One word? When seven would do…

Can’t at all recall what happened last Thursday or Friday. There would have been Crafternooning no doubt, pizzas undoubtedly but over and above that I simply do not recall.

So I will skip ahead to Saturday instead. We were up at a most unGoddardly hour to drop Bonnie dog off at Sean and Ali’s and be at the pier ready for the 850am boat. I will reiterate that once more incase you missed it. A boat BEFORE 9am. This is still the middle of the night usually for Davies, the early hours for Scarlett and pretty darn early for me too. So we were not entirely sunny and cheery ;). Ady and I left the kids to their devices, safely installed in the seats next to the plug sockets and had tea and toast in the cafe on the boat. Pre-Canna we chatted to Martin a bit – he is a bloke who used to come to Rum lots as a volunteer bird surveyor, doing stuff with the eagles and shearwaters but fell out with SNH so no longer comes. Between Canna and Muck we mostly listened to ill informed people talking with authority about things they knew nothing about and getting them wrong as we sailed past the back of Rum which is always entertaining. Between Muck and Eigg we talked about Eigg. After Eigg we chatted at length to some tourists who had been on Eigg for a few nights about island life. Most amused when they told us we should go on that show, the one with the nice man, what was his name? Oh yes Ben Fogle… We later saw them again in Mallaig – they had managed to lose a holdall and speculation was that it had been sent off all around the second tour of the islands on the ferry again. Between Eigg and Mallaig we mostly ate chips and got ready to get off.

We collected the car, popped into the CoOp for some supplies and headed off to Alison and Leon’s. We were going to Leon’s 50th birthday party which was sort of an all weekend affair given they had lots of people staying over but the official party was on the Saturday. Lots of food, drink, music and chatting. It was very lovely but was also the most middle class event I think I have ever been to. There was an actual, non ironic crisis when the balsamic vinegar was found to have run out, there was lots of Kumbaya style guitar strumming, token folk with dreadlocks and even someone called Caspian. I suspect we were the token ‘meet our crazy friends’ contingent and this was confirmed when someone actually said to me ‘Oh you’re Nic! I’ve heard about you’. In the afternoon I seemed to spend a lot of time chatting about Home Education, in the evening a lot of time being generally silly having found a couple of people to be sarcastic with and the following day a lot of time talking about crofting and island life. It was a nice weekend though, the kids had a ball with a gaggle of other teens, Ady had lots of opportunities to tidy and be helpful and I spent lots of time chatting and making crochet midges.

On Monday we headed away, leaving rather later than planned as a local teen had been desperate to come over and hang out with D&S again before we left so we delayed leaving for another couple of hours. We got to Fort William and stopped at Morrisons for some food for lunch, went round Lidl for various bits and then back into Morrisons for microwave food for dinner before heading along to the camping pods just south of Fort William. We overshot the village by about 10 miles somehow, I think we were distracted by the bike track for the six day trials plus Scarlett was in the front as she gets really carsick so I was struggling to navigate / watch out for landmarks from the back. We realised and turned back but it added a good half an hour on to our driving time. We arrived and Corrine  was just home herself. Excellent to see her again – we stayed there the night before we moved to Rum, complete with Pajero, everything in the horse box and tiny puppy Bonnie having just collected her.

We had showers, cooked our microwave food and had a fairly early night after a couple of very late ones. The camping pods are really comfy, warm and cosy, loads of room for all four of us and we were all so tired we slept really well. I woke up at about 430am and dashed across to the byre for a wee but got straight back to sleep when I came back.

Tuesday – Ady and I headed into Fort William first thing for Ady’s X ray – the reason for staying off extra nights. The actual x ray was super quick but we had to wait for the cash office to open to claim back expenses so had a quick look around the charity shops in FW while we waited. We got the ferry and mileage costs for Ady reimbursed and then went back to collect the kids. Off to Oban which we last visited about 3 years ago and I think was one of our first trips off Rum after we arrived. Which probably explains why we remembered it as better than it actually is 😉 We wandered round the charity shops, looked in book shops and watched the boats coming and going. We went to find the CoOp we had been in last time but could only find Tesco. Davies managed to get some of the clothes he was desperate for in there and when I chatted to the cashier she confirmed that CoOp had been there and had closed down two years ago. We got food for lunch and to take in the cinema and then drove back and managed to park right outside.

We went in to the smallest screen room ever, just 20 seats, like being in someones’s lounge, although once the film started you forgot how small it all was. The film was great, really enjoyed it and the cinema experience, it’s high on all our lists of things we miss about the mainland. Back to Tesco for stuff for dinner and then back to the camping pods. I chatted to Corrine again for ages and ages. Her son lives in the same road as my Mum & Dad in Worthing and she has always been a big fan of ours and what we are doing compared to the lifestyle her kids and grandkids are leading. We packed most stuff up and for me at least it was another early night.

Wednesday -the weather forecast had been dire for days and we were not at all sure we’d get home as ferries were on amber alert. We’d booked accommodation in FW just incase but had decided to take the car back and catch the train back to FW if the ferry didn’t run as we didn’t need the car for anything and the return train fare would be much cheaper than two more days car hire. We parked the car up and put the keys back in the safe, did a last minute fruit and veg shop at the CoOp and cancelled the accommodation having been assured the ferry would run to Rum but nowhere else.

It was a choppy crossing but not too dreadful – Scarlett who suffers most with travel sickness slept through it and was ok. It was pissing with rain and pretty bleak when we arrived home which is never a nice welcome back but there were friendly faces to greet us and offers of cups of tea if we wanted to put off going back up the hill in the rain. We didn’t take Fliss up on the offer but it was nice to have made. We drove round to Sean and Ali’s to collect Bonnie and her crate and then home. We managed to get everything in two wheelbarrows and didn’t even get too wet walking up the hill. We unpacked everything, had lunch and made the most of the wind turbine action. I rang my parents for a long overdue catch up chat.

Thursday morning was much the same. I cleared all my backlog of emails and was very productive online. In the afternoon I went to Fliss’ for Crafternoon and met up with Ali, Debs and Fliss. Lots of general chit chat, caught up with Lesley on the way home. Ady rang a contact for possibly getting peacocks. I had also asked about possible black female cats (it’s an animal rescue place Corrine had told me about) and got an email back saying they had a 2 year old black female cat if we were interested. It turned out to be the cat Scarlett and I had been looking at a photo of in a shop window in Oban and cooing over. We had no idea if it would be at all feasible to organise but it turns out the husband of the volunteer loves driving and was happy to drive to Mallaig to meet me, so we’ve organised it! I am beyond excited at this, I have missed having a cat sooo much and have tried twice before – once with the kitten when we first arrived here and again with the feral cats who did a runner (and still get periodically spotted on the island!) but this feels right – a black girl cat who is friendly and desperate for a home after her owner died. Mrs Broody Chicken hatched two chicks!

Friday – In the morning I walked down to the post office to send off my broken phone which is supposed to be being fixed. No idea if it will end up costing me or not but I have sent it off as requested. Ady was building a run for the hen and her chicks – a third had hatched. I helped move that over the chicken house for them and the kids were both up so we all had lunch. We had been planning to go to the boat but there were technical issues and the boat was coming in very late. The kids had showers and I brushed Scarlett’s hair, then Ady and I went down to the village. We collected the post, a delivery of wheelbarrow and hosepipe to male hoops over the raised beds to put netting on, dropped off some eggs to Jinty who has some broody hens but no cockerel to fertilise their eggs, chatted for ages to Lesley, Ali and Ross who were knocking about in the village and then came home for pizza. We watched a film – Now You See Me which was pretty good although I fell asleep before the end so the others had to tell me what had happened this morning.

Today – Ady was working this morning so I enjoyed my usual Saturday morning of lots of tea, Graham Norton on the radio and crocheting before the kids get up. Two of the pigs were out so Scarlett and I rounded them up. Ady came home with clean laundry so I sorted and folded that, we had lunch and he did some pig fence maintenance while I fixed some hooks in the shed to hang scarves from and put a mirror up in the there. We walked down to the car to put together the wheelbarrow and then walked down to the village as Ady had bought milk but left it in the hostel. We fed the animals and came in. Ady cooked dinner and we watched the first few episodes of Yonderland which was very funny.