Monday – The morning utterly eludes me… At midday I set off down the hill to meet the ferry. It came in early and I would never have made it to the boat if I’d not got a lift for the last wee bit of the way from Ali & Eve. Abi, my friend from library days had already got off the boat so a big hug and kiss and welcome to Rum and she introduced me to her new partner – Gary! Gary is worthy of an exclamation mark because Abi’s previous partners were called Juliet and then Alexa… I helped them carry their stuff along to the camping cabins where they were staying, had a quick catch up on Abi’s news (went to work for East Sussex county council library service in a very high powered job, became a Buddhist, got a job at a live in Buddhist retreat in the Scottish Highlands and moved here, finished with Alexa, got together with Gary!) and her with mine (went traveling, heard about a croft on Rum applied for croft, got it, moved here, did all sorts of mad stuff for 3 years, met Ben Fogle, that sort of thing… although she knew most of it because I had not one but two leaving parties with library friends – one when we went WWOOFing and then another when we came back to Sussex before we moved here to Rum. It was the week of many leaving parties and walking in inappropriate shoes when the car broke down after I had dinner with Ali in Brighton and walked part way home, then walked into Worthing the following night for another dinner with friends. I still had the blisters on my feet when we arrived on Rum weeks later… I’d quite forgotten all that until I started typing this.) Anyway, I showed them the showers and loos and the camping cabin and then headed back into the village to the shop, walking most of the way with Ranger Trudi.
I caught up with Jinty for a while as she was heading off and wanted me to do a couple of hours of sorting out veg and working the shop. I did that and had further chats with Abi & Gary who came along for some food shopping and then headed back up to the croft. We had arranged with Stevie to do a first session of staff training and tai chi so Ady and I went back down to meet up with Stevie & Claire and the kids who were already down there. It was actually quite good fun despite Ady and I struggling to take it seriously. We finished that and then came back home to feed animals and have dinner. I had a go at a recipe for happy bread which I’d seen the day before on facebook and it turned out amazingly.
Tuesday – Ady went down to collect some cheese and some mince from the freezer for me in the morning and I spent much of the day baking for Teashop. I made brownies, ginger and oat cookies, peanut butter and choc chip cookies and then Davies helped me make the 3 different flavour flatbreads. Ady was having a mammoth tidy up in the horsebox. Davies and Scarlett went off for a wander down to the beach and back and Abi and Gary came up for a cup of tea and tour of the croft. It was pretty midgey so we didn’t linger anywhere but it was fab to show them round.
I made dinner and tried a twist on the happy bread from the night before by adding herbs to the dough and then rolling mozzarella and roasted garlic in the layers. It was delicious 🙂
Wednesday – The Last Teashop for me, well certainly for now. I was also doing Post Office so Ady came down with me and he helped Ali with the first bits of Teashop. He also hung out with me in the shop along with Ross and Jed and Ian. We had a really funny ten minutes of all gathering a food order from Steve Dev Officer which had come through, it was like Supermarket Sweep in the shop! I finished up in there and then went next door to Teashop. Because it rained all day and because it was actually quite a nice atmosphere Ady stayed too so it was a pretty relaxed day all round. We had loads of locals in too which was nice and I got to chat to Ali a bit about resigning as a director which made me feel better as I was feeling bad for not talking to her about it first.
Back home and I wrote a letter to my Granny, did various emaily things, had a shower and did some crochet. Ady cooked dinner and everyone appears to have had a fairly early night, so I may follow suit.