One word? When seven would do…

It feels like it should be way past Tuesday already. Not sure why though…

Yesterday I mostly baked I think. I made bread dough in the morning so we would have rolls for lunch. Then some more bread dough for actual bread to cook later, then two women appeared up on the croft asking after bread so I arranged to make them a couple of loaves to deliver down to the campsite for today so had to make two more batches of dough. And we needed cookies (having volunteers is great for keeping us right on providing a balance of good fruit and veg and nice home baked cookies or cakes too).

I had hoped to get outside and actually do some outdoors stuff too but was conspired against – I did relabel my pot pourri, finish reading my book about basket making and reply to some emails. I also cleaned some windows and got the kids to clean some more.

Then it was lunch time, Dave and Faye came over for cups of tea and chats, I showed Manon the fruit cage tasks and then further failed to get back outside. Ah well.

Down the shop for veg collection, a beer and some chit chat and then home to make dinner. The kids had got what they thought was a pack of bacon out of the freezer but turned out to be a pack of pork chops, so Davies went back down to the shop to get some bacon while I got dinner started and we watched Doctor Who and had a later than planned dinner.

Today was a castle shift this morning, with Davies, Scarlett, Dave & Faye and Manon all coming down half an hour before we finished so they could have a look around the castle. Faye has never been round before and we took the opportunity for Manon to have a look too. Then they all left to come back to the crofts – Davies, Scarlett and Manon for lunch, while Ady and I popped along to collect some carpet offcuts from Mike & Deb and have a quick look at Jinty’s new barbecue cabin before coming home for lunch.

It rained all afternoon so I spent time researching new curtains for the caravan online, Ady did some carpet laying and we all chatted about ways to make the caravan more homely / cosy / nice this winter. Showers for Ady and I as we felt all castle grimy, then a nice dinner of the pork chops!

Thursday was Sheerwater day but it was really, really windy and when Ady phoned to check it was running he was told it was but it was choppy out there. After some discussion we decided not to go. A tough one really as we’ve never  missed one before through choice, only because we’ve not been on island or its not been running. But this year we have been on so many where we have seen nothing at all and just paid a tenner to sit feeling cold and at various degrees of feeling seasick. Instead we made the most of the wind turbine for internet power. Manon and I put some strawberries in one of the raised  beds and netted it.

In the evening we went down to say goodbye to Mel & Em. There was a really good turn out with most people on the island coming along for a beer and to wish them well. They both made a touching speech and they headed off home for their last night in the castle around 8pm. Which is probably when we should have headed off too but instead that dangerous third can of cider was cracked open and from there it is a slipperly slope to the kids being given out of date kinder eggs by Jinty to persuade them to stay while we were poured complementary glasses of Baileys (me) and Jura (Ady) to persuade us to stay. And it worked! At 11pm we finally called time on the evening and I think dinner was around 1230am. Oops!

Friday morning I had a meeting in the IRCT office so I went down for that. It was productive and hopefully will be the start of something exciting for Claire and Steve who are looking at housing plots. I had not expected to be home for lunch and had set Manon on weeding the herb spiral but walked in the door just as they were all laying out food in the caravan. Manon carried on with that after lunch and then transplanted some comfrey she had dug out of the herb spiral into the space along the outside north side of the polytunnel, then she carried on weeding. She has not done as comprehensive a job weeding as I would, or as is necessary given the ground elder and rushes but she has cleared the inital grass off the raised beds which leaves the slightly more satisfying job of ferreting out the long roots of the weeds which is the bit I actually enjoy so we make a good team.

We took the kids and Bonnie down to the ferry to wave off Mel & Em. There was a good turn out of most people on island there to say final goodbyes which was nice. We will miss them both – as Bonnie sitters, as friends and Mel as someone who we genuinely liked a lot. Emily had a whole load of crazy about her which frequently meant she was a nightmare in meetings or to the IRCT but she meant well.  We dropped the kids off in the village and came home to feed the animals and make pizza dough. We walked back down and collected the kids them came home. There was a bloke over who has played at the Edinburgh Fringe and is travelling around in a milk float playing music. Usually we would make the effort to attend such things but it had not been advertised, it was starting at 830pm and it turned out tickets were £8 each. Word had it he was not very good anyway so we were glad we had not bothered.

Saturday – work for us both in the morning. A quiet one for me with just Ross, Neil and Steve plus some tourists. Steve brought me a bowl of soup to try which was lovely but reminded me a bit of Norman and his random Saturday morning food offerings… Ady met me and we chatted to Doug for a while before heading up the hill.

We had lunch and then Ady and I walked across to the cabin and Dave and Faye had arrived on the morning boat. We had a cup of tea, caught up on each others news and arranged to meet at 6pm to walk down to the shop for a beer later. Ady and I collected some water pipe that Ady had found to use for cloche hoops and spent some time working out a plan for the raised bed on the south side of the polytunnel where the strawberries have been moved to. It needs a plastic covering both to keep it warm and grow the strawberries but also to protect the fruit and plants from our own birds and wild birds. We made a start and more or less decided how we would do it, the fed the animals and walked down to the shop. We stopped for a couple of beers and then came home for a curry.

Sunday – I had intended a lie in but Ady has a habit of managing to do something noisy outside the bedroom window every morning which wakes me and today was no exception… Although I was awake I did stay in bed and read my book though. That showed him! 😉

Before and after lunch we worked on the cloches and made three frames using a dismantled pallet and the pipe hoops, then covered them with some of the ripped polytunnel plastic. They look great and will work perfectly. Really pleased with them 🙂 The strawberries are looking a bit traumatised by the move and I doubt will fruit any more this season but we now have two beds full and I have sown some strawberry seeds which are just starting to germinate too so next season should be good.

I checked the fruit cage which is desperate for some weeding and we have blackcurrants ready to start harvesting. I also made a mini rockery of all the lavender which had been getting water logged in pots and was looking quite sad. Some has flowered, some has just gone woody so it may not all come back (it was a bargain ebay purchase last year, 10 ‘seconds’ from a nursery where the plants were healthy but didn’t meet the size spec, plus a very old pot from Osborne Drive). This should give it all a better chance. Ady did some scything too.

Ady cooked dinner and I had a long catch up phone call with my parents. I was hit today while we were messing about dismantling a pallet by a wave of really missing my Dad 🙁 It doesn’t happen very often like that but when it does I could just sit and cry, or pack a bag for the next ferry, so talking to him tonight really helped.

Teashop shift for me today, working with Ali as Fliss is on holiday. It was not as busy as last week but we still took over £200 so over £100 even after we’d paid the community hall our 10%. Davies sold another four postcards too. Yay! I had some nice chats with tourists and Ady came along after helping load Mel & Em’s stuff into the removal van which was here between boats.  We didn’t get the second flurry rush which was what killed us last Wednesday so instead the three of us (me, Ali & Ady) sat down with tea and cake instead. Far nicer even if meant about £40 each less in our pockets!

Inbetween I had frustrating and irritating chats with Clare and Steve about housing and IRCT stuff. Sooo tedious. Not even worth recounting as if I am bored of it and I live here and am in the very middle of it all then it will definitely not be interesting for anyone else to read about or me to record for future reading back on.  Lots of emails back and forth between directors this evening too.

Manon the volunteer has been doing great work weeding and working in the walled garden. Am hoping to get in there myself maybe tomorrow although weather is looking dreadful again. At least she is replacing me in doing something on the croft this week while I’ve been busy elsewhere.

I had a really funny email from Davies this afternoon saying ‘OMG how much power? Sun tick, wind tick. All well, had lunch, volunteer fine. Loads of love from D&S xxxx’ He is totally my favourite teenager 🙂

Monday – rained and rained and rained and rained. Oh and was quite windy too. Sigh. It’s JULY! I expect, anticipate and accept this in November but July is supposed to be the trade off period, the time to be cursing midges… I’ve said before and will say again if this had been our first year here I think we would have left. There was not even really a spring to speak of, let alone a summer.

We had no bread so I took Manon, our WWOOFer down to the site of the old polytunnel and got her digging up strawberries to move across and came back to the caravan to make some wraps for lunch, some bread dough for later and then as it carried on raining I decided to do some cooking for teashop on Wednesday. Ady was doing compost loo maintenance, infact he did stuff on both the static loo and the horse box compost loo. Reason 2167 for loving Ady 🙂

I made two batches of cookies – peanut butter & choc chip, and ginger, plus wraps. I was short tempered with Scarlett for no real reason which came to a head later in the day after I made her cry, realised I was being a complete cow and apologised. What is that about? Isn’t it supposed to be her getting all arsey with me not the other way round?!! The kids were doing bedroom tidying although Davies came to my rescue and helped me with the wraps for lunch when I was struggling. Manon came in for lunch, we all ate together and then she carried on transplanting the strawberries into their new home. It started raining even heavier so when she came in to say she had finished that after just an hour or so I got her to come in for  a cup of tea and chatted to her for awhile.

At 5pm it was raining harder than ever so I decided not to go down to the village for the cinema night and to stay home instead. Ady and the kids went while I got dinner on, finished baking (I made some cupcakes and baked the loaf), read some of a book, did all the washing up, did some stuff online and just hung out with Bonnie. It was really nice 🙂

The others came home around 730pm with post and veg box and we had dinner and watched a couple of episodes of Eureka.

Tuesday = castle shift for Ady and I first thing. I’d already told Manon to get on with weeding and then to meet us at the castle as we had misunderstood the timings for the helping Mel & Em and thought it was starting earlier. So we took Manon back with us to the croft for lunch and then she did some more weeding. I made my flatbreads for teashop tomorrow and then Ady and I went back down to the village to the castle. Mel & Em were wanting a team of folk to help them move all their boxes and furniture downstairs into the Great Hall of the castle ready for the van to collect from the front door tomorrow. I think there were 8 of us there altogether and we did it in under an hour. First in relays moving stuff and then as a human chain all the way down the corridor and down the stairs passing boxes. It was heavy, hot and tiring! We did it all and then retired back to the flat for fizz and some food. Ady and I didn’t eat much ( I literally had a piece of bread and fancy balsamic, Ady ate rather more!) as we were coming home for dinner. We stayed a while to chat before coming home to cook dinner which we did together with me getting it all started and Ady finishing it off. An episode of Eureka and then bed all round as everyone was tired.

Overshadowed by the utter calamity which was Ady going to check on the cats first thing on Saturday to discover they had escaped!!!! I can’t even talk about it yet as bird lovers on Rum will be horrified at the prospect of wild cats on the island trashing the birds (they are a pair of neutered males so not likely to do any real lasting damage to the wildlife population but it is still frowned upon) and being facebook friends with Ann who sent them over to me and was so impressed with how much time I was planning to put into taming them. It was a wild, wild night of wind and rain on Friday and they must have been so scared they managed to squeeze through the tiniest gap in the crate which they had already explored several times in the 36 hours previously and decided against attempting.

Lots of online research suggests they will be likely still very close by here on the croft and if we continue putting out food we will probably recover them. I have a human cat trap on  order which should hopefully arrive this week to try and catch them or we may just suddenly see them appear around the croft. In terms of their own welfare there is probably sufficient rats and mice and birds to sustain them, in terms of the impact on Rum wildlife two cats will do very little, in terms of my own feelings I am devastated 🙁 I was so, so thrilled to have them here, so up for spending days and weeks slowly taming them and I can’t even share this current sadness or hopefully eventual victory. It sucks 🙁

In other news Ady and I worked yesterday morning – me at Post Office and Ady at hostel / White House cleaning. Ady finished really early and came to meet me from work rather than the usual other way around. The wind was so bad that all of the Saturday boats were cancelled, apparently the first time in 5 years that a July Calmac was cancelled due to the weather, crazy! Cat scaring crazy 🙁

Back at home we spent ages looking for the cats, reading online about displaced cats, looking for the cats some more… all to no avail.

Today has been some more looking for cats. We went to the boat to meet our latest WWOOFer, Manon a 24 year old Frenchwoman who lives in Belgium and is in Scotland for 2 months combining WWOOFing with holidaying / hiking / exploring. She seems really nice and is here for 2 weeks. I am not sure she will be much use for digging but will certainly be able to do some weeding, general helping around the croft etc. She had lunch with us today and then went off exploring.

I did some weeding and sowing and transplanting in the walled garden / polytunnel. Ady did some more waterproof painting on the caravan roof, we appear to have once again fixed the roof leak but as every time we say that we are proved wrong this is a tentative victory only… and then some scything. In between there was more cat searching.

Then we all went down to the castle for Davies and Scarlett to have a last go on the Xbox before bringing it home, Ady and I to help dismantle their bed and roll up their rugs (Mel and Em are both quite small) and have a last dinner / goodbye with them as they leave on Friday 🙁 I have not always loved Em’s company but will miss them both lots, as will Bonnie. It was a really nice evening with quite a lot of wine and loads of laughter.

We had a walk up the tower to the top of the castle which was cool – Ady and I have been up there before but Davies and Scarlett never have so that was fun. Then home for bed before another day of cat searching tomorrow.

A reminder of the winter ahead, bummer after a couple of nice days of actual summer. Ah well.

I checked on the cats first thing, they had eaten all their food and drunk all their water so I topped that up and then came back in for Popmaster. Ady and I walked down to the village to collect some bits from the shop and some stuff from the freezer and then came home for lunch.

I had another half an hour in with the cats – I have set up a chair next to their crates so I can just sit there, talk to them and read or whatever and get them used to me being around. Fairly easy to do on a day like today when it was tipping with rain and I had nothing else particularly to be getting on with, less easy on sunny days when I could be out on the croft or days when I have commitments down in the village but hearteningly they both ate and drank infront of me, sniffed my hand and seemed fairly calm with me there. Not sure if they have been to the loo yet despite me putting a litter tray in there – Ginger spent some time just sitting in it! I even got to touch Comfrey who is timid but not aggressive.

Ady and I went down to the pier to collect our diesel which came off and then Ady spent some time de-molding in the bedroom while I spent another couple of hours with the cats. Not really hard work, particularly when armed with my kindle and a bag of humbugs ;). Davies and Scarlett made bread and pizza dough and took advantage of the wind to have lots of internet time. Scarlett had a shower and hair wash, poor thing has her period again and it’s lasted a week this time.

I came in just before 6pm and warmed up before making pizzas for dinner. We watched Doctor Who and a couple of episodes of Friends. Hoping the weather is better tomorrow.

This morning we took Emmanuel down to the Sheerwater with us as he was heading off on the later boat. Steve Dev O was heading off today and happy to take him as far south as Perth where Steve lives so that worked perfectly. Emmanuel was planning a day in Edinburgh tomorrow before heading back to France on the Eurostar over the weekend. He was a nice enough lad but not much cop as a WWOOFer really. He left a nice comment in our WWOOFing book though. We may have another French WWOOFer arriving at the weekend.

Coming off the boat were our two newest Croft 3 creatures, a pair of cats. 2 boys, brothers. One ginger and one black and white. I advertised in our local newsletter for a cat last year and Ann, the editor got in touch to tell me about the ginger one who she had rehomed but had never settled with her. She was debating whether or not to keep the black and white one and then decided she would. The ginger one is very scared and I didn’t really think that was the right cat for us here. She got back in touch a couple of weeks ago to say she still wanted to rehome him and actually, would let the black and white one go too. After much debate (as in the kids and I really wanted them, Ady really didn’t) we agreed they could come and she sent them over today on the boat with her son.

We popped them in the car with all the windows and boot open  to recover from their journey and headed off on the Sheerwater. It was a gorgeous day, I even got a bit sunburned. The water was super calm with excellent visibility and on the way over to Soay we saw porpoises and lots of seabirds, on the way back we saw a minke whale 🙂 So lovely to see one again after such a crappy start to the wildlife year. Let’s hope it heralds the beginning of some good spots for the coming weeks, probably only about 6 or 7 left I guess.

Back to Rum and we said goodbye to Emmanuel, dropped Trudi in the village and popped to the shop for some catfood, then brought the cats home. Ann has been calling the ginger one Ginger anyway, which was the name Scarlett was determined a ginger cat should have. The black and white one will be called Comfrey which is the name we chose for our hypothetical cat while we were WWOOFing and planning the list of animals we would have. Ann called him Bertie but I don’t think he’ll mind the name change too much.

I have fixed together two large dog crates for them to be in, inside our really good chicken shed. They are scared and edgy and it will take quite some time to win them round but I am fairly sure we can do it. Comfrey will be fine and would probably even already be a lap cat so I will work with him first and build Ginger’s confidence by spending lots of time in with them. I can take a chair and sit in the shed talking to them and reading or just being there so they get used to me. It will definitely be quite a project but I love cats so much and have really missed having them around all these last few years since we lost Candle. These two are used to living with a dog so they should be fine with Bonnie although she will take some getting used to them. The idea is that they are mostly outside cats anyway although I secretly plan to have them on my lap of an evening, putting them out before I go to bed. We’ll see how long that takes to pan out…

It was really midgey this afternoon so my planned weeding didn’t happen but Ady and I fed the animals together and I made a really nice dinner with sausages and roasted root veg. The forecast rain for the next 24 hours has already started so tomorrow may well be mostly sitting in the cat shed reading and knitting I suspect.

Saturday – post office in the morning for me. I couldn’t find my keys in the morning and had a sudden flash of realisation that they were probably in the back pocket of my posh mainland jeans which I would have been wearing the previous Saturday having worn them home on the Friday and knew they were in the back of the Jeep in a white sack ready to go in the laundry. I hoped this was the case and dashed down to find Ady, rummaged in the washing machine in the castle and sure enough, there they were! Phew.

A quiet morning shift at Post Office and then along to the hostel to meet Ady. Not sure what we did in the afternoon but we had a really early dinner and then headed down the hill in the pouring rain to see Elsa Jean McTaggart. She first came to Rum just after we arrived in the summer of 2012 and we loved her then. This time she was even better and hugely excitingly sang with me when I was trying to persuade Dave to play The Gambler. Most starstruck! Even more so now she is my facebook friend and we have had some facebook chats 🙂 Also on the bill were the Boathouse Blues Band (Rum’s Jed, Sean the Rat and Chainsaw Dave) and Danny (Clare’s boyfriend). It was a cracking night 🙂 Ady got probably the most drunk I have ever (in 22 years!) seen him, drinking most of a bottle of whisky. Davies and Scarlett left to come home around 11ish and me and Ady got home at 2am. How we got home in the dark without torches and Ady in the state he was I am not altogether sure but we did…

Sunday morning the kids and I laid in. Ady was up to feed the animals and go to the pier to send diesel cans off. I did some stuff in the walled garden / polytunnel and we had an early, very delicious, hangover soaking up roast dinner and an early night all round.

Monday – Ady and I walked down to the village in the morning, stuff to post, things to buy, food to get from the freezer. We stayed awhile as various folk were out and we quite like the morning chatter at the shop. Home for lunch of wraps and the new series of Dragons Den on iplayer, then lots of stuff on the croft in the walled garden for me. More beds weeded, netted and with seedlings transplanted, sweetcorn potted on, leeks planted out. Dinner of venison bolognaise.

Tuesday – castle shift in the morning for Ady and I. I was incredibly bored as we were dusting and hoovering the castle. We entertained ourselves for a while but four hours is a long time to kill… eventually it was home time though so back to the croft for lunch. I had a whole afternoon of baking – flatbreads, bread and cookies for Market Day / Teashop and steak pie for an early dinner. We then walked down to the village for the Hawaiian shirt ceilidh which some visiting musicians were laying on. Another excellent evening of dancing, music and craic. The kids left at 10 ish, we were home just after midnight. Ady made toast all round. I remember taking a 4 month old Davies to the 24 hour Tesco on Christmas Eve to do our Christmas food shopping at 430am because that was when he’d woken us up for a feed so I’d fed him and then we’d taken advantage of being up anyway to do our sprout purchasing without crowds. Nearly 15 years later it’s nice to be reaping the rewards the other end of having kids old enough to sit up and eat toast and talk nonsense with you in the early hours (their nonsense is down to being teens and therefore fairly random, not being inebriated I hasten to add….).

Wednesday – I was Mrs Post from 10 til midday as Jinty was off for a quick mainland visit. To my (and her) horror her Dad Pete has taken away the kettle. Yes it leaked water everywhere when it boiled and was therefore probably a huge peril of death to us but I can’t possibly function at post office without my tea. Bad Neil says if it is not back for Saturday then he and I will go on strike like the Calmac workers. Bad Neil does not actually work on a Saturday morning but he does drink at least 2 cups of tea with me so has a very important role….

Fortunately my next role of the day was Mrs Teashop with Ali. It was bedlam! We had queues and queues of folk, sold out of everything and had to turn the last few folk away. Made over £100 each 🙂 Hurrah for that. The early customers and the aftermath customers were really chatty and I love that side of life here 🙂

We finally cleared up, moved our stuff back to the craft shop and were ready to finish by 4pm. Davies was a star this afternoon, he and Scarlett came down, he chatted to tourists about the weather forecast, sorted out the hall PC which had been unplugged, took Eve round to our freezer and gave her an ice lolly and was generally awesome. Love that boy 🙂 The kids and I walked home but I had agreed to check my emails expecting to be called back for a brief meeting at 5pm. So I was home long enough to move two dog crates up the hill in readiness for tomorrow’s arrivals before going back to the village for a meeting at Ali’s with Dev O Steve and some housing blokes who are over doing audits on the housing stock.

Back home to water the polytunnel and have dinner.

Tomorrow is Sheerwater day and the cats arrive 🙂 🙂

Tuesday was work. Only Ady and I this time which was far better, no being cornered by Clare talking. We had two final bunk beds to dismantle and the rooms to hoover clean afterwards so I did the beds while Ady did the hoovering. Then we went through the two kitchens and reduced the crockery, cutlery, pots and pans and utensils down to smaller numbers to reflect the reduced bed numbers.

I had plans for weeding in the afternoon but never got there as I was busy baking an army of flatbreads ready for market day the following day.

Wednesday was said Market Day. Fliss, Ali and I have agreed to take on the Wednesday teashop between us too as we are there anyway for the market day. This week all three of us were there, usually it will probably be just two of us but I am there for all of them… ah well. We took a fair bit of cash, Fliss bought soup and rolls and scones, Ali bought cakes and I bought the flat breads. We shared the tea and coffee takings. I think I made about £40. I also managed to sell 4 of Davies’ postcards by chatting to someone about them. Ali sold loads of jam and I probably would have done too except I have sold out of jam already this season despite making loads and loads last year. It has been flying out of the honesty larder at the croft gate and now I am desperately checking bramble bushes for progress despite it being a full six weeks at least away before there will be anything to pick.

Then Ali and I went off to a meeting with SNH bods. Sandy was here on Rum for a few days, it didn’t go well apparently 🙁 I didn’t actually see him but Ady did and was glad to have done. The SNH meeting went well. Got home about 6pm and was knackered from a long day.

Thursday – Sheerwater trip. We saw a few porpoises and there are slightly more seabirds around. We saw a sea eagle being mobbed by a smaller birds just off the coast of Rum but it was still far from the exciting cetacean encounters we have enjoyed in previous Julys.

When we got back to the croft I tried to do some weeding but it was too midgey really. We went down to the shop for a beer or two as various folk are over visiting (Jinty’s sister, Bad Neil’s brother) so it was nice and sociable.

Friday – Another meeting, this time the first drafting of the IRCT business plan for the coming 5 years as the current one ends at the end of 2015. A good morning thrashing stuff out and some real positive stuff came from it. Slightly tarnished later today when an email has gone round requesting an emergency meeting about housing next week. In that zone of spending too much time and energy on trust stuff again just now, need to balance it against the good crofting stuff but it’s rained non stop all day today which never helps.

Pizza and Doctor Who tonight. Despite still raining heavily (and being cold and damp enough to light the fire for an hour or so this evening) the sky is really bright and glowing above the clouds.

Tuesday morning Ady and I went off to work at the hostel. We were dismantling bunk beds. I think everyone else thought I got the raw deal as I was a dab hand with the allen key and dismantled four while Ady loaded them into the trailer and moved them across to the castle and Clare drew pictures to label the various parts but I was happy with that. I love flatpacks, even in reverse 🙂 I did get caught in the really hot hostel talking to Clare about housing though which I’d rather have avoided. Never mind.

In the afternoon and evening we packed up ready for the trip to MainlandLand the following day.

Wednesday – a lovely day of weather so we went for the long boat trip to Canna. The school were on the boat too to visit Canna so we snuck upstairs to avoid sitting with them. Mean I know but the kids get fed up with the littler kids demanding their attention. Ady and I spent most of the ride out on the front of the boat and saw some dolphins , mother and calf splashing around. When we got to Canna we decided not to get off; we’d only been there two weeks ago and there is not actually much to do. The kids were watching a dvd, I was reading my kindle and Ady was watching something he’d downloaded on his phone and then having a snooze – all simple pleasures that we probably could not have justified taking time out in the middle of the day to do if we were at home. The Calmac staff are on a two week on, two week off rota and the mean skipper was on who insists on you having tickets to get off at Canna but we had not realised. Fliss and Deb came running back on the boat to offer to pay for our tickets as they thought we were not getting off for that reason… we assured them that was not the case. On the way back to Rum we sat with Fliss and had some chips. Eve & Joss presented us with a thank you card for letting them come and feed the croft animals as we’d be missing the school prizegiving end of term day the following day (which in truth we would probably not have attended even if we were on the island anyway…) which was sweet but a bit embarrassing in the middle of the busy boat.

The school got off back at Rum and Neil & Lesley and a few others got on. I sat with them for a bit on the way to Mallaig chatting about some Rum politics stuff. When we got to the office the car keys were not there as expected so Ady rang the garage and they were running late. It was with us in about 10 minutes though and we set off to Inverness. A slightly stressy journey as Scarlett felt carsick so swapped with me to sit in the front. I then felt pretty rough in the back as the drive from Mallaig to Inverness is very twisty turny. Scarlett wanted to pull over alongside Loch Ness in the layby where we first wild camped in Willow but I was feeling rubbish and just wanted to get to the hotel so refused. I regretted it later and wished we’d stopped and taken a photo. I am not often petulant these days and almost always regret it afterwards…

We got to Inverness and struggled at the end as Ady’s phone which we were using for sat nav was out of power and I was struggling to navigate from the back. I had in my head where I thought the Premier Inn we were staying was and I was right but needed help to find it. We eventually got there, stopped at Morrisons for some breakfast for the morning, some beers and some bubble bath and then got to the Premier Inn and checked in. There is a KFC just a five minute walk away which we’d already planned to eat at so we walked there and after some fresh air, food and cooling down a bit (it was crazily hot and still as anything, we were all struggling with the heat) we all felt better. So much so that we decided at 10pm to find the nearby Tesco and do that bit of our planned shopping then rather than wait til the morning. We got back to the hotel around 11ish, I had a bath and I think we all fell asleep around midnight.

Thursday – It was just as well we’d ticked Tescos off already as we all slept in til 10am the following day! Not unheard of for me and the kids but a complete miracle for Ady. The room was north facing with a tiny window facing a wall and with heavy curtain it was pitch dark in the room so we’d just slept. That scuppered our plans to do Screwfix / B&Q in the morning so instead Davies had a bath and we watched crap tv. Then Ady and Scarlett dropped Davies and I at the hospital and they went off to do Screwfix and B&Q. We had a bit of a wait and had gotten there early anyway but we sat in the paediatric waiting room watching the cbeebies channel that the TV was set to and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves 🙂 I was quite sobered by being in there actually, it made me realise how fortunate we are to have two healthy children and how different life can be for parents who don’t… That has stayed with me all week, quite haunting.

All well with Davies. The doctor was lovely, weighed and measured him, chatted at length, explained puberty for boys, then examined him and pronounced him well into puberty and anticipating a growth spurt pretty much now. For a belt and braces approach he took blood to test for thyroid function and pituitary glands doing their thing, sent us along to xray to have Davies’ wrist xrayed to give a bone age and predicted adult height and will see him again in a few months to follow up. He can also see us in Fort William next time which is fantastic, will be far less hassle / expense and can probably be tied in with a dentist appointment too. Yay. We left fully reassured which was great. We managed to claim back part of the expenses too – all of the ferry for Davies & I, £35 each night towards accommodation and petrol mileage from Mallaig. Every little helps towards the huge expense of a mainland trip.

Met back up with Ady and Scarlett and then parked the car and went into the city centre. I quite like Inverness, it feels pretty familiar as we have spent a fair bit of time there over the last five years (although only one previous visit  since moving to Rum). We did the charity shops, Primark, Game and HMV, poundstretcher etc and stocked up on all the sorts of things we had on our lists to buy. We had lunch in McDonalds just to complete the fast food jaunt of the trip and then got in the car and came back to Fort William. We came via Aldi which was the last shop on our Inverness list and I managed to ride the whole way in the front thanks to a new dvd purchase which the kids watched on the drive :).

In FW we went to Poundstretcher for various things including a memory foam mattress topper and Morrisons for picnic tea and the food shop to bring home (stuff like bombay mix, chocolates, marshmallows, own label whisky, gin and baileys, all of which cost a fortune here buying proper branded stuff through Jinty and are nice to have in the cupboard for treats) then finally to the Travelodge. We sat on the floor and watched Masterchef while eating our tea and then Scarlett had her bath (with Lush stuff from Inverness), as did I. The combination of 2 baths in 24 hours and extreme heat has bought all of my eczema on though so I have really itchy elbows and ankles now 🙁

Friday – we were all up and awake much earlier and out of the hotel by 830am. A quick stop at Lidl and then off to Mallaig. As we pulled into Morar and got our first glimpse of the Rum skyline I actually got butterflies of excitement about going home. We do live in such a very beautiful part of the world :). We detoured to Loch Morar and took some photos as I realised recently we don’t take as many pictures of the four of us any more, just lots of the croft, the animals and the landscape and I don’t want to miss photo documenting the kids teen years. We had the car back well before the arranged time and the girl ran us along to Mallaig. We left all our stuff in the Calmac office and went to CoOp for various items. Back in the Calmac office we rejggled some of the packing so we had as many bags as we had hands between us and then Davies and I ran back to the CoOp for ice lollies. We saw Big Dave and Faye on the way so bought some for them too and all sat in the office eating them.

We stayed outside the whole boat trip back and it was a glorious crossing with flat calm sea and lovely sunshine, a fab welcome back to Rum 🙂 We managed to drive all the way up the croft, stopping at the freezer to drop stuff off and then spent time unpacking and putting stuff away. Bonnie was glad to have us home and be back on the croft and all was well here. I was working at the shop and Scarlett came down with me while Ady and Davies fixed a bike and got dinner on. Davies appeared before I closed the shop to say Ady was in a flap about missing onions and rice for dinner so I sent him and Scarlett back up with them. Dave and Faye came down for a beer and we walked back to the croft together as they were coming for dinner.

Saturday – work in the morning, a very productive afternoon of planting, transplanting and weeding in the afternoon. Ady and I fixed a shelf in the polytunnel too. He and Emmanuel managed to move some more stuff which had been cluttering up and looking messy at the croft gate too. Pizza for dinner and Doctor Who plus an earlier night all round.

Sunday – more weeding for me, I got loads done 🙂 One more small bed to weed and two of the really big ones and that is all of the walled garden weeded. I actually think I might get stuff planted out in every single bed this year which is fantastic 🙂 I’m really proud of that little area including the fruit cage and the polytunnel, it looks good and is on track to be productive. Ady, Dave and Faye took down the community polytunnel which had been an eyesore and was really grating on Ady and I. The croft looks so much  better with it gone 🙂 Then we all went to the cabin and put up four of the ceiling panels to finish all of the ones above the mezzanine. It looks fab. It was unbearably hot in there but worth doing.

Ady cooked dinner – roast venison and I made eton mess for pudding with freshly picked strawberries from the croft. We had a lovely evening with them, lots of laughs, too much to drink…

Monday – Ady and I don’t have any phone signal. We noticed on Friday when we got home but it wasn’t a problem until last night when I wanted to ring my parents as it’s my Mum’s birthday. I managed to hook up via TuGo using wifi but our internet is so slow that it was a really poor line. So frustrating 🙁 I had a livechat with o2 this morning about it and it is a mast with problems in Arisaig. They are aware but can’t give me a time / date when it will be fixed. Hope it does’t take too long.

I spent much of the day doing more weeding. Ady and Emmanuel did some digging on the house plot, Ady did some scything too. We took Dave and Faye to the boat to say goodbye and then it rained and was midgey so we called it a day and watched a film with the kids. I cooked dinner and we watched some Dr Who.

And that’s me all caught up again 🙂