I think I’m getting better. I’m just a bit rubbish at allowing my body to catch up with itself to be sure…
Friday – A late start for some of us (Davies and I) and a rather topsy turvey late breakfast / early lunch arrangement.
Ady and I went to the boat and collected a couple of parcels and helped with Jinty’s delivery which was huge. It was crazily midgey at the pier, definitely the worst I’ve ever known it down there where it is usually quite midge-free.
Back to the croft, I made some pizza dough for dinner later and we all walked back to the village as Ady had arranged to meet Claire to start working out details for a Swap Shop – a bit like freecycle, a space where you can put stuff you don’t want for other islanders to help themselves. They have one on Eigg and it works really well -= althought we’re a much smaller community we think we may well be able to make it work here too.
Back to the croft for dinner – one of the parcels was our static bolt down kit and another oven shelf, the little oven only came with one shelf so now having two means life is massively improved when doing a lot of oven stuff, pizza being a prime example. I can now cook 3 pizzas at once instead of just 2!
I left the others to an evening of playing cards and listening to music and headed to the village hall for Ladies Night. I could have happily given it a miss really but felt I should go as I’ve been pushing it. It was quiet – only Fliss, Lesley, Claire, Kate, Izzi (and her visiting daughter and niece) and me, but it was a nice evening. We finished about 1230am and the walk back to the croft even with headtorch and wind up torch did feel a very long way. I still paused a couple of times to look at the sky and feel overwhelmed by the beauty of living here though, particularly when walking alongside the river.
Today we’d agreed to help Ian on a Hebnet (our internet provider) mission to get a reel of cable a kilometre up the hill behind us which will mean the whole island is getting faster broadband speeds. It was hard work – Ady, Mike and Ian were using a motorised barrow with the cable reel and scaffold poles in it, I was following behind with a satellite dish in a box which got heavier the higher we climbed. Terrain was crazy with boggy bits, thigh high grass and holes up to your knees. But the sun shone, there was enough breeze to keep the midges away and it was stunningly beautiful the higher you climbed. At the top we put up a cradle with the scaffold poles to unreel the cable from. I volunteered to stay at the top and monitor it being unravelled, which meant I got to sit on a rock and wait for the others to come back up again. We then trundled all the way back down again, often as hard as going up in the first place.
Nearly five hours of pretty hard graft finished off with a well deserved cider in Kate and Ian’s garden 🙂 We came home to feed animals, drop Bonnie off and grab some cash before heading back down for a beer at the shop and to get a piece of pork for dinner tomorrow.
It feels odd to know lots of friends have been together last weekend and this weekend – I remember struggling with this feeling about this time last year too. Am really hoping we can pull off a Rum fest…