Friday was spent recovering. Sleeping, catching up with the animals, settling back into stuff. I can’t actually remember what we did beyond having tacos / fajitas for dinner. I know it was really good to be home.
Saturday – Clare, James and Elinor, friends from N.Ireland arrived on the ferry. It’s their third visit to Rum and the first time they have actually got here when they were supposed to! The first year the weather had been iffy and Calmac had been on amber alert, Clare has listened to some random bloke in Mallaig the night before who assured her the ferry probably wouldn’t run so had not bothered getting up to try and meet it. Â Ady had gone to meet the boat and accosted some other visitor to the island who had the right colour hair and had agreed she was called Clare when he asked her (she was, just not the Clare he was looking for…). The second time, last year, the ferry actually had been cancelled due to bad weather despite this time Clare firmly believing it would not be. This time the ferry ran, they got on it and it brought them to Rum for the whole of their planned trip. Yay! Ady took their stuff along to the bunkhouse while the rest of us walked and we settled in for tea, chats and the rest of the afternoon really. Ady came home as he had arranged with Bad Neil to catch and dose the sheep for the various things they needed dosing for pre-winter (ticks, fluke, flystrike etc.). I came back up a bit later to have a shower and get changed and then we went back down for dinner with Clare at the bunkhouse. There was a Halloween disco happening at the hall so about 9ish we all wandered along there. Clare and Elinor left around 11, Davies and Scarlett headed home but Ady and I stayed as it was a good evening finally getting home around 130am ish, but the new 130am having had the first 130am still down in the hall dancing.
Sunday – The kids and I headed down to the bunkhouse after lunch while Ady stayed behind on the croft to get on with a couple of hours work and feed the animals before coming to join us. Another nice dinner with Clare and the kids, chatting to the other bunkhouse guests (Dr Kev the worm guy and a couple of his research assistants). Then Chainsaw Dave and two of his visiting mates – Rum regulars Dougie and Spraytan Paul along with Bad Neil’s brother Ewan came along with guitars and shakers to do some singing with Clare and I. It was fab. Another late night home.
Monday – we’d arranged for Clare and the kids to come up to us to see the croft but they managed to miss the bottom gate, attempt to negotiate the previous thigh deep pig pen mud and then retreated to the trail again before Scarlett rescued them and guided them in from the top gate. Poor James had a bit of a sense of humour failure about the whole business particularly as the rest of it found it rather hilarious. He recovered though… Elinor stayed up at the croft carving pumpkins with Scarlett while Clare and I went to meet the ferry as we’d ordered steaks from the CoOp for dinner. Â We got our box and offered a lift to the bunkhouse to new arrival Roller Clare – a woman who had come with stacks of rollerboots for a few days to run roller discos in the hall (it was pre arranged, she didn’t just randomly arrive, although we do get a lot of Clares…) but I couldn’t get the car started again as the immobiliser had triggered itself so we walked back and left the car there (Ady went back later and collected it). We chatted to Roller Clare for ages and then the kids came back with their pumpkin, Ady arrived with the car and we had dinner. The girls were really keen to visit the roller disco so the adults and girls went along leaving Davies and James at the bunkhouse as they were not fussed. Scarlett, Elinor and I all had a go at rollerbooting, some folk already there were really good – funny what skills you didn’t know fellow Rum folk already have… I did a bit of roller discoing when I was very young and am not bad but not amazing either, Frazer was really good and had proper inline blades and other gear. We walked back through the starry starry night with some aurora showing and I sang nursery rhymes really slowly to freak the girls out as it was Halloween and apparently that is really creepy… It was Clare’s last night so Ady, Clare and I played cards and Roller Clare joined us when she arrived back after the disco had finished. Another late one…
Tuesday – We’d arranged to do a castle tour for Clare and the kids and when we arrived to collect them Clare had told Dr Kev, his assistants and the family of one of the assistants who had arrived on the first boat about it so they all came along too. We’d found a really old photo of the first time the four kids had met at our friend Cally’s in about 2008. None of them remember each other but I have a couple of pictures of them all sitting on a swing seat together so we got them to line up in the same order and took some more photos. No swing seat available as a prop. We walked along to the pier with them and waved them off and then came home. It was a very early night in comparison!
Wednesday – felt like my first real day home and after three weeks away or entertaining I was knackered and in dire need of a day of not much. Ady was working for a couple of hours in the morning so I made some pumpkin soup, bread rolls, bread, toasted pumpkin seeds and made venison pies for dinner. Scarlett and I watched a nice relaxing downloaded programme about the Lost Gardens of Heligan and I crocheted while the cat sat near me and purred. It was blissful.
Thursday – Ady and I went to the shop in the morning and bought ingredients for Christmas cake. We watched The Apprentice and I did some more crochet in the afternoon watching stuff with Scarlett and brushing her hair after she had a shower.
Friday – In the morning Ady and I went to the campsite to help build the bonfire. In the afternoon I made the Christmas cake and helped Scarlett make some pumpkin cupcakes. We had pizza for dinner in what felt like the first time in months! Nothing is as good as home made pizza – fact.
Saturday – Ady and I spent the morning in the old hostel mincing up 19kg of venison from the beast we processed a few weeks ago and had frozen. You can re-freeze it after having minced it as it changes the structure of it. We chopped, minced, weighed and bagged it all – another for 30 dinners, that’ll keep us going for a while. Debs and Bad Neil both called in while we were there and stayed for chats. It was not quite the Saturday morning I was planning, usually I listen to the radio on a Saturday morning and enjoy the peace, we did have the radio on but the mincer and people talking meant I didn’t hear any of it! Good to get it all done though.
Home for a late lunch, pumpkin cake decorating for Scarlett and then we all headed down to the campsite for the bonfire and fireworks. We’d taken mulled wine, hot chocolate and the cakes as our contribution. There was a barbecue of venison burgers and sausages, venison steaks and various other nice stuff, the bonfire roared and the fireworks whizzed and banged! It was a good couple of hours despite showers of rain. We went back to the bunkhouse for a cup of tea afterwards and were home around 930pm. It was really, really cold, 5 degrees in our bedroom and freezing. I had to keep swapping which had I was holding my book outside of the covers with to warm them up.
Today – a lazy Sunday. I stayed in bed reading for hours as it was finally warm and cosy under the covers after a nights sleep! The first snow had fallen on Hallival – the peak we see from the croft. Hallival is the second tallest peak on Rum with the tallest, Askival just behind it and snow had fallen on that yesterday but now Hallival has some too. Winter is coming! More crochet for me and Ady and I walked down to the freezer at dusk which was nice, getting back just before we couldn’t see any more. I do love that time of day to be outside in. A lovely roast dinner – our own pork – followed by some mainland ice cream brought back last week and stashed in the freezer – hurrah for a car meaning a trip to the frozen food store in Fort William is feasible in winter on the ferry directly back to Rum as it’s less than 3 hours from there to our freezer in an insulated bag in the boot.
I’m just getting cold so I’m hoping the electric blanket will have helped prewarm the bed even if the genny did go off 3 hours ago…