Thursday – Ady went down before us to watch the ponies being tacked up. He is doing some ghillieing next week and Good Neil the Farrier was over so the ponies were being shod. The kids and I packed up a picnic and followed him down. We walked along to the pier with Trudi and Debs walked part way with us for a chat too.
There were high hopes for a good Sheerwater trip but to no avail. We sailed all the way around Soay but Ronnie the usual skipper was off and the skipper was not chasing anything even if it was there. On Saturday they saw a basking shark so they are out there, just not on our watch it seems. Plenty of manx shearwaters though and lots of diving gannets, a couple of porpoises doing their thing and one of our fellow passengers on board being seasick…
On the walk back we collected enough raspberries to make a single sacred jar of raspberry jam. Ady went home to feed the animals, get dinner on and give Bonnie some time outside, the kids and I went along to Sean & Ali’s for Eve’s 7th birthday party. The kids spent the time playing mostly outside. Ali is so funny, she always makes such a point of how well they all get on and is utterly oblivious to the fact that Davies and Scarlett are playing babysitters – they more or less enjoy doing so and have fun but it’s not as though they are getting their teenage social needs met by the two little girls… Fliss stayed too and we chatted to Sean & Ali and updated them on all they’d missed while they’d been away (they’d been off for two weeks, getting back the day before). They told us tales of the mainland and also having been at Kilmory meeting Dermot O’Leary and Gordon Buchanan  who were on Rum for a night filming over on the other side of the island. Various folk met them, I’d have quite liked to meet Gordon, we really enjoyed his polar bear and wolf documentaries.
Ady joined us and loads of other folk down at the shop for a very late night. Most of the village was out I think at some point but the die hards were us and The Neils, Jed, Sean and Nicola. It was a really good evening and I think we finally made it home just about by midnight having had emotional goodbyes with Good Neil and Bad Neil, who were both heading off the next day.
Friday – morning the potential new family came up at 11ish and stayed til about 130pm. They were nice and asked lots of sensible questions. They are also interested in Home Ed and we talked a lot about that. I always forget how big a part of our lives that is, it feels so much an incidental but is one of the biggest things about us (well maybe not since we moved here I guess). Ady and I had a quick something to eat and then headed off down to the pier. The boat was running a half an hour late according to Calmac but the Friday boat is often late anyway and it was actually a full hour late coming in. Fortunately our petrol came off after the walk all the way down and the wait. And it was sunny and not midgey! We waited with a father, son and son’s friend who had been here for a few days. The boys were the same age as Scarlett, attached to their phones and ranting about lack of signal and wifi – a good reminder to Ady that our simple life and unconnected from social media kids is no bad thing. Calmac left the van so we drove Jinty’s van back to the village and Jinty drove that, we helped unload the van, took Bad Neil’s chicken food along to him which had arrived and chatted for a while to folk before coming home. Jinty had had some cream doughnuts come on the delivery so we’d bought them as a Friday treat and enjoyed them with a cup of tea back at the croft with the kids.
Davies & Scarlett had emptied out their wardrobes and made piles of storage / outgrown / wearing now so I helped them fold stuff up, put stuff in vacuum bags and tidily back in their wardrobes. I also ordered some hanging shelves for them both to tidy them even more. Davies made pizza dough and then it was time to head down to the shop again, this time for Nicola’s leaving party. There were jugs of cocktails and it would have been very easy to stay longer and later (several people did!) but we were all pretty tired from the night before so headed home by 9ish for pizza and Doctor Who.
Saturday – work for both Ady & I. Post office first for me. It was fairly quiet with no Neil and not many other people in. Ady was cleaning the White House so I walked along to meet him. As he had the place entirely to himself he had taken the liberty of having a bath which seemed like such a good idea that I did the same! Luxury! It probably won’t happen again as next Saturday we’re not working and after that the work on converting it back into 2 houses should have started so it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. Then along to the castle to do a tour. We had four people on the tour, two were constantly watching the clock and were actually quite rude and annoying, the other two were charming and really enjoyed it so we chatted to them awhile longer. Ady told them that there was a show about Rum on TV on Monday, neglecting to mention it was actually about us – will be funny if they watch it! 😀
Back home for late lunch and catch up with the kids. I did the last of the vacuum packing up my wool under the sofas and Ady cooked a lovely curry. A couple of episodes of Eureka and then a fairly early night all round.
Today – I had planned a lie in but woke just after 8 and read for an hour or so instead of sleeping later. Ady is starting to fret a tiny bit about his ghillieing so went on a long walk around the village and crofts with Bonnie. We realised that Scarlett’s duckling was missing so spent ages searching for it only to find it swimming on the river. Both lovely to see and amazing to realise we could have lost it as it is a rubbish walker so may well have struggled to get back up to the croft. Scarlett came down to help get it out and return it for some much needed food after it’s adventure.
We had lunch, I made some brownies, we ate some brownies… I did some weeding and sorting out in the polytunnel, a tiny bit of weeding in the walled garden and then had a walk all around the croft picking flowers, taking photos and stopping to sit and just enjoy the view for a while. Ady scythed the next line for extending the pig fence (now waiting for more electric fence wire to arrive, should be here within the week) and put in some posts. The kids had showers. I brushed Scarlett’s hair and we watched the first of a two parter of Doctor Who, then the second part with roast dinner.