because we didn’t really get a Scottish one… so far this week has been glorious. Almost midge free, sunny to the point of mild sunburn yesterday and without a spot of rain.
Monday – Ady worked in the morning. I walked down to the village for a cup of tea and chat with Fliss. I forgot to take the freezer key with me so came back to the croft to collect it and met Ady heading down to meet the ferry as our petrol was coming off. So I went with him. We got a lift down to the boat and a lift back for our 2 jerry cans of petrol, while we walked back in the sunshine. We came back up to the croft for a late lunch and then headed down for Tai Chi. We stopped for a beer afterwards at the shop before coming home for dinner.
Tuesday – Ady did various things out on the croft while I baked brownies for Trudi’s birthday and got dinner all prepped and ready to go in the oven. We went down for Trudi’s birthday and the first meeting of Whisky Club – an idea Ady had for tasting the expensive whiskys that Jinty sometimes gets in. However many people who want to join in split the cost of the bottle between them and all get their share. This means some of the pricey £35-40  bottles she gets in turn into a fiver each and they all still get several healthy measures. Predictably it was a very late night with three bottles of whisky sampled…. Jinty utterly ran with the idea dusting off a notebook to create Whisky Club, nominating Ady as Mr Presidento – Forever! and insisting on everyone giving each whisky a star rating out of five and commenting on it in the book. It was a hilarious and very fun evening. I don’t drink whisky, well in theory I don’t so I was given free Baileys as an honorary non whisky drinking member, although I know for a fact it was being regularly topped up with whisky anyway.
Trudi had a great birthday, ending up sobbing at the end about being drunk on whisky and nearly 50, as is right and proper on anyone’s birthday. Davies and Scarlett came home, cooked their dinner, got ours heated up ready and were very tolerant about us being late 😉
Wednesday was our wedding anniversary – Ady went off to work for a couple of hours in the morning (hostel cleaning for Billy the roofer, quite our favourite of all the contractors that do work for SNH – he was here when we came for our interview and moved here and has been back every winter since. It was his mats which helped get the caravan up the hill to the croft and last year he gave us enough old wood from the White House roof to keep us in firewood for the whole winter. We heart him lots) while I slept off the whisky club hangover and the kids slept off the late night. He came home with a bottle of fizz 🙂
Scarlett and I went down to do an hours bramble picking and walked all the way along to the campsite and old pier to check the ripeness of the bushes there – a few weeks away yet. We walked back along the beach which was very lovely. We collected the post and some shopping on our way home.
Today has been super windy but still sunny. We voted on the Sheerwater and decided it would be too choppy so not to go, the kids have spent too many two hour trips to Soay this year feeling sick and not seeing anything anyway. Next Thursday is the last trip of the year and at the moment the forecast is good for that day. After lunch Ady and I headed down to do some work on the bridge for the Kinloch Castle Friends Association and then called in to the workshop to organise our freezer. We needed to do a stocktake, scrape off some of the ice which has built up so much it was hard to close it and clear out some of the stuff which has been in there ages and probably won’t get eaten now, meaning Bonnie and the pigs all had feasts of food for dinner tonight. It now closes and locks, we know what’s in it and there is space for the first stash of pork which should be done in the next couple of weeks.
The birds are doing a great job in the fruit cage of clearing weeds and grass around all the trees and bushes and should also be eating any caterpillars and slugs. Now all the fruiting is over they should not do any damage to the trees and bushes and are far more efficient than us at weeding and trimming the grass down. We will probably get them to do the same in the walled garden around the raised beds. All we have to do is throw a couple of handfuls of feed where we want cleared and they scratch around for it and do all the ground clearing at the same time. Genius 🙂 We walked the croft planning our next project which is the creation of a volunteer base camp for next year – we need to construct a compost loo, camp kitchen / hang out spot, firepit and places to pitch a tent including our bell tent. The plan is to attract groups of volunteers who we just pass food to do organise themselves and to be able to offer camping pitches too. Our next task towards that is a bonfire for some of the clutter we have built up, a sort out of a couple of shed spaces and dismantling of two then moving the posts and corrugated sheeting over to the base camp area ready to construct it. Â If we have more weather like this it will be a pleasure to be outside working on all that.
Baileys is whisky! But the other bits make it taste way nicer :-). I know someone here who’d love to be able to join that club…
Comment by Mich — 11 September 2015 @ 7:22 am
Yeah I know, but it doesn’t (usually) have the whisky effect on me which I am avoiding by not drinking straight whisky.
We mentioned Marcus at Whisky Club and said he would love it 🙂
Comment by Nic — 12 September 2015 @ 10:16 pm