Life Laundry

Yes, off island, for ten days!

When I organised the Big Lunch back in June I got invited to a Big Lunch Extras workshop thing. I was going to go to the October one but life caught up with us and it just didn’t fit in but managed to get on the January one instead. I’m not entirely sure what it entails but it is lottery funded community building workshops, seminar stuff at the Eden Project with lots of networking, training and help with accessing info, grants and so on. It sounds both interesting generally and potentially useful for both us here on Rum and for me / Ady and some of our other ideas for business stuff. Plus they are covering all travel expenses!

So on that basis although it will be a mad 10 days we are heading down to Cornwall, via Sussex. I’ve not said anything as we have literally no time to see anyone – our schedule is as follows:
Tuesday – leave Rum on 2pm boat, arrive Mallaig 330pm, drive to Glasgow to stay in Premier Inn off motorway.
Wednesday – drive to Manchester, stay with Lynda and Stuart – both because they are a handy stop over and because I am not sure when we’ll next see them and we miss them!
Thursday – drive to Sussex, arrive mid afternoon. Finally meet Robin and see Frazer for first time in nearly 2 years. Parents want to take us all out for a meal to belatedly celebrate everything missed for last two years – birthdays, births etc. Stay at Mum & Dads.
Friday – Ady and I drive to Eden Project arriving for lunchtime for Big Lunch Extras. Kids are staying at my parents. First time Ady and I have ever been away from kids since we had them, regardless of quality or interestingness of workshop it will no doubt feel like a sort of honeymoon!
Saturday & Sunday & Monday morning – Big Lunch Extra for Ady and I. Indulged by grandparents for Davies and Scarlett until approx Sunday lunchtime by which point my Mum will have had enough of them and Davies will be spending time reassuring Scarlett that it’s only one more night til Mummy and Daddy come back.
Monday – drive back to Sussex from Cornwall. Reunited with children, suspect more visits from Frazer, Kat and Robin. Stay the night at parents.
Tuesday – Drive to Glasgow. Stay in Premierinn.
Wednesday – drive to Fort William, Overload on supermarket shopping etc, stay in Premier Inn.
Thursday – drive to Mallaig, catch ferry, return to Rum, get reunited with Bonnie, croft, static, animals, deal with any fall out days away, reconnect static to water, gas, solar, wind, put away vast quantities of food shopping and probable stuff kids will have rediscovered at parents and insisted on bringing back. Sigh at laundry from 9 days away with no access to washing machine. Collapse.

I suspect we’re mad. It was the only way I could ever see us getting to Sussex to meet Robin as we could never justify the expense. We have one set of people looking after Bonnie, another looking after Humphrey and three sets of people sorting out their own rota for pig and poultry feeding twice a day. If I’d realised when I started arranging it that Gav and Laura wouldnt be back I would probably have never even considered it! I’m not even going to start considering poorly animals, gale force winds or any other eventualities and have been talking to Davies and Scarlett about road safety for weeks!

Definitely needed to blog this, it was far too long for a comment reply Michelle! 🙂

Today has been laundry – three loads, all very complicated as the water needs taking off the supply to the static and putting on the washing machine, via a hose that Ady has bodged with a load of gaffer tape so it only leaks a bit ;). Then the nice posh genny has to be used to start the machine as the other one doesn’t make the door lock and the water valve open, but the nice posh genny is not powerful enough to get the water up to temperature (old machine, lowest wash is 40 degrees) or operate the spin cycle so once it is full and heated we have to turn it off, switch gennys over and then start it up again. Very complicated. But clean washing! On the croft! For just the price of the petrol! It was a perfect drying day so I got the first two loads dry and aired infront of the log burner, now folded and put away. The third load I hung out by headtorch light but hopefully will dry tomorrow. We’ve already realised we don’t own enough pairs of pants each to take with us so will stop on the second day and all get new pants. On Sunday I have sceheduled in panicking that no one has clothing suitable for staying at grandparents / meeting strangers to do training workshops about community building. We have lots of clothes that are mud stained, ripped and meet Rum chic standards. Maybe we’ll be buying more than pants!

Barbara Pig has not escaped at all today, hurrah and yipee. Bonnie caught a rat, she is a spectacular ratter,yay Bonnie. Ady and I are both at dry throat clearing cough stage of the cold and the weather has turned colder so the bedroom is very chilly at night which doesn’t help. Rent paid again by tenants, still no sign of the winkle cheque in our bank account.