Work this morning – post office for me and Ady’s last ever hostel shift. I did mine on Monday. The hostel closes forever this Monday coming and those of us here will be celebrating with tea and cake in the kitchen. It’s an ugly building, really expensive to run, poorly insulated and leaky. It’s been politically fraught ever since it went up and remains so as it is due to come down. But we’ve had some excellent times in that hostel – both working and socialising with various friends who have been staying there. I feel quite affectionate towards it and all it’s quirks.
Post Office was very quiet, a couple of tourists and a handful of locals. Loads of folk have headed over to Eigg today for their anniversary ceilidh celebrations – 18 years since their community buy out. A coming of age for Eigg and while it can be frustrating at times to have comparisons made it is heartening to look across at our neighbouring isle and see how far they have come and how much they have achieved. There are some amazing characters on Eigg, far more so than here on Rum, people who have dedicated so much to their island and making it work. |They will be partying hard this weekend.
Bad Neil, Ross and Jed all appeared at the same time at post office but I made teas and coffees and had just sat down to chat with them when Fliss arrived so I ended up chatting with her inside instead and they had all gone, Missed my regular catch up chat of the week, particularly with Neil. I walked along to meet Ady and we came home. We had lunch and then there was a knock at the door and it was a guy who is over making  a film about Rum’s landscape and people’s relationship with it for his masters. He was a solicitor and gave up to go back to uni and become a film maker. A nice guy with a similar story to our own, if a little less extreme! He is taking lots of stills and camera footage of Rum and then will set audio from interviews with people over it. We said we would all be prepared to be interviewed so he is coming back up to the croft tomorrow afternoon to record us. He spent an hour or so roaming around the croft filming and photographing this afternoon.
Ady and I finished the polytunnel plasticking. Just the door to sort out now. We will probably create a roll up / roll down door with some heavy duty plastic we have and then dig it over and put in some raised beds, a path and some shelves to put seed trays on. We’re also planning a little tool store on the north side and a cold frame / bed with plastic over on the south side to further extend the growing space. Inbetween helping Ady I finished weeding the bed I had almost completed yesterday and turned over the earth in another one. Tomorrow we’ll cut some willow to make hoops to net those two and one more and get them filled with the seeds I have sown (cabbages, radishes and one other tray of seedlings I can’t recall). Then we need to net the rhubarb and asparagus beds and construct a frame around the big long bed which we’re planning to transplant peas (which have already germinated and are ready to plant out) into. If we get even half of that done before we head off on Wednesday we’ll have done really well, particularly as I am working Post office again on Monday and we have the hostel closing party in the afternoon.
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You know you asked if there was anything you could do to help? It really has helped me that you blog so regularly. It gives me something to look forward to reading, especially when I am awake in the wee hours. Such as now. Hmm.
We have a bundle of willow soaking in the bath as I write. It is I n a plastic bag tube as otherwise it will stain the bath and make it slimy. A day soaking for every metre. For C to do her basketry at Kentwell.