A lovely two days of no village intrusions on Monday and Tuesday… well until 5pm on Tuesday anyway.
I’ve been weeding and sowing and potting on and planting out in the sunshine, singing along to music and just enjoying life, sold nearly £50 worth of stuff from the shop including the first midge. Scarlett’s been playing in the river, Davies has had loads of solar and wind power so been busy online and Ady has been pottering Ady style. We got the bell tent up and decided we will try and rent it out, maybe on airb&b, so we’re working out what we need to do to set that up. For now though it is pitched and looking really lovely near the caravan 🙂
Tuesday afternoon brought Mike up with tales of woe from the village and then Ali with a bottle of fizz and some beers to celebrate Jim finally having his heart op. Jim is Ali’s FIL – Sean’s Dad and one of the various ‘Rum parents’ who is well known to everyone here by virtue of spending lots of time here on the island over the years. We were nearly at the end of the bottle sitting outside in the sunshine when Sean sent her a heart stopping text saying ‘need to talk’. They finally got through to each other and it was bad news, there had been complications and Jim was back in surgery and looking bleak. After debate we opened a second bottle and talked lots. Ali stayed for dinner and finally left about 10pm. Very, very sadly she messaged me in the early hours of this morning to say that Jim had passed away at 130am 🙁
So this morning I went down to be with Ali for a couple of hours. They are all in shock and not really sure where to start making arrangements. It appears there may be some issues to do with the surgeon and maybe an inquest, all of which is just even sadder really. Eve, Sean and Ali’s 7yo was with Sean but Ali’s parents have now collected her and are bringing her home to Rum next week, Sean will stay with his mum and Ali is now covering Sean as full time deer researcher as it is calving season. Â All just sad and a reminder to us all of how fragile life is and how very far away from everything we are here.
Ali and I went to the boat and I came home with Ady – we had animal feed and CoOp shopping off the boat and Ali had decided to head off to Kilmory for some headspace. We came home for lunch and then all four went down with a wheelbarrow each to unload the car – two trips for everyone, I think it nearly killed Davies! We also popped to the village for milk, cheese and to collect the post so saw a few people and were re-immersed in the village life once more.
Back up here I did a bit more stuff in the polytunnel, I’ve now been ruthless with the tomatoes and potted them all on and discarded the small ones, which to salve my conscience about just killing the tiny seedlings Ali is taking as she has not sown any tomatoes yet. I still have a couple of raised beds to weed and some more stuff to plant out and the herb spiral needs weeding, netting and the herbs planting out but I suspect that job will roll over into next week now.
Back in the caravan I made dinner – quiche, new potatoes and salad so lots of faffing with pastry making and I decided to make the birthday brownies tonight too while the oven was on along with a batch of mini quiches to take on the Sheerwater trip tomorrow for lunch. I am off on Friday which is Ady’s actual birthday so we’re doing birthday brownies at the shop tomorrow evening instead.
belated birthday returns to Ady!
Comment by mich — 15 May 2016 @ 9:56 pm