 of them are super long), four are now properly sown and netted and cleared, so only 14 to go! Three of those already have things in them – some rhubarb and asparagus which are permanent crops but much neglected and in need of weeding and netting and the third is purple sprouting broccoli from last year which went over and turned mutant and got eaten by turkeys in the end – it appears to have self seeded so I will leave that to it’s own devices for this year too. Another of the large beds has four posts which mean it’s idea for tall netting so I am planning to transplant the seedlings of peas in there which I already have growing and ready to move. Lots to do, all nice stuff to get on with too.

While we were chatting and having a cup of tea in the sunshine Tom appeared coming to do his last bit of work for us and sign the WWOOFing book – he has finished the digging out and done about half of the drainage ditch too – probably only a couple of hours work remain in there of the ditch digging now. Once we have the mini polytunnel up and the walled garden sorted we will return focus to that and get it back on track. More volunteers arrive when we get back from the show next week.

All of the ducklings and the goslings were down in the river swimming with the packs – so lovely to see.

I supervised the kids making tortilla wraps, showed them how to peel and chop avocadoes, Davies demonstrated he is the king of grating cheese which is good. I hate it so much and have grated my knuckles so many times over the years that my single biggest kitchen indulgence these days is ready grated cheese which I buy in bulk! We watched the first couple of episodes of the new series of Eureka.

Thursday – not so productive as Sheerwater boat trip day. Another frustratingly quiet day 🙁 Barely even a bird let alone a cetacean. The one ‘highlight’ was going around the whole of Soay which we have done a few times before but this time going right into the harbour where Gavin Maxwell did the shark fishing and processing and seeing the building.

Our drainage pipe had arrived at the pier yesterday so we fixed it onto the roof of the Jeep, transferred it onto the back of the Rangerover, drove across the river and part way up the croft and then rolled it across the croft to the cob site. So glad that it is here. We went for a cup of tea before starting the next raised bed only to realise it was already 5pm and therefore too late to do anything else really. Scarlett, Ady and I went down to the shop for a few bits and stopped for a drink. Davies stayed home with Bonnie. I rang my parents and Ady cooked dinner – an eclectic mix of leftovers, stuff which needed using up and random added stuff – I think all four of us had slightly different variations on our plates.

Friday – Don’t recall what we did in the morning. After lunch Ady and I went to the ferry to collect Big Dave and various stuff from the ferry. We dropped off some of the stuff we had collected for Jinty and then all came back to the croft. Dave came over tea and doughtnuts and then went to open up the cabin. We all went down for a beer at the shop and then came home for pizza.

Saturday – work for both Ady and I in the morning. A nice morning for me at Post Office – the usual sociable coffee shop type of arrangement 🙂 I walked along to Ady and we came home together. Big Dave came over for lunch too. Ady did some de-moulding of Scarlett’s bedroom while I made brownies and prepped the ingredients for curry that night for dinner. Ady got it ready and in the oven on a low heat and we all went down to the village. There was half a plan to celebrate Bad Neil’s birthday (Sunday) but he didn’t properly come out in the end. We all came home by 9pm and had lovely curry.

Sunday – Ady and I wandered over to Big Dave’s for cups of tea and chats and to check what he had gotten done in the cabin. We all walked down to see if we could do some maintenance on the Jeep but were foiled by not having the right bits. Ady and I came back to the caravan for a late lunch and then some general bimbling about on the croft. I met Dave and we went for a beer (or four!) while Ady got dinner on. Bad Neil came out and it was actually a lovely couple of hours sat in the late afternoon sunshine chatting with a few folk hanging out at the shop. Back home for a lovely dinner, brownies for pudding and lots of Davies’ very funny films.

Monday – work at the hostel for both Ady and I  – my last ever shift in the hostel as it closes next Monday. We were done by midday and walked home. Dave came over for lunch and then we took him down to the ferry and waved him off, picking up the veg box on the way back home. I supervised the kids putting jacket potatoes in and Scarlett making bread dough. An evening back to just the four of us meant a dvd fest of two episodes of Doctor Who and a Modern Family marathon.

Today – I watched over Scarlett making leek and potato soup and we turned her bread dough from yesterday into bread rolls. Ady worked for a couple of hours in the hostel as Claire was due back to work  but didn’t come back to the island on the ferry yesterday. We had lunch and Tom appeared so he got on with some digging. I organised hotel rooms for Davies’ hospital appointment in a couple of weeks (we’ll be off Wednesday to Friday and will do one night in Inverness and one in Fort William – had hoped to see our friends in Glen Uig but they are away down south).

Ady and I strung up wire between posts in the fruit cage to train the various fruit bushes and did some work in the walled garden which was mostly talking and planning but meant we came up with a plan for netted frames for the raised beds to get working on.

Back at the house I supervised Davies making bread dough for bread and garlic bread, pasta bake (including making white sauce from scratch, cooking and chopping bacon, cooking a pan of pasta and constructing it all), roasting a bulb of garlic and then making garlic and herb paste to make a garlic bread. It’s all pretty basic cooking stuff but all from scratch and feels far more real than the baking we did when they were small.

This post should have appeared on 4th June

No bloody dolphins either.

Even the Sheerwater, our weekly splurge of a tenner and escape from everything to remind ourselves of why we live here and how lucky we are has been pants this year. The last two weeks have been vomit voyages, this week no one was ill but we didn’t see anything. Nothing. Nada. Not a thing. And even worse the bloody boat was packed – 32 people including all of the school children who wanted to sit next to Scarlett and Davies who didn’t want to sit next to them so I swapped places and took the hit and consequently got kicked and buffeted about by small children who can’t sit still. Argh.

I think there was one guillemot, a pair of shearwaters so distant they were not worth remarking on and a shag. That was it. Not even a bonxie let alone a cetacean or a shy porpoise.

I made wraps for lunch this morning, then we set off for the Sheerwater and when we came home Ady and I faffed about with the plastic for the wee polytunnel. We now have A Plan so will get that sorted, hopefully tomorrow. There has been a mix up with the collection of the drainage pipe from Inverness (as in I thought I was waiting for the courier to let me know when they were collecting it so I could pay for it, they just went to collect it and it was not actually there because I have not paid for it – classic Highland ways of poor communication!) but I think it is sorted now so fingers crossed that will be here next week sometime.

Then we went down for the monthly residents meeting and stopped for a beer afterwards. Looking forward to Big Dave visiting tomorrow, need some proper socialising with non Rum folk – it feels like far longer than 2 weeks ago that The Barts were here.

The irony was not at all lost on us…. 😉

Yesterday morning I made brownies, we had all gotten bored of the oat cookies I had been making for TV crew and WWOOFers in great numbers so having made a tray of brownies for Fliss as a birthday present on Saturday which we had snaffled a few of the request was made for more of them.  We had lunch and then Scarlett and I went down to the village as she had the doctors. We were a bit early so sat on the castle steps chatting to Ross watching the Sheerwater and the doctors boat come in from opposite sides of the bay and race to the pier. The doctor boat won! Sean & Nicola walked past so we chatted to them for a while too and arranged for Nicola to duckling sit while we’re off in a couple of weeks. Then Dave brought the doctor and a buggy full of tourists along for the castle tour so Ross did that while we went round the back of the castle to the room used as the doctors surgery.

We have finally got a better set up for the doctor I think. After losing the resident doctor on Eigg just after we arrived here the surgery there was staffed by a series of locums for about a year and then there was a plan to merge the Small Isles practise (does the four islands) with the Mallaig surgery and operate from there. Except they never managed to recruit any doctors and we had a further series of locums some of whom were really poor, none of whom every seemed to have read the notes before they arrived or demonstrated any sort of continuity of care. We don’t go to the doctors often (Davies has been once, this was Scarlett’s third visit, I have been once and Ady has been a few times but mostly because he tops up our medicine cabinet with painkillers and ibuprofen gel for his tennis elbow and archilles tendon issues) and have largely been lucky when we have needed to see a doctor to see a good one but others here have had poor experiences. The surgery is now based on Skye and they have recruited two GPs to work two weeks on and two weeks off on rotation to cover the islands, coming across to Eigg weekly, Muck, Canna and Rum fortnightly. The doctor we saw yesterday was lovely, an older man from Hampshire who moved up to Skye to take the job for the last 10 years or so before he retires. We chatted lots about settling into the Highlands and Islands from the south coast of England.

Scarlett’s ailment is a hurty knee. She jarred it when we were off in Edinburgh and it has never fully recovered, is swollen and tender and cramps up or gets stiff when she rests it. Mairi had felt it a bit and manipulated it when she was up visiting and said it would be worth getting checked out so we did about 6 weeks ago. The doctor then said if it was not improved after another month then it may require physio so we went back as it was still playing up. This doctor reckoned it was more growing pains – or OSD which had probably coincided with the injury by chance and made it more painful in that knee. Scarlett seems happy enough with that so we will keep an eye on it for the next few months and see what happens. I know when I fell on my knee a year or so ago it took about 8 months or so before it was fully better and not waking me at night, particularly when it was cold or damp.

Back at home it was time for another cookery lesson. We decided last week that the kids need to learn more about cooking – for two reasons: one so that they can actually look after themselves more particularly their favourite foods when they are older and two so that they can help out generally more. The idea being that twice a week they will cook, either one meal a week each on their own or two joint effort meals (their current intention). So every night Ady or I have been showing them or supervising them cook whatever we’d be cooking. Last night was venison pie, mashed potatoes or roasted potatoes. So they made pastry, peeled potatoes, chopped garlic, seared the meat coated in seasoned flour, made stock to make gravy, constructed the pie and egg washed it, par boiled the roast potatoes and got them oven ready with oil, garlic and herbs and chopped up the potatoes ready for boiling for mash. They did  a great job and really enjoyed it. Scarlett is very capable in the kitchen generally with Davies less interested usually but he said he had really enjoyed it and they both talked me through how to do it again, what they’d learnt etc. We have previously done more elaborate Come Dine With Me style three course meals which was fun but I think them knowing how to make the sort of food we eat all the time will be far more useful.

Today we had a visit from the school. Eve (7), Joss (6) and Andrew (3) from Rum along with Debs and Nicola and then the four kids from Canna (aged 11, 9, 7 and 3) and their teacher and Mum. Deb had asked if Davies and Scarlett could mostly lead it which they did although Ady was not so good at not talking to all the children instead, he does love children. We showed them all the birds, looked at the broody goose on the nest, watched the geese with the 2 goslings, Scarlett brought over the other gosling, showed them all a variety of different eggs, let them feed the birds and hold some of the tamer chickens and ducks, showed them Scarlett’s pet ducklings and the ones still penned with their mother duck and then went over to the pigs. It was good, D&S were fab, particularly Scarlett who is just so confident and knowledgeable about all the animals – she should definitely do something like that when she is older – outdoor education or ranger or something similar. She is really patient and calm, I love how unfazed she was by such a huge audience.

After lunch Ady and I walked down to the village to get steak from the freezer and check for post. We got caught up chatting to various people along the way. Back at the croft we finished building a pen for the ducklings to be in during the day with some reclaimed wood and part roll of chicken wire my Dad had given us. The kids went back to the village as the post had not been put in the car when we went down and we needed more milk. It was gone 7pm by the time we were all back indoors. The upside of the cold is it being 3rd June and still no midges!

That was a bit bleaty yesterday wasn’t it.

Pissed with rain all day again today and infact still is. The wind has blown in a fairly sporadic fashion, veering between so fast the turbine is screaming and then stopping altogether so no reliable power all day. It is tied up now.

The kids have made the most of the netflix sub watching lots of Doctor Who and Primeval. I reckon we’ll watch as much as we can in the free month and then stop it. After all the many recommendations Ady and I watched most of the first Breaking Bad tonight. We gave up before the end. It is totally the sort of thing I would turn off back when we had a TV, I hate swearing, violence, anything too graphic so I did wonder if it would be suitable but it was so raved about… ah well. Even Ady, who is far more likely to watch stuff like that was happy to turn it off.

Ady hates being indoors all day so has been dodging the rain and spending some time outside. I updated the timeline and volunteering document we are sending out to reflect what we’re actually hoping to achieve this year and emailed that to anyone who has signed up to be here this year. A few positive responses to that already. I messed about with some knitting and crocheting but didn’t really settle with anything. I need a new craft project to get into if I’m going to be stuck inside like this!

I emailed a potential publisher about a book of the WWOOFing year which I have been meaning to sort out for ages. Will see whether than turns into anything.

At 5pm Ady and I donned waterproofs and headed down to the village. It was fruit and veg order day, we wanted to check for post from the ferry (1st June and ferry ran to amended timetable just calling once due to the weather. WTF?!), get some venison from the freezer for dinner tomorrow and also I was out of wine. Half an hour after we got home it actually stopped raining for a while. But only for a while.