This morning dawned bright and sunny but also bitterly cold (minus four I think) which meant the gas was frozen. This means it either doesn’t light at all, does light but runs at such a trickle that a kettle with enough water for two cups of tea takes half an hour to boil or it lights but flares through so erraticaly that it’s like a blow torch coming out of the gas ring. Ady tried various measures including pouring some of the precious warmed water over it which worked. The bottle and regulator is now very lagged, fingers crossed that makes a difference.
We had plans to get some tidying up done on the croft today – the area around the animals needed some attention as it is very visible from the nature trail walk and while wooden and metal animal housing looks a bit charming and rustic we were a bit crap tastic with various gathered stuff scattered about. We used up a couple of pallets to make paths across the mud to places we need to get daily (such as chicken coop to collect eggs), remounted the solar panel for the pigs electric fence on a wooden frame rather than the bright blue plastic fish box it was on, took down some galvanised sheeting from around one of the chicken houses that the chickens used to brood underneath but have stopped since we brought in another house. It looks loads better, more to do tomorrow.
I got an email from Sandy saying he had arranged to get the car that Norman was supposed to be giving us started for us but needed the jump starter unit he lent us while he was borrowing one of our leisure batteries to get his second car running. I ignored it as we were busy with stuff and he has taken to signing his emails ‘Bad Boy Fraser’ which I don’t have an appropriate response to really! We came up for a cup of tea and Sandy appeared, drunk. We talked to him for about an hour and then he went off and we arranged to meet him at Norman’s in an hour or so. We had some lunch and walked down. He was not at Norman’s so we went to him and Fliss’ where he was but had had another row with Fliss over puncturing his tyre driving back from ours. We had a cup of tea with Fliss and then came home, finished some of what we’d started and then realised Bonnie had disappeared. She’d been with Davies and Scarlett and had greeted us when we got back then just gone off. We called and called but she didn’t return. In the end we got the logburner lit, the dinner on, had a last cup of tea, fed the animals all giving her a shout every five minutes until she’d been gone for an hour and it was nearly dark so Ady went off to look for her. I’d given her raisins to eat yesterday (she shared some of mine_ but someone on facebook told me they can kill dogs so I’d been googling and scared myself silly reading stuff so was convinced she was dead somewhere.
She arrived back and I managed to reach Ady on his phone to tell him so he came home. We had dinner (which had been planned to be lunch!) and I tried and failed to read the very end of the last book in My Side of the Mountain trilogy but I was so tired the words were jumping about on the page and I struggled so we’ll finish it tomorrow. That sounds bleak and things are not but it’s all just a bit wearing at this very tail end of the winter…