Days to clutch to us through the winter

Another gorgeous day here again today. Sun shining, blue skies, lovely autumn colours. We’re being predicted a very cold winter I believe which is all good as far as we’re concerned. It’s endless days of wind and rain I am dreading, although now we feel more secure in the static I guess even those would mean lots of cosy days inside the static doing crafts and reading by candlelight – you know I’ll make anything sound romantic and just what I always wanted! 😉

We were all up just after 7am as the kids were off to do bird ringing with Mike for J Ranger this morning. The last three or four mornings have been spectacular sunrises over the sea with Rum residents all posting up stunning pictures of Loch Scresort and the village all bathed in pinks and reds but this morning when I was up early enough to actually see the sun get up there was nothing – typical! A rant at Scarlett about suitable levels of clothing meant any lurking wildlife had been long since scared off by me by the time we left the house too!

We arrived just as Mike was checking the nets for the first time and had caught five birds – four song thrush and a redwing. We all stayed to watch them being done and the kids got to release them all too, something they are really enjoying, I’m very impressed with their confident handling of the birds. We were there just after 8am and by 10am the village had properly woken up with several people cycling past on their way off to work or to the post office, the SNH tractor starting up and getting moving and general to-ing and fro-ing – it all felt a bit like being in Balamory! 😆

Ady and I stayed for the next net haul and then we headed back to the croft to let Bonnie out. Our original plan for today was to get the horse box sorted but we had so many interuptions to our day that we decided to save it for tomorrow when we have nothing else happening. So we listened to Popmaster, did the washing up, had a cup of tea and piece of cake on the sporran and then gathered everything up ready to meet the boat. We were hoping dog food and a sack of flour would arrive on the boat along with food shopping from the CoOp and a couple of jerry cans of diesel. On that basis we took down empty water jerry cans and kept the veg delivery we’d not had the energy to carry up the croft hill last night in the car too with the intention of doing a run up the hill in the car as we had so much stuff.

When we got to the pier the Orion was in with foot passengers and the contractors who do the roads and are building SNH agricultural building were there waiting for their machinery so we chatted to them for a bit. Our CoOp order came along with the diesel but the dog food and flour was delivered to Calmac about an hour after the ferry had left so it will come on Thursday now. I’ve chased up a new power pack we ordered along with a jacket for me which was shown as despatched on 13th October so really should be here by now. There is a fine line between the excitement of waiting for stuff and needing to feed the dog, bake bread and keep warm! 🙂

Ady dropped me off in the village to meet Davies and Scarlett and he took the car up to empty it. They had just caught a blackbird and a chaffinch and were taking the nets down so I waited with them. Davies was really good at aging and sexing the chaffinch, which is apparently easy but nonetheless impressed me. Mike can be a very frustrating person but he is amazing with Davies and Scarlett and their knowledge on so many nature related things is massively improved as a result of the time they spend with him. He is really passionate about outdoors education and bringing the natural world to kids – if we’d had a wish list of people and their skills to be on this island I think we would have been hard pushed to top the idea of Mike really, we have all learnt loads from him and I know his influence is going to be really important to the kids.

” alt=”” />
” alt=”” />” alt=”” />

We walked home discussing what would be the coolest way to make use of the pile of leaves if you raked up every fallen leaf on Rum 😆

We had lunch and then listened to a play on Radio 4 about an alternative ending to the moon landing where Armstrong and Aldrin didn’t make it back. It was good.

Fliss arrived for us to chat about grant funding for the creative Scotland event, the Christmas Fayre and other such stuff and we had a really lovely couple of hours chatting. I really like Fliss, she’s definitely the person I have clicked with the most here – we have lots in common.

Fliss left and then Scarlett and I went down to the shop to buy milk and check if any post had arrived for us today. It hadn’t but Derek gave us a pair of wellies which will fit Davies when he next grows – we have quite a welly stash now :).

Back home I made lasagne for dinner which was very delicious (I made the white sauce by mixing philadelphia with cream, it was really nice) and some bread for the next couple of days. I’ve been looking at candles, trampolines and pushbikes online as they are our next planned purchases with excess funds although I admit to feeling a bit wobbly about a trampoline here… maybe one sunk into ground level…