I did blog a post last night and intended to upload it today but it appears to be lost somewhere on my laptop (I’ve checked it’s pockets and down the side of the sofa but it is still unfound). So that can’t be told.
It blathered on about river dipping, book binding and stuff anyway. All good 🙂
The kids and I made two books each under Claire’s splendid tutiledge – one small square book with pages that unfold when you open them and one more traditionally bound using sewing. Davies was amazing, worked til 11pm to finish both, taking great pride in creating the entire book all by himself 🙂 Scarlett made the first one and most of the second one but got fed up of the sewing bit so went off with Ady to walk Bonnie instead.
Claire is lovely, lives in a yurt and runs the teashop on island. It was fab to have our first visitor and she stayed for dinner.
Today has been a mish mash of a day. We spent some time this morning with the kids – I worked with Scarlett to start a River Diary documenting what she sees and catches in the river, while Ady and Davies made a calendar to count down to a DS game coming out. That involved lots of writing, talking about days and weeks and months and why we have 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc (the st,nd,rd,th bits). Davies then asked about why the days of the week are called what they are called so later we looked that up and learnt about various stuff to do with that. I talked to Ranger Mike about spotter sheets and ID books for the river life and he’s looking something out to lend us and suggested we talk to the uni lecturer currently over here with a student group as they are studing freshwater ecology and would probably be up for letting Tarly tag along on one of their sessions. I’ll sort that tomorrow 🙂
We came down to the teashop to order a few bits – blue tack, a noticeboard for the static, some socks for Ady, some oil for the static door, some food shopping. And to work out the best option for track for the croft and chicken and duck housing. We didn’t get very far but did fire off some emails to suitable companies and sent an email out to the community thanking everyone for their welcome and kindness to us so far and asking for any surplus material anyone may have suitable for chicken or duck or pig housing for sale or barter.
I spent some time chatting to Ali who was looking after her daughter Eve and Fliss’ daughter Joss and struggling with the twosome. She was telling me the woes of the nursery closing and looking like she was having a really bad day. I felt for her and have half a plan to offer some childcare swaps at some point (she’d be great for my two to spend time with, particularly Tarly as she does deer post mortems etc) but I’ll wait awhile before offering.
We realised we’d missed the ferry coming in which we felt bad about as we were expecting a fair bit to be on it but after chasing around we realised nothing had come in on it for us anyway. We went back to the static for lunch and then left the kids there doing some drawing and playing with Bonnie. They later went off to do some river dipping as we bought Scarlett a new net from the shop so she is loving catching tiny fish, observing them and recording them in her diary before letting them go again 🙂 Was so lovely to drive up to the static later on and see the kids and dog standing by the river looking so happy and free 🙂
Ady and I popped in to see Vikki and collected some paperwork – we offered to make a contribution towards water and road so that had been put in writing and to collect stuff for our first Odd Job which is to replace the lid of a kerosene tank that got damaged in the storms in December. We’ll do that tomorrow.
We stopped to chat to Mike (ranger) and Georgie for a while too. Really like them 🙂
Then we went to check the ferry as it came back in and wave off Dave and Sylvia who are off island til Friday for her cancer treatment. We also bumped into Sue from Eigg who was over for a training session at the school and got introduced to Stuart who is the cluster headmaster for the small isles. We’ve arranged to meet him sometime next week for a chat as I intend being very out and proud about our Home Ed status to alleviate any concerns the islanders may have.
We called in back at the teashop again but the internet was down anyway. We chatted to Claire and Steve for a while and then went back to the static. I had a go with the wonderwasher but was unsuccessful and had a fair bit of washing to get through so decided to nip down to the castle to do a load instead (further honing of technique required). I shoved it all in and bumped into Georgie and Rachel working out how to get Rachel and her cat back home again (the other end of the village) so offered them a lift. That meant getting shown round Rachel’s house and sitting in her sunny garden with a white wine spritzer, joined by Georgie and Mike 🙂 all very lovely.
I left there (rather reluctantly) and popped to Jinty’s shop for food supplies and change for the drier, swapped the washing over and went back to the static. I cooked dinner while the others enjoyed a film (generator on!) and we chatted. I then left them to it and came back down to collect the washing (now all clean, dry and folded, hurrah!) and am having a quick catch up online in the village hall otherwise I get too behind on blogging.
I need to update my CV to apply for the admin job but am having a real mental block about how to do it. Tomorrow we’re attending a May Day Flower Ramble with Mike seeing the flowers on the island and Ady and I are doing our Odd Job stuff. Wednesday Ady is helping someone who is moving off the island in the hopes of gathering some offcast stuff for chicken housing while the kids and I attend a meeting about an architect feasibility study on uses for the old byre into a community trust revenue producing enterprise, plus we’re hopefully gathering lots of stuff from the ferry. Thursday is RCA meeting in the evening (Rum Community Association, basically residents meeting), Friday is cobble together anything and everything possible to make chicken housing with. We’er waiting on some money to clear and then buying a strimmer / brush cutter to start clearing the croft land a little.
At least three times a day I stop what I am doing, look around me, take a deep breath and am overwhelmed by how happy I am to be here. The kids feel the same. Ady is still rather overwhelmed by everything but I am very hopeful he’s getting to the same place as the rest of us.