Friend in need…

We had Ranger Mike and Thalassa round for dinner last night. Thalassa is an ecology student who was here for a month last summer doing research on the newts that live on Rum. She is lovely and fitted in really well last year with the islanders. She has now finished her Phd and is job hunting but finding it really hard so filling in her time with volunteer stuff to enhance her CV and offered to come here for do some stuff with Mike. She’s been here for 3 weeks this time, staying with Mike and both of them have found it slightly straining I think. Yesterday was her last night and we’d invited them up for pizza night which Mike is always angling for invites to ;). We’d been to theirs for mexican last weekend.

I’d been down to the school in the morning to deliver the disclosure form that had finally arrived in the post (like CRB check for Scotland) while Ady went to the castle for a bath to try and ease his neck. It seemed to work and he is much better today but has a doctors appointment on Tuesday which I will insist he keeps even if he is fully recovered as he also had a nose bleed which may have been coincidental but I’d like checked over and if nothing else he can get some better painkillers as we have very little here and they would be useful to have to hand. I ended up chatting to Fliss for longer than I’d planned and walked very briskly back to the croft but was intercepted by Grace (lovely woman, talks for Scotland, much of which I don’t understand as she has the broadest east coast accent I think I have ever heard, wants to move here to run a bunkhouse, like everything here it is taking years and years to make happen). Ady had beaten me home, made the kids lunch and met me halfway in the car. We dropped Davies and Scarlett and their lunch off at Mike’s for J Ranger (where they did drawings of rocky shores and underwater species to go on display in the visitor centre and watched a dvd of British sealife.

Ady and I collected a pile of firewood and then started bringing up stones and rocks to try and create a path up the croft. It will take loads and loads and loads but every little helps so we made a start by loading the car up then reversing it up as far as we could go and unloading it into the tracks. I then walked down to collect the kids while Ady carried on. Back at home I made pizza dough and chopped some wood up while Ady got water and emptied the loo. Fingers crossed neither of these will be tasks like that within the next few weeks although Screwfix rang today to say our order has gone to Osborne Drive instead of here – pants! That means a delay.

The welly saga appears to have ended though with all returned and cancelled wellies now refunded and my new pair here and so far appearing to be suitable. The tea saga (not even sure I blogged that) is also remedied I think with a refund for the missing tea now in hand and a reorder of a replacement despatched so hopefully here soon.

We had a nice evening with Mike and Thally, pizzas much appreciated. They left about 11ish and went off singing Jessie J which we’d watched on youtube and has earwormed all of us all day today too.

Today we had pancakes for breakfast and then Ady and I went to meet the boat and wave Thally off, our Screwfix order we’d been expecting didn’t arrive although we now know why. Back at the croft we brought more wood up, I chopped a load, Ady cleaned out the chickens and we planned a few jobs to do over the next weeks or so. I am away for an overnight supermarket run with Fliss in a week, then a 3 night trip to Skye and Harris & Lewis the following week and by then will definitely have started at the school so we want to get as much done next week as possible.

We are both slightly exhausted by various goings on with Fliss and Sandy who we love dearly but are by far the most high maintenance friends we’ve ever had. I am loathe to get too involved as their issues drag me into a marriage guidance type role I am desperate to never take on again after living with my parents for 20 years – it’s very hard being a friend to both people in a shaky marriage but there are greater issues at play which the intimacy of living on an island in a small community means become everyone’s issues really. Slightly tough to see the photos on friendfeed of lots of uncomplicated friends celebrating together…

Osborne Drive is on the market, we’ll see how that pans out. I’m looking forward to family and friends starting to arrive for visits within the next few weeks to talk over plans with more impartial ears that the people who already live here!