Thursday – in the morning Megan the student came up with her friend Molly to explain about her dissertation which is a mapping project and leave some questionnaires and maps with us. Scarlett packed up the rucksack with lunch stuff and we headed down to the pier. It was a busy Sheerwater with a few visitors, a school trip and various islanders having friends visiting who also came along. We spotted a pod of porpoise fairly early on and then a large pod of about 20 or so dolphins which stayed with the boat for quite a while splashing about and swimming alongside us. Dolphin and whale encounters never lose their joy and magic, despite how many we have had in the years we’ve lived here and this was no exception.
We found the drake runner duck dead that morning which was pretty devastating – not least because it means we can’t breed runners ourselves for next year without a drake. Since then we have lost a couple of muscovy ducklings too. We have now penned the remaining muscovy ducklings and are keeping a close eye on everything. We are not sure whether there is a murderer among our own birds or if something else is happening but have been working to eliminate possibilities, one of which is that Bonnie may simply be running through during the feeding frenzy and crushing them. So she is now kept in at feeding time.
When we got back from the boat we managed to fix up the gate from some old bits of a mini polytunnel we rescued that Mel & Em had had and abandoned mostly broken when they left last year. The pieces fitted together to be just the right size to make the frame and I have stitched netting on to it. It is not quite perfect but so far no birds have broken in so it works.
Friday – I worked Post Office in the morning which was mostly chatting to Neil 🙂 I had planned outside stuff after lunch when  I came home but the weather was not on my side for that as it started raining as I walked home and carried on most of the afternoon, so instead I did some baking with Scarlett – several batches of cookies for her to ice, some breadsticks and biscotti for Italian night and pizza and bread dough. Ady and I had arranged to meet Mairi at the shop for a beer so we braved the rain which had all but stopped and headed down for a couple of drinks. Home for pizza and Lost.
Saturday – I had an hour or so of crochet and tea drinking before heading out to do some weeding as the sun came out. I cleared a strawberry bed which had gotten very overgrown and uncovered some runners to plant in. Ady came home so I came in for lunch with him. I made the tiramisu which didn’t really work as I added too much cream I think so it was very runny. It tasted delicious though.
We headed down to the village around 6pm for a couple of beers before the evening started. We had a really good night – loads of food, lots of people, some music as Mike and Jed played so I got to sing, plenty of random nonsense at the end of the evening as we discovered stabilo fluorescent marker shows up really well under Jinty’s new fly zapper blue light so were all drawing on each other to make tattoos… classic Rum larks! Davies and Scarlett headed home around 10 ish, we followed around 1am.
Sunday – Mairi came up for lunch and stayed a good couple of hours drinking tea and catching up. It was nice outside for a while but then got really midgey so we retreated indoors. We had planned afternoon fishing and it had gotten late so we almost didn’t go but we roused ourselves and headed down and did really well catching 22 mackerel between the three of us. Scarlett doesn’t really like casting and reeling in so she takes fish off the lines for us and is happy to kill them. She will do gutting too but prefers not to so Ady tends to do that. Davies is really good at fishing and enjoys it a lot and we now have three decent rods so everyone is happy. It was very midgey towards the end, just as we had all gotten rather icky with fish blood, guts and scales too… it had gotten later than we’d realised too so it was gone 7pm before we got home having washed out our haul and put them in the freezer on the way home.
Dinner was crazy late but very delicious.
Today – Ady and I took a load of washing down to the village this morning, picking some brambles and sticking them in the freezer, calling in to the shop for some bits and generally bimbling round the village while it was done. We bought it back up to hang on the line and have some lunch. It was really windy so I had a couple of hours on the internet catching up on various things including putting in a butchers order, replying to emails, getting the new car insured, booking the ferries for our holiday in October. We’re going to a holiday cottage on Lewis for 5 nights with bath, wifi, washing machine, dishwasher and freezer. Looking forward to watching crap TV, having baths, eating ice cream… it’s only half an hour from Stornoway so plenty of getting a fix of the bright lights when we want it and beach walks and lazy days when we don’t. We’ll have the night before in Fort William, a day on Skye before the late ferry across to Harris, then come back via Ullapool for a dentist appointment in FW and a last night back there before Ady gets the train and ferry back to Rum to meet Jen who is croft sitting for us, while me and the kids head south.
I rang my parents to catch up with them – they are up here in just over 2 weeks. Dinner was stir fry and my hand slipped while adding the chilli powder making for a rather hotter dish than normal. It was nice though! Very early dinner all eaten by 9pm in stark contrast to last night.