Wednesday – it was mostly lovely to not be doing teashop 🙂 We walked down to the village to collect the charged battery with intentions of sorting the car out. As we were walking back up the hill with a wheelbarrow talking about getting some straw bales to make a compost loo for volunteers we walked past  a young couple coming the other way.  We smiled and said hello and they said hello too and went to keep walking, then double backed and blurted out ‘we saw you on telly and came to Rum because of it!’ so we chatted for a while. Turns out they had seen the show and were coming to Skye on holiday so changed their plans slightly to include a day trip to Rum. We must have completely lived up to their expectations walking along talking about stuff like that 🙂
In the evening we went to watch a couple of plays  which were both really good. The first, Mallory was a single hander of a man standing talking, Mallory had he not died in his third Everest attempt, but had done it instead and returned home to his wife and children victorious. It was really good and very captivating. The second was a farce style play about Heslop Harrison’s story of finding rare plant species on Rum and was good, if a little patronising in it’s oh-so-clever -Oxbridge-uni-types manner. All a bit Stephen Fry and Rowan Atkinson. I warmed to the actors a lot more when  there was a power cut – classic Rum, meaning they had to continue without sound or lighting. Ady lent them a headtorch and they spotlit each other in turn depending on who was speaking and threw in lots of impromptu one liners about the dark, electricity and so on. It was hilarious.
Thursday – we decided against the full Shearwater experience of the Soay trip too so spent the morning packing, tidying and generally doing stuff in the caravan. Ady made pancakes for lunch as we were out of bread and then we headed off. The Sheerwater trip was very rocky indeed – no one was actually ill but there were lots of rough looking people. I sat outside with Ady and Bonnie, in a heightened state of everything because of having Bonnie, being aware that several of the people on the boat had seen us on TV and worrying about the kids who were inside feeling ill and failing to get past the packed boat of people to get to the side should they actually be ill. It was all fine but a very big boxer dog sitting next to us was pushing all of my dog fearing buttons and I was very pleased to get off the boat when we finally arrived at Arisaig.
We’ve never been to Arisaig before and didn’t really know where the hire car car park was so roamed around a bit with Bonnie jumping up at every car we passed, being anxious and finally being sick, all of us carrying stuff and trying to look for the car park and being a bit stressed and me needing  a wee! Finally we asked in the Spar shop, took a wrong turning and asked someone else and then actually spotted the car. The hall where the keysafe was was not marked but I took a guess that it was too big to be a residential property in the middle of normal sized houses and sure enough the keysafe was there. So finally in the car and on our way. We stopped at Poundstretcher for a stock up on various stuff then to the hotel. We booked in, got Bonnie and the kids settled, dealt with wifi sign up stuff and then left them in the room while we went to do Morrisons food shop and get McDonalds for dinner. We were back in the room for 9pm, went to move the car as we’d left it in a  loading bay and fortunately some cars were leaving the carpark so we were able to park there rather than the other end of the town and walk back as we’d planned. Then back for baths, telly and bed.
In the morning we had a 8am dentist appointment. I was first, followed by both children, then Ady. All fine with no need for anything other than x rays for Scarlett and Ady and a clean up for me. Both kids will get referrals for orthadentist which will mean another trip off at some point soon. Ah well. We were back in the car for 845am so went to Lidl for various shopping there, then parked up for a quick look in the high street, a stock up on medical supplies at Superdrug and then back in the car to head to Mallaig. We had time there to load stuff onto the van (so much better than carrying it all on), a quick CoOp shop and then on to the ferry. Friends of Big Dave were over using his cabin for the weekend so they introduced themselves and we chatted to them, a Dutch mother and daughter visiting Canna and a couple who visit Arisaig every year and come across on a day trip to Rum. Also to Gina, the catering manager on the Calmac who was delighted to see me and tell me how she’d seen the Fogle show and that the four of us ‘are bloody mental!’ 😀
The home  bit was so smooth – we managed to drive all the way up the croft which meant unloading the shopping was so easy, we all helped put stuff away, ate some of the junk food we’d brought home and had pizza for dinner. We had half thought about going to the shop but it was a bit grey and drizzly so we stayed in instead.
Saturday – work for both me and Ady – shop / PO for me followed by castle tour, castle tour and cleaning followed by another castle tour for Ady. Home for 330pm with time to put dinner on low, feed the animals and then head down for a beer and catch up with Rum folk at the shop. I had heard through the grapevine that Lesley had had the baby so that was talked about and we had a nice couple of hours down there with various folk before coming home for curry. Later I had a text and photo from Lesley 🙂 Exchanged a few texts with her over the night / today. She is hoping to be back to Rum for next weekend 🙂
Today – Scarlett and I went bramble picking this morning as she had spotted some last night infront of the hall that were ready. We got enough for 3 jars of jam 🙂 Of the 8 I made last week I have already sold 6 so it was good to get more done. I finally bought jam jars this year after recycling them usually. It is so nice to use brand new ones 🙂 Nice to have an hour with just Scarlett too.
After lunch (more mainland junk food) we all went back outside – Davies and Scarlett to play / hang out with the animals and me and Ady to gather up the pieces of a shed base which we acquired and have been using all around the croft on boggy bits of ground but now intend using as a shed base! We’re going to put a shed at the croft gate to act as a shop for next season. We did that and it started to rain so that meant the end of outside time although I did manage to water the polytunnel and take some seeds I got while we were off down there.
Back indoors Davies did a birthday card for Ranger Trudi, Scarlett had a shower, I made popcorn and then we all sat down to watch Jurassic Park together which we’d bought while we were off. I think Davies has seen the first one before but Scarlett had not. We have 2 and 3 also and will then get 4 when it comes out on dvd.
Roast dinner, Doctor Who and bed.