Friday – in the morning Scarlett and I walked along to see Ali and meet her new kitten, Buttons. He’s very cute and so tiny. I love cats very much and kittens are adorable but I’ve never hankered after one that much and prefer already grown cats really. We did have a pair of kittens when we first bought our house back in the mid nineties but their cute factor was massively outweighed by their giddiness, clambering up curtains and constantly getting into scrapes. I think I prefer toddlers really. Nice to go and coo over Buttons every so often though and then come home and breath a sigh of relief at the zen-ness which is Kira curled up on the bed 🙂
Scarlett went off to hang out with Poppy and Evie and I came home for lunch with Davies and Ady. Ady and I went along to the ferry – we were hoping for petrol and animal feed, neither of which arrived but we did get all our monthly amazon supplies of flour, tinned tuna, bulk loo rolls, boxes of crisps and packets of teabags, 12 bottles of wine etc. So we were glad to have had gone.
Back home we unloaded all that and then went to start making some cloches to go over a couple of raised beds we are planting up with strawberries. It was a bit midgey and we were sort of making it up as we went along but we came up with some good ideas and laid out pipe and wood ready for next time we get to it. I made pizza dough and bread dough, we fed the animals and went down to the shop for a Friday beer. Lesley came down too and then Doug & David appeared so it was a good hour or so. We had started off sitting at the table in the sun but it got midgey so we retired under the cover. We stayed for a couple of beers and then came home for 8pm.
Pizza and Lost and a phone call for Ady from his brother.
Saturday – I had a phone call with Julie which gave a rather different slant to some of what Chris had been saying. It’s very odd both being the confidantes for a couple splitting up, particularly when there are such close relationships. We also learnt that Ady’s mother died, at some undisclosed period in the last few years since any of us last had contact with her – we last saw her at Chris & Julie’s wedding reception (14 years ago)  and before that at Deborah’s funeral (over 15 years ago), although I never actually spoke to her and neither did Ady at either of those events. Chris had seen her much more recently, but still probably 8 or 9 years ago.
I cleared the coat rail in the hall and sorted some coats to get rid of, put some away in other places and cleaned some mold off the way with bleach spray. Ady had been at work and came home with laundry so I folded that up and we had lunch. Big Dave came over for a cup of tea and chat. I was feeling a bit rough with either a cold relapse or a brand new cold hot on the heels of the one I had been congratulating myself on getting over so quickly, so did crocheting in the afternoon, which was fine as it was quite rainy anyway.
Ady and I went to the evening boat to collect Muscovy ducks and gave Bad Neil a lift along as he was putting fuel in his run out of fuel car at the pier. The ducks came off fine and we brought them back. It is five adult ducks and 11 ducklings belonging to two of the adults so we worked out who belonged to who, reunited ducklings with their mothers and put the three other adults all in a pen together. Ady had cooked a really lovely curry for dinner which helped a lot with my cold.
Sunday – up for the ferry as we had runner ducks coming – it was quite  a busy boat with various people coming and going. The ducks were just in a small cardboard box so we were able to just carry that up the hill. Ady had made the frames for a pen so I stapled the chicken wire on and we did some moving things about with the birds, putting one duck pen on fresh ground, releasing Crispy duck and all her ducklings, releasing one of the mother chickens, ringing some more chicks, bringing the three adult muscovies over and putting them in a pen with a cluster of muscovies so they can all see each other, giving all the ducks little ponds for swimming in and generally settling everyone in. They are all eating, drinking, swimming and looking happy and settled. Mike & Deb came along and chatted for about an hour, meeting all the new arrivals and hatchlings which was nice. We had a late lunch, Ady did some electrical work fixing a little cool box / fridge we have bought which runs on either 12v or mains and we have to plug into our 12v solar system as a dump load for when we have too much power on sunny days. It made sense to dump it into something which will actually be useful on sunny days such as a fan or fridge and this came up and seems to work well. We may have chilled wine and beer on sunny days yet!
I stapled on plastic to the cloche we had made so far but the staple gun which has been ailing for ages finally gave up the ghost and broke. Fortunately we already have a replacement on the way as we had anticipated it’s imminent demise so it shouldn’t hold up progress as hopefully the new one will be here when I get back on Wednesday. We might need some more plastic to make covers though, will have a look for some while I’m off. We did a fix on the bell tent of a ripped seam which I had tried to sew with waxed thread and sail canvas needles but had split more so we bought some Gorilla tape having looked on line for suggestions. It seems like it might do the job, really need to fabseal spray the tent though as it has a few leaks in heavy rain which we get rather a lot of here on Rum!
The kids went to the village to buy some potatoes, Scarlett had a shower and I brushed her hair and then I went down to Mike & Debs to meet with Fliss to do some singing. Inevitably we got distracted by chatting so only spent an hour singing rather than the two hours we’d planned but it was fun. Back home for dinner and Lost.
Tomorrow the kids and I are heading off island for a brace fixing appointment for Scarlett – car to FW, late dentist, McDonalds for dinner, bath! Tuesday will be charity shop shopping and supermarket run and then back to Alison’s for the evening before bringing Jenna and Iona back here for a few days. Hoping for decent weather as the plan is for all the kids to be sleeping in the tent.