The moon is so bright this week it has been like daylight outside every night. It’s weird, night falls and it gets dark but the moon then rises and it gets light again.
Ady has been cleaning Marcel’s old house today (and will be again tomorrow). It needs a good old clear up before the trust lets it out to Jed and I said Ady would do it – for a price, obviously. It will be a good earner for 2 days work and he loves cleaning anyway so he is very happy with the arrangement :).
I spent the morning mostly working on a 500 word application for a job. It’s one day a week working remotely for Lowimpact.org – I know of Dave Darby, the director and brains behind it as he is very involved with WWOOFing in the UK and runs the WWOOF forum. We have been facebook friends for ages and I know he has read my blog at times, although not sure he reads all the time. He is a little extreme in his views but is quite an inspirational guy and the job would not only suit me really well but sounds like just the sort of thing I’d love, good money and a focus away from Rum which would be good. 500 words is very hard, particularly for me so I have already utterly discarded the first attempt and started again, I think I have got the tone right this time but need to really pare down the word count. Will have another go in the morning before the kids get up.
Davies and Scarlett got up, breakfasted, got dressed etc and then we walked down to the village for Ranger Trudi’s Imbolc event. I like the idea of celebrating all these tied to the land and old traditional festivals, it feels so appropriate living here in the lifestyle we have and Trudi had been keen to check we were on island for this event so I felt obliged to go along anyway. Trudi’s events always just leave me with a feeling of faint dissatisfaction though and the kids feel the same. I am not sure if we were just spoiled with Ranger Mike who taught us so much, had an encyclopedic knowledge of the wildlife of Rum plus a great love and passion for the island, whether we know too much ourselves now to enjoy being given facts from someone who is still learning them herself, whether Trudi is still finding her feet after only 8 months here or whether there is some other reason but they always feel under prepared and I’m never really sure whether she is pitching them at me or the kids because she doesn’t seem to encompass all of us.
Trudi wanted to look for signs of spring on a bit of a walk and I mentioned that Vikki had said on facebook that a snowdrop was out at Mike and Debs house so we walked down there to spot it, looking for further signs along the way. Trudi pointed out great tits singing, some buds on an elder tree and talked about how Rum’s mudflats never freeze so we get such great waders and seabird life during the winter. We talked about the herons and then I remembered something we’d read or seen about birds working with fishermen to catch fish. I thought it was herons or pelicans but Trudi correctly said it was cormorants. We looked up gorse and broom as there are always some flowering on Rum as we have about five varieties between the two. We found the snowdrop and then wandered back to the hall to make brigid crosses to protect and bless our hearths. Scarlett quickly lost interest, I made one and then helped Davies, it was really a two pairs of hands type activity. Tarly went to check on Bonnie who we’d put in the car as Zara was around although I should really have thought to get her out to walk with us, never mind.
Davies, Scarlett and Bonnie headed back to the croft, I walked along to see how Ady was doing, catching up with Fliss and Ali along the way and arranging a meeting tomorrow afternoon at Ali’s. We took a car load of rubbish along to the skip and then came home, stopping for a chat with Nicola on the way. I had gotten really, really cold and took ages to warm back up again. I had a shower – and tried natural shampoo of bicarb and water with a conditioner rinse of vinegar and water. It is super shiny (and does not smell of vinegar) so I’ll see how it is tomorrow, although online reports suggest it will stay that way for four days or more so I may have found the answer.
I made tacos and fahijas, which was a real faff as I had to make the tortilla wraps from scratch. Ady felt guilty (I was grumpy about it) and so chopped all the chicken up for me which was lovely cos I hate doing that :). We watched Saving Mr Banks which was just lovely – the biography story of PL Travers and Walt Disney / the Mary Poppins film. We all thought it was good and it made me cry.