One word? When seven would do…

Post Office shift for me this morning as Jinty is away for a few days. So that mostly entailed drinking tea with Neil, with brief interludes of Ross, Jed, Ian, Fliss and Sean breaking up the drinking tea with Neil. Some people have not voted at all on the marine harvest fish farm vote about which I utterly despair. Sigh. Have an opinion definitely but please make your voice heard by voting, sometimes this island and some of the people here really make me shake my head. Not feeling very tolerant just now I don’t think…

Ady came to meet me after the boat – some amazon food deliveries and some local fish from the fish seller in Mallaig – locally caught white fish mix, smoked salmon and mackerel. What we don’t manage these days in local, seasonal fruit and veg we certainly manage in local, sustainable protein – all our meat, fish and eggs is either from Rum or a very close radius supporting very small businesses. We were expecting veg but it didn’t  arrive. Billy the castle builder / renovator is back so we called round to say hello to him and collect some firewood he had for us, then home for lunch.

Bob Pig had moved quite a way from where we’d left him so we decided to try and get him on to the croft after lunch. I had a bit of a rant at the kids who galvanised themselves to action very speedily and spent time tidying up while Ady and I moved animal feed around the croft, collected the firewood from the car and brought it up the hill, stacked it under a tarp and chopped some and spent ages with Bob Pig. We didn’t get him on to the croft but he did show he is capable of getting around fairly speedily which is heartening if not good news exactly. We have decided to give him the week that Mum & Dad will be here to improve more or less fully or we will kill him. If he is unable to actually walk around and mate with Barbara then his quality of life is poor and we are not an animal sanctuary or able to sustain the food bill for unproductive animals. We WWOOFed with too many hosts who had allowed the livestock holding to get out of hand to fall into that trap. We’ll have to make a decision about Blackie too really but have some possible thoughts on that to explore further. All unwanted further stress and angst though, I am feeling utterly exhausted by everything this year 🙁

This evening everyone had showers and I brushed Scarlett’s hair, then rang my parents. Mum answered the phone crying after a four hour non moving event on the M8 and then an argument about nearly running out of petrol and having to turn back. They finally got to Fort William at about 1030pm and rang me from the bar to say they had arrived, so not a great journey for them. The boat is on amber alert for tomorrow and I suspect will not run, so further drama to come. I know that separately all of these woes are small and even in combination they are mostly insignificant but I would really like to find my optimism and ‘it’ll be fine’ persona again soon, I’ve almost forgotten what that feels like at the moment.

Yesterday was a productive day – Scarlett finished painting the sporran and kilt around the caravan – it looks really good, a dark green colour which should preserve it for years to come. Davies made the most of the wind turbine giving internet and did stuff online, Ady and I did tidying up around the caravan /croft, gathering rubbish and burning it, pulling up some of the broken pallets and chopping them up for firewood and generally sprucing things up. I watered the polytunnel and we spent some time with Bob Pig. Still not sure whether he will recover but he is doing better each day, feel sorry for Blackie who is up here on the croft without him too.

Today was less productive as the weather was showery so every time I started to think I would head outside it threatened rain again. Ady was outside getting stuff done but I was indoors chatting to Scarlett and crocheting instead. We did move an empty gas bottle halfway to the car, carry up some wood for a fence we’re planning and bring the camping mats out of the Pajero to air on the washing line ready for us to sleep on when Mum & Dad arrive though. After lunch I went down to Crafternoon – no Ali this week as she is off island so it was just Fliss, Deb and me, with the constant company of Joss as there was no Eve for her to play with. Ady came down to meet me and we all walked round to the shop together as we are voting on whether to go ahead with a fish farm off the coast of Rum and votes need to be in by tomorrow. Neil and Lesley were around so I persuaded Lesley to stop for a beer with us while Neil went off to check the power and Steve the Man and Jed came along too so a nice little sociable gathering for a beer before we came back home.

Ady had constructed a mobile shelter for Bob Pig so we carried that over and put it over him to keep the rain off then came in. Davies helped with dinner by getting the pasta on while Scarlett made a white sauce and grated cheese and I made bread dough so a collaborative effort. Some River Cottage and a couple of episodes of Warehouse 13 so we can send the disc back tomorrow as I am working at Post Office.

Ady and I went down to feed Bob this morning and not only did we coax him up onto his trotters we also got him out of his fenced area and walking about 20 foot. He’s still far from right but this felt like a massive leap (stagger!) forward. Certainly won him his 24 hour reprieve for today anyway. He’s not made much progress the rest of the day although he has moved around a bit within  the grassy area at the front of the croft he has now commandeered.

After Popmaster we walked down to the village to get some shopping, clear our shop tab (rent went in today and we had 2 veg orders, a slab of sweetcorn and a load of cheese to pay for), put this week’s veg order in, collect the shop keys so I can do Post Office on Thursday and get bits from the freezer for dinner tonight and tomorrow.

Back home for lunch and what was an overcast but promising day turned into a really grey drizzly day with a couple of hours of rain. Scarlett made cookies and I got dinner on (roasted root and rice gratin, delicious but such a long time to prep – peel and chop and roast veg, make cheese sauce, cook rice, assemble). We watched a documentary on Spectacled Bears and I did some crochet. Forgot to blog a long conversation with Davies last night about whole numbers, fractions, decimal places and percentages showing him how to simplify fractions  and add them together. On a really basic level but an interesting conversation (for 11pm!) which gave him the gist of the idea to build on next time it comes up.

The weather had enough of a break in the rain for Scarlett, Ady and I to go out and feed the animals. The pig feeding is very convoluted just now as we need to feed the birds first so they don’t all follow us to the pigs, then go to feed Barbara, Waddles and Ben Fogle first because they might break through if we feed Blackie first, then Blackie and then down to the bottom of the croft to feed Bob. Complicated! Hopefully we get Bob up asap and then it’s just two adjacent pens to feed pigs in. Bob managed a bit more staggering before lying down, he’s definitely improving.

Back in for board games, shower and finishing off dinner which I had mostly prepped earlier – I made sausage meat (our own) patties to go with it which Ady and I really liked but the kids did not. We watched some River Cottage (we were given a Hugh FW book last year which was one of his really early foraging ones so we got the dvd to go with the book and then started re-watching all the RC series as the kids had not seen them before and they were so inspirational to Ady and I in what we have ended up doing. Then Haven which is quite good but too similar to Warehouse 13 at the moment so we’ll watch this first disc then send it back and try something else.

I used to be really good at stress management, or maybe it was just such a frequent state of being in my life I was just really adept at it. These days though it rather knocks me for six. Last year I had a buzzing in my ears for a few days, I forget what it coincided with but I was adding to to an already long list of stuff I was struggling with rather than realising it was the physical manifestation of that actual list. Some extensive googling and asking everyone else on island if they could hear the buzzing which felt so real and outside of my body I was utterly convinced there was a helicopter about to land that no one else could see or hear and it finally abated.

On Thursday, after a few sleepless nights the pigs arrived. It did NOT go smoothly – the sow, Blackie is ENORMOUS! Way, way bigger than I had expected. The boar, Bob was sitting down on his haunches and looking really hacked off. We walked them – Sandy the previous owner and Andrew, her friend with the 4×4 and trailer who brought them, down the track and he reckoned it was worth trying to drive it. Blackie lumbered out of the trailer and fairly quickly Ady was able to lead her up the croft and into her new pen. She is very overweight so will start to slim down a bit over the summer here but will still be a pricey mouth to feed, and we never really wanted her anyway, it was just that she came with Bob.

Bob took forever to come out of the trailer and then could not really stand. He laid down for a while, tried and failed to get up a few times and then just laid down. We had a cup of tea with Sandy and Andrew and their kids (they had brought one each!) before they needed to head away to catch the ferry (which they only just managed). Leaving poor old Bob. Sandy was upset, this was very much not how she had wanted it all to go either and I think she found it really hard to leave them.

We left Bob to it, hoping he just needed to get over the trauma of the journey, fed the others and had to go down to a community meeting. We decided Bob would either not last the night due to the shock and possible injury, or would perk up and be fine by morning. We checked him a few times but no real change.

The meeting was fairly straightforward with no big upsets but I think everyone had been anticipating something to kick off and by the time we got home I had bright starry flashing lights in my peripheral vision, a real spacey feeling and was just utterly exhausted. I made dinner and felt a little better but by 10pm (early for me) I was falling asleep so went to bed and fell straight asleep. I was worried I might be ill and felt as though I had spent hours crying – my eyes hurt and were hard to focus and I was just so very, very tired. Turns out it must have been stress because after a good nights sleep I did feel a lot better.

Friday morning Bob was trying to stand (not very successfully). Ali came up for a cup of tea and to meet the pigs. I spent ages baking for the evening – cheesy stars, pizzas, quiches etc as it was Cheese Night. We spent some time with Bob deciding the best course of action and then went down for the evening. Had a really good night, good turn out, some lovely food, some good chats and laughs and a late arrival home. Unusually Davies and Scarlett stayed with us and we all came home together although we were part of the last to leave posse. My excess of wine drinking hit me on the way home and I felt a bit rough but we sat on the sporran drinking cups of tea and star gazing and I perked up.

Saturday – I slept in and felt much better for it. A mix of out on the croft stuff, crocheting and making pizza for dinner. We watched Doctor Who and it was supposed to be an early night but somehow that didn’t quite happen. Ady had been at work in the morning and done laundry, Scarlett made a start on painting the sporran with green wood preserver which had arrived on the ferry.

Today – Scarlett’s done more wood preserver painting, I tidied and cleaned the bathroom and bedroom in preparation for Mum & Dad visiting next week, Ady did wood working stuff with Mike this morning, Davies has been catching up on some iplayer stuff, Ady cooked roast pork. It’s been quite cold but dry so not the glorious calling you outside weather of earlier in the week but not bad either.

We will have to make a decision about Bob in the next day or so – kill him or keep giving him 24 hour reprieves. Ady and I both have the same gut feeling that he is not going to make it, I think he has internal injuries which are just too severe and would probably prevent him from breeding again anyway. It’s such a shame as this felt like a real poetic solution to losing Tom and infact might just mean another dead pig to deal with and a huge great sow we never wanted anyway. We WWOOFed with so many hosts who had allowed their livestock holding numbers to get out of hand through poor management or sentimentality and we are determined not to go the same way and end up running some sort of animal sanctuary but it’s really hard playing god too. Decisions, decisions…

Yesterday was a wonderful day – I spent almost all of it in the polytunnel sowing hundreds of seeds. Seeds in containers, seeds in egg boxes and seeds in the ground. I just love the poetry of planting tiny little bombs of potential amazing plants and flowers and food and waiting to see what might happen – it;s like giving birth to a million tiny children and waiting to watch them grow. The sun was shining, birds were singing, chickens came and hung out with me and I sang along to my music.

Ady was getting the replacement wind turbine that we have had since December but not gotten round to fixing up back up and running. Steve and Trudi came up and chatted with me for a bit which had the dual outcome of really winding me up and really making me grateful I’m not a director any more. I ranted at Ady for about 15 minutes after they’d gone which made me feel much better. I’ve withdrawn my name from the running as chair of the community association too. I really am determined to just live here this year and only give my time to fun things I want to do for pleasure rather than things which feel like the ‘right’ thing to do.

One of my rants yesterday was people like Steve and Trudi and indeed Mike who keeps telling Ady we don’t know how lucky we are having our view and our life here that we do indeed both know how very lucky we are and fully appreciate what we’ve got but have also worked really hard, made lots of compromises and tough choices, put up with the challenges of living off grid in a caravan on a remote island miles and miles from family and friends, put hours every single day into just surviving and have come from 20 years of working in demanding jobs prior to this life, unlike pretty much anyone else here. We got our croft as a result of a credible, feasible business plan and an interview and have poured tens of thousands of pounds and four years of our lives into making what we have here from a bare field to what it is today. Every choice has been researched, discussed, agonised over, every purchase has been pondered and considered, every livestock loss felt keenly, many many night spent lying awake, many conversations between the four of us as to whether we are doing the right thing. So fuck off with your ‘you don’t know how lucky you are’ bollocks actually.

Anyway…. worked that off my chest didn’t I?!

After polytunnelling I came in for a shower, we played games and I made quiche for dinner with some of the suddenly huge stash of eggs we have 🙂

Today was firewood day – it took us a while to get the chainsaw running, it is new (although we’ve actually had it for about a year!!) so we filled the fuel and chain oil tanks but it took a while to get started and I think we flooded it. It had been our plan to go down to the woodland to cut some stuff but we faffed with it for so long it got late so in the end we just chopped up a load of stuff that we had around the woodstore and had not been able to split with the axe including the remains of a picnic bench. Given us a good weeks worth of wood though. Will do some more over the next few days. We had lunch – outside! and then I went down to Crafternoon with Fliss, Ali and Deb. Topics of conversation were mostly bitching about yesterdays directors meeting.

Home to shut up the shed, water the seedlings and enjoy Ady cooking dinner. We watched some River Cottage and episode 1 of Haven which we got from Lovefilm on the basis it’s similar to Warehouse 13 and Eureka. It is indeed very similar, maybe too much so.

Friday and Saturday were pretty much wall to wall solid rain. It started raining early on Friday morning and just didn’t stop for about 48 hours. So Friday was an indoors day – crochet, animal programmes, pizza, games, music, chatting.

Saturday was work for Ady and I in the morning – me at Post Office, him at the White House. I walked along to meet him and we came home together in the rain. Vikki was over visiting for a couple of nights staying with Mike and Deb and we’d been invited down. I had made excuses for Davies and Scarlett so they stayed home while Ady and I went down. It was pretty boring, made slightly better by Ali and Doug being there and just as rowdy as me… we had nice chats and played a nice game and legged it by 9pm.

Back for curry and Warehouse 13.

Sunday the sun came back. Bad Neil came up for many cups of tea in the morning, I did some polytunnel weeding and Ady did some pig pen stuff in the afternoon, then Vikki came up for a cup of tea just as we were feeding animals. Ady cooked dinner, we watched Doctor Who, somehow it ended up really late.

Today was my final post office shift for now as Jinty came back today. The usual tea drinking and chatting, then home for lunch. Ady had made soup with the chicken remains from last night which was very nice. We met the boat as we had animal feed coming off and that was very sociable sitting in the sunshine with various Rum folk waiting for the boat to arrive. Back home for more polytunnel weeding for me while Ady did some wind turbine stuff to get the replacement for the one which broke last year up and running.

I made bread dough and lasagne for dinner (the lasagne was for dinner, not the bread dough! although I did make garlic bread for dinner too) and we watched Warehouse 13 – 2 episodes as I was so efficient with my dinner prep that we had eaten and were sitting down before 9pm. First night this year with no fire lit although it is pretty cold in here now (12 degrees actually, just checked). Firewood chopping tomorrow to hopefully stock up on the final run of what we’ll need for this year and then we can start working on building up the supply ready for next year.

Post office for me again this morning. A busy morning again, not of working so much as making tea and chatting.

Ady was working too – helping move stuff about and clean the newly converted into two houses SNH white house. After work I walked along to meet him, collected the laundry and we came home for lunch. We watched an Attenborough programme and then Ady went to do more stuff on the pig pen while I did some more weeding in the polytunnel, almost there with that now. If the weather is kind enough to be in there tomorrow I should get it all cleared ready to start sowing. It is forecast to be grim though so it may end up being  a crochet day instead.

It is days like today which remind me why we love it here so much. Long, sunny, beautiful and free.

This morning Ady was was working on the new pig pen. I helped carry some posts up the hill and then went off to plant artichokes. Ali had given me some more yesterday so I wanted to get them all in. Then I went down to the polytunnel and spent an hour or so weeding. A couple of chickens came and joined me and it was lovely. Back up for a quick shower before lunch and then Ady came down with me to the village. We collected a new gas bottle as ours ran out on Monday so we are on our spare, got some bits out of the freezer and checked for post then he came back to the croft while I went to Fliss’s for Crafternoon.

I got back around 6ish, we played a round of Blokus and then I got dinner sorted.

That all sounds very brief and rather mundane but trust me it was sunny and lovely and one of the nicest days I’ve had in ages. Outside is wonderful!

Monday – In the morning I chopped up some firewood and helped Ady move a barn door from the bottom of the croft to halfway up. We’ve used it as the floor of a pig pen a couple of times and it was in a house Ady has dismantled to use the bits for a new house. We have two rehomed pigs arriving next week so needed to finish creating a new area for them next to Barbara, Waddles and Ben Fogle (current three girls – Barbara and Waddles will be staying, Ben Fogle may be pregnant so we’ll wait and see if she is but eventually she will be sausages. Does that all sound a bit too much like I’m blogging in code?!) so they can meet at a distance before fully integrating them. Ady is working on that this week with odd bits of assistance when he needs them.

We had pancakes for lunch in  celebration of the chickens finally starting to lay eggs again then Ady and I went to the boat. Calmac and Johnston Bros – the chandlery and fuel station in Mallaig – had pulled out all the stops to get our jerry cans of petrol back to us on the boat, Calmac are really very lovely to us from the Mallaig office and really go out of their way to be helpful. We collected that and called in to the shop to get the shop key as I am Mrs Post Office for the week while Jinty is off.

Back home and up the hill with a 20lt jerry can each, trying hard to love the hill after a lecture from Fliss and Ali about doing the hill more if I am finding the hill hard on Saturday night! It started to spit a bit so having unsuccessfully tried to burn a load of empty milk cartons after feeding all the out of date milk (from the shop) to the pigs who loved it and drank from the bottles like babies, I came in for a cup of tea and to sort out some dinner prep. We had home made bagels with chicken and bacon and home made coleslaw so bagel making (make dough, prove dough, shape dough, allow to prove again, poach the bagels, bake the bagels, toast the bagels….) and coleslaw making took time. Scarlett grated the carrots for me which was fab as I hate grating things. We played games and had dinner while watching two Warehouse 13s.

Today – Post Office for me. Not sure if word was out or whether it was normal Tuesday morning behaviour but it was madly busy, I must have boiled the kettled 10 times as people kept coming for coffees. I had a long chat with a tourist and generally enjoyed being down there and sociable. Home for lunch, a bit of helping Ady and then baking cookies with Scarlett. It was grey and drizzly outside so Ady was dodging showers while getting more done on the pigs pen. I had a message from the pig rehoming woman to say she can bring them next week so booked them on the ferry. Exciting! 🙂

Saturday – I realised late ish on Friday that I had said the first Rum choir meeting would be on Saturday. I had also tentatively arranged for a visiting couple to call in for a cup of tea on their way to the boat. They were supposed to be camping at Kilmory so by my calculations would not be with me before 9am and would need to leave before 11 to meet the boat so I knew I had a window for them turning up. I spent the time crocheting and looking out of the window, having decided they were not coming I walked down to the hall. No one came for choir – Fliss messaged me to say she had thought it was 11am rather than 1130, Deb messaged me later to say she had forgotten and Stevie had called in to see Ady to say he had changed his mind about doing it. I gave it five minutes then walked round to meet Ady from work instead.

We decided to leave the car in the village and walk home, meeting Ali and Eve coming  back from the ferry so chatted to them awhile before coming home for lunch. It was sunny but really cold out so we ended up watching animal programs, crocheting and having showers / hairbrushes before getting ready to go down to Fliss’. Fliss had invited a load of us round for the evening, we called in at the shop for snacks and drinks and to collect the post (new kettle and new wellies! Yay) before heading round there. We were the first, shortly followed by Lesley, Bad Neil and Baby Dougal, Doug, David and David’s visiting girlfriend Raquel, Mike & Deb and Jed. Ali came too – all of them were invited by they had had Joss round for a sleepover with Eve the night before and Eve was knackered so Sean had stayed home with her while Ali popped round. Fliss had done some delicious food – a fish stew, pizza, venison, cajun chicken, breads and more and it was all lovely. We ate, chatted, drank and had a great evening. Davies and Scarlett left around 1030, we followed around 1230 getting home about 1am. I’d had a fair bit to drink so went to bed while the genny was still on and the electric blanket was still working 🙂 Scarlett came and got into bed with me for a while. She then got back up when everyone else had gone to bed to wrap gifts for me.

Today – Ady went off to do wood stuff with Mike, I woke about 9ish and read in bed for an hour or so, then got up and made soup and bread rolls for lunch. I drank lots of tea and crocheted. I woke the kids around midday and they gave me my pressies – loads of chocolate, a wine tumbler from my favourite potter who made my lovely tea mug I got for my birthday, a card and painting from Scarlett and one of Davies’ classic tear jerking cards complete with lovely illustrations and words. I do have the most lovely, lovely children 🙂

Ady came home, we had lunch and then walked down to the village for cinema club. Trudi put on Restless Natives  which was really good, never seen it or heard of it before. It was funny, the soundtrack was ace and the scenery was stunning, really enjoyed it. There was us, Trudi, Jed and a couple of tourists so pretty small gathering but good to have started it up again. Next Sunday and onwards!

Home for animal feeding, getting dinner on and playing some Blokus. I rang my parents. We watched Doctor Who and somehow it got really late. Everyone very tired so off to bed with me now.

Wednesday morning was pretty grim weather, again. Ady and I put up the price signs on slates I had made but that was about the sum total for me of productive on the croft stuff. After lunch I went down to Crafternoon. Ady came with me to get stuff from the freezer for dinner. Had a nice couple of hours down there with Fliss, Ali and Deb.

Thursday we went to the boat in the morning, we had petrol going off. Animal feed delivery and meat order came off for us along with a couple I’ve been chatting with on facebook who are here for a few days. He came last summer to do a mountain leaders course and is currently doing off grid living in a van, she has a 3 yo son and a life in North Wales so despite him being very keen to make a life here she is less enthused. They are over for a few days wild camping and walking during which he is hoping to persuade her.

Lots of treks to and fro the Jeep with wheelbarrows to empty the car of animal feed, compost and straw, feeding animals and then down to the monthly community meeting for Ady and I. We took wheelbarrows with us to collect veg and a sack of coal. The meeting was fairly productive, first we’ve been to in months. I abandoned my barrow of coal once we got to the fork as I am unsteady enough on flat ground in good shoes in broad daylight, pushing a wheelbarrow in the dark on our track seemed rather misguided! Home for burger and chips for dinner.

Today we had planned all week to be a trip across to Harris. We’ve been meaning to get there all year to see whether the winter storms had washed up any interesting treasure on the beach and today looked good on the weather forecast and was a no boat day so seemed a good plan. Everyone up and on the road by midday for a lovely few hours over there in the sunshine. We found various ‘treasure’ and carted it all back across the beach to the car then back up from car to croft. Some driftwood, fishboxes and random plastic tat which Ady plans to make water filters from, a whole box of stuff for Scarlett including footballs, deer antlers, two goat horns, an unidentified skull and further random plastic tat. Scarlett corrected me that it ‘was not random plastic tat, it is precious loot!’ when I dismissed it as such 🙂

Home for a cup of tea on the sporran, animal feeding, a search party to find Waddles the runty pig who had followed us as far as the footbridge when we left earlier then tried to keep pace with us in the woodland on the other side of the river as she doesn’t want to cross the river. We thought she’d get bored and come home once we’d gone but she’d obviously hung around and missed her dinner. Ady and I walked back that way calling her and she met us halfway. She is just like a dog!

Pizza and Doctor Who this evening. Everyone tired from the fresh air and exercise. I am feeling Very Old today.

but in the interests of staying up to date…

We had hoped for a semi decent day of weather today and had plans to be outside but it mostly rained. Ady moved animal feed about first thing so he was productive. I was less so… we ticked various things off our lists of stuff to do though. After lunch (leftovers all round) Ady and I walked down to the village to collect the post from the last 2 days – LOVEfilm, the postcard stands and a few other bits. We also collected our cheese which had come and moved that into the hall kitchen fridge as we didn’t have the freezer key with us. We chatted to a few folk outside the shop too.

Back at home we had a cup of tea, Ady made a couple of phonecalls and then we went down to the shed to fix the postcard stands and some signs up and fill the stands with Ady and Davies’ postcards. We have space for 15 designs and they currently have just 6 between them so both have been tasked with finding more photos / doing more drawings to get ordered to fill with a bigger selection. Ady took the plastic off the sign so that it is now pointing to the shed for visitors. More signage and some final titivating in the shed to do but it’s basically there and ready to go. Really pleased with it and hoping for a good first season. Need to get cracking with more stock for it really now…

In other news I made a steak pie for dinner which was much enjoyed, Scarlett and I have finally totally synced our periods and both started today, explaining higher than usual levels of stroppiness yesterday all round ;).

Erm… Wednesday would have been Crafternoon. Ady and I walked down to the village in the morning to get stuff out for dinner and collect post. We bumped into Mike and Ali so stopped to chat. Ali invited us up for a cup of tea but we were keen to get back. On the way back we bumped into Stevie and Trudi but still just about made it back for Popmaster and then planted out artichokes. Ali gave me another bag in the afternoon dug up from her garden so we still have more to plant, planning to put them in a different spot and try and have two artichoke patches for pig feed. We did a little bit more in the shed before I went off to Crafternoon and then Ady went across to help Dave and Faye put roof panels up in the cabin.

Thursday – We helped Dave and Faye a bit more in the morning, then went to meet the boat as we had diesel coming off. Dave and Faye wanted a lift to the second boat. The Rangerover had conked out with a load of firewood in the back so Dave came to have a look at that with us and decreed it ‘fooked’ 🙁 Water in the engine. It will need draining and refilling, which is rather beyond us but we will have  a try. The four of us tried to get it out of the way as it was at the croft gate. First Ady, Dave and Faye pushed while I steered but we got it stuck in one of the big dips (which is mostly a puddle when the river is running high and floods) on the path. We tried and tried and had almost given up when I suggested that as I was stronger and heavier than Faye maybe she should steer and I should help push. It almost killed the three of us – Ady and Dave made some very odd noises and went funny colours but we did it. I walked up to the car with them and collected all the amazon stuff which had arrived, Ady took them to the pier to see them off then back to the hostel to do a couple of hours cleaning. He collected the veg on the way back.

Friday Ady spent most of the day working on the path up the croft hill, gathering wheelbarrow loads of gravel from the river and tipping it into the mud to make a track. It is so, so much better. Pathbuilding is one of the tasks on our volunteer list for this year, we’re planning a footpath at least all the way up to the caravan and maybe even a rough track to get a car up. If we had that we could probably get all the way up to the caravan all year round. We are looking at another 4×4 with better tyres and keep seeing bargains on ebay that we can’t get here… Ady has a monster truck yen I think. I spent most of the day doing shed stuff and chopping firewood. Ali, Trudi and Eve walked round in the afternoon so I chatted to them for a while. I came in for a shower and to make nan bread dough and then we all went down to the hall for Curry Night. It had gotten later than I’d planned so curry was more like 730 than the aimed for 630 but a fab time was had by all. We had almost 100% turn out of those on the island with just Stevie not coming along. We stayed out til crazy late and I felt rather the worse for wear on Saturday morning….

Saturday – I was up and about though, although not terribly constructive. I read in bed for a while, did some crochet and then walked down to meet Ady from work as I realised I still had the freezer key in my coat pocket. We chatted to loads of people outside the hostel, then more at the shop before finally getting home for a late lunch. Later we walked back down and Scarlett came with us to check for post and gather dairy produce from the shop that we’d somehow neglected to purchase earlier. An early dinner and an early night all round.

Sunday – Ady was doing wood working stuff with Mike in the morning. I made two types of soup (leek and potato and curried parsnip), bread rolls and peanut butter cookies and Scarlett made shortbread bears. I chopped some more firewood and then Ady came home so we all had lunch. After lunch the kids went off for a walk while Ady and I gathered stuff from the car and he showed me what he and Mike had been doing in the woods, chopping down, splitting and debarking wood for fences and stuff. He is really enjoying learning stuff from Mike, it’s a good Sunday morning regular slot :).

Home for roast dinner and a round of blokus or two.

Monday – It’s rained and rained and rained all day. After Popmaster we walked down to the village in waterproofs to fax a butchers order, put in our veg order, get stuff from the freezer and buy milk. We stopped for a cup of tea with Jinty and I agreed to do a weeks worth of Post Office shifts from Saturday as she is heading off island for a few days. Back home in the rain, baked some rolls with dough I made yesterday to go with some of the soup – so glad I’d made the double batches, I should do a soup day more often!

An afternoon of internet for Davies, animal documentaries for Scarlett (and me), crochet for me and tidying the kitchen cupboards for Ady, all happily coexisting in the same space doing our own things. Dinner of our own pork chops and potato gratin (thank you Jinty for free out of date cream!).