Thursday – The kids all headed off down to the village to hang in a gang. So good to have a gaggle of older kids here this last week or so, made me realise how much D&S miss having others to hang out with. Adding Ben to the mix was even better. I have no recollection of what I spent the morning doing at all or even what the weather was like. I was quite possibly making survival bracelets, or equally possibly doing something outside.
Ady and I walked down to the village after lunch for me to go to Crafternoon and him to put the battery of the Jeep on charge as it had struggled to start the last couple of times and we needed it reliable for the early morning Saturday ferry run to get Ben off and the Monday and Wednesday ferries next week to take us off and pick us up, all times you don’t need to be fretting about a car not starting. Crafternoon was good, nice to see Ali, I’ve actually missed her while she’s been off for a couple of weeks, she is less demanding / political company than Fliss. She was sad as her cat had died while she was off (taken off with her and put to sleep as he was very ill) so we talked about that a lot. I miss cats so much 🙁
A late night all round I think, possible even later for the teens…
Friday – The kids headed off out again, I had plans to plant out my peas but had barely started when Ali and Eve appeared so came in for a cup of tea / chat with them for an hour or so. We walked down with them as we had petrol going off on the boat so walked to the ferry to put that on as the car battery was still on charge. We helped with the shop delivery, then walked back, collected the battery, put it on the car, drove back to the village to collect the post and came home. Just as we got in it started raining and didn’t really stop for the rest of the day. So that was the end of planting out peas. Infact it actually snowed on the high peaks through the night. Grr.
Ben’s last night but I don’t think there was much of a nod to that in the time they all went to sleep… I had started to come down with the cold and I think Davies had too by then. They had all gone to the boat to wave off Poppy and Evie and exchanged addresses so they can stay in touch.
Saturday – everyone was awake but not all of us actually got up 😉 Ady was working anyway so he took Ben off to the ferry and saw him safely on, poor Ben had an epic trip with 5 hours on the boat, a couple of hours hanging round Mallaig and then a few more hours on the train south. I think it was about 12 hours after he’d left Rum that Babs texted to say he was safely with her. Â Davies stayed up for a while before going back to bed, I was awake but stayed in bed reading for a bit, then got up and made soup for lunch. Scarlett got up after a bit and sat chatting to me.
Fliss and the girls came up to feed the pigs so we chatted briefly, then Ady came home. We had lunch and all decided we were feeling pretty rubbish so would not really attempt much else. I did go down and plant out the rest of the peas as they were sitting out where I had abandoned them the day before but that was plenty of exertion! I cooked dinner which felt like a huge effort and by 10pm we had all called it a day and were in bed! We had watched the final Blackadder Goes Fourth which obviously made me cry before bed too.
Sunday – The down side of going to bed at 10pm is of course waking at 530am! Ady was being really noisy with coughing and snoring due to be all blocked up so I laid there thinking evil thoughts for a while, watched the sunrise (hazy as without contacts!) and then put the light on for about 20 minutes to read until I was dozy enough to fall back to sleep. Whereupon I slept through til gone 10am and woke feeling tentatively much better.
Ady and I did walk down to the village to collect the post, which is only about 3 miles and is usually a 30 minute round trip march but took us well over and hour and felt like some sort of polar expedition! We did meet up with young David and his girlfriend Raquel so chatted to them about their recent trip to Vietnam and Thailand (beautiful but poor and they got very hassled by locals they said) and then bumped into Portia who used to live here before our time and would love to move back so chatted to her for a while too.
Back home for leftovers lunch of the dinner we didn’t really eat much of last night and listening to the radio in the sunshine. Davies got up around 3pm and pretty much his only achievement today was packing his rucksack for tomorrow. Scarlett was feeling much better so she had a shower and I brushed her hair (which was really tangled having been rained on at least 6 times this week) and she made me lots of cups of tea. Inbetween  I have been crocheting (a midge!), coughing, blowing my nose and wishing I had been more diligent with pelvic floor exercises…
Ady cooked roast chicken and we watched Doctor Who. Another generally early night as tomorrow we’re heading off for the mainland for a 48 hour dash taking in dentists, opticians and supermarket shopping!