Friday – Ady and I spent the day helping Gav and Laura mostly. We’d agreed to go over to Croft 2 for some concrete mixing at 9ish so having fed our animals and checked on the new chicks we headed over there. The first task was bringing up a big box they have built six of to construct the concrete pads to put the ringbeam on. Laura is now six months pregnant so stuff like that is out of bounds for her so while Gav bailed out water from the hole it was to go into Ady and I fetched the box. It was heavy but mostly just hard to carry because all the weight was on your hands or fingers, none of it able to be shouldered. My hands are still sore now, I should have used gloves.
That brought up we set about measuring stuff and trying to make a water level indicator gizmo work. It did work, perfectly well, it’s just that thanks to an optical illusion of the slope that the crofts are on we all failed to believe what it was telling us and insisted it was wrong. A knocked up beam with a spirit level which somehow we all had more faith in simply proved it to be right. Bonnie and Finn enjoyed playing together while the grown ups talked physics and then we broke for lunch and Ady and I returned to see Davies and Scarlett.
We had lunch and the kids were quite happy staying home drawing and playing lego so I went with Ady to the castle for his appointed meeting with the doctor to have an injection for his tennis elbow. The doctor was not there and it turned out he had gone without waiting for Ady. There are all sorts of problems with the locum service we currently have and we have just learnt that the practise which had pitched for the Small Isle medical practice has not managed to recruit sufficient GPs so is going to advertise again…. any GPs reading who love the highlands and islands…..? 😉
Ady and I hitched a ride with Gav to the pier where our car was as we were almost out of diesel so had decided to leave it there until it came on the boat. It was due but didn’t arrive. The gun from my Dad did though. Hoodies beware….
We came back up with Gav and sat chatting for a while before deciding no more was going to happen that day. Rather a wasted day really but it was nice spending time with Gav and Laura even if not a lot was achieved.
In the evening we all went down for a beer to the shop. Paul is back for 2 weeks to work his notice so was down with his two dogs and there was a good turn out of people including Mark and Doug the two seasonal ghillies from last year who are back now til Christmas. Our resident numbers have taken a real boost temporarily. A really nice evening down the shop with lots of people out. Home for pizza.
Saturday
Rain, rain, rain and rain. I had a very productive morning ticking all sorts of tasks off my to do list, mostly online stuff but all very worthwhile and good to have done and dusted. The kids both had showers and I brushed Scarlett’s hair which took about an hour. Aby sent me a message to say our diesel had finally arrived and was at the pier so after lunch during a dry weather window Ady and I walked down to the pier, filled the car up and brought it home again.
We fed the animals and I spent about an hour in the polytunnel looking at strawberry runners, sorting out the tomatoes and generally tidying things up in there. July and August are write off months in there as it is just too midgey and cleggy to do anything other than a speedy water but it all looks a little less neglected now.
Davies had been making some 3D minecraft characters out of paper so I helped him make them into marionette type puppets with some string.
We’re watching Black Books on dvd at the moment which the kids are really enjoying, adult moments aside, so we watched a couple of those.
Sunday – a rainy morning so while Ady nipped out between showers to do various things including some strimming and I popped out to pick some herbs to dry it was a lot of indoor stuff too. The kids carried on with their crafty stuff they’d been doing and I worked on the newsletter a bit.
The kids didn’t fancy going down for community teashop so Ady and I walked down on our own and sat with Gav and Laura chatting about off grid living and what you most miss (washing machine). The weather had totally picked up by the end so we walked home, collected the car and drove down to put a load of washing on. While it was on we picked raspberries around the village, which I brought back up and turned into 2 jars of jam straightaway. Squirrelling away supplies as we get them for tastes of summer through the bleak winter months ahead 🙂
I hung the washing out while Ady got the roast lamb joint cooking on the barbecue and fed the animals. I then sorted out the herbs to dry and finished crystalising some mint leaves and some borage flowers – very impressed with them, particularly the mint leaves. I also got the vegetables on and then had a brainwave to make a cheesecake for pudding as we had some soft cheese which needed using. I walked down to the shop to buy biscuits for the base and stopped for a beer as a few people were there. Then home to make the cheesecake and serve up dinner.
I managed to explode a half bottle of elderflower fizz all over the kitchen which was most amusing, if rather sticky.
Dinner was gorgeous, I don’t think we’ve had lamb since we moved here and it was lovely with freshly made mint sauce, followed by cheesecake.
It’s been a good week – 12 chicks hatched, all of the rehomed chicks from Ross and Jinty doing well and lots of productive stuff achieved along with TV and radio appearances of course… 😉
ouch to tennis elbow. Is it possible the strimming has caused that?
Comment by Mich — 05 August 2013 @ 9:41 am
If it’s any consolation to Ady, the injection he didn’t get for his elbow probably wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. The evidence isn’t great. Painful though. regular ibuprofen. Wheat bag.
Comment by Jan — 09 August 2013 @ 9:56 pm