Back home again 🙂
Monday – we left on the 2pm ferry and despite our fears that Bonnie may be in season again and the lack of return phonecall from the holiday cottage when we were sure they’d said they’d ring us nearer the time to confirm our arrival time everything went smoothly and according to plan.
The crossing was a good one, the sea like glass and on the boat with us was Neil from Eigg, our old WWOOF host. It was so good to see him again, I really like Neil and he is very responsible for us being here now. I’ve seen Sue since we came to Rum (she works for the school on Eigg, part time teaching and part time clerical) but not Neil. We had a good chat with him. Between chatting to Neil and knowing lots of the crew on the boat we really felt like proper islanders coming off 🙂
Into the car and straight to Fort William to the vets. Bonnie was checked over, weighed and shown into the same big crate she had last time she was there, going in pretty happily. Then to the holiday cottage which is just around the corner. Sure enough we were expected :). A quick chat with the owner who recognised us from September and then left us to it. We needed food but predictably the lure of a TV was greater than Morrisons so Davies and Scarlett stayed behind while Ady and I hit Lidl and Morrisons for a quick initial shop for dinner for 2 nights and breakfast for the next morning. The holiday cottage is really well stocked and has all the essentials like tea, coffee, sugar, rice and pasta, gravy, herbs, spices, oil, ketchup etc. The owner had also put a carton of milk in the fridge and a bottle of wine and box of shortbread on the side which was very gratefully received :).
Back home for dinner, baths, TV and bed. We all slept badly – the kids because I had put the washing machine on before we all went to bed and it was very noisy. Ady and I because it was so hot in the cottage compared to what we’re used to so we both got up for drinks of water and to throw the covers off. The following day we turned the heating off and had a window open so slept fine after that.
Tuesday – up early-ish to head to Inverness. Fort William has little in the way of a high street with over half the shops closed down anyway. There is a huge Tesco due to open this year which will no doubt be the end of the high street there forever. As befits the town as a tourist destination it is mostly outdoors shop with the sole clothing store there being M & Co. There are about 5 charity shops but rather hilariously pretty much the entire clothing stock in every one is M & Co clothing too – I guess if that’s all you can buy new then that’s all that gets donated! So we’d decided to take a day to go to Inverness which is 65 miles from FW. It’s a twisty turny road and within 10 miles both the kids were feeling car sick. After 30 miles we had to pull over so Scarlett could actually be sick, poor thing 🙁 For such seasoned travellers they both suffer in cars now after such a long time not in them (Willow travelling was a different sort of car journey experience). We bought travel sickness tablets in Inverness and although they both felt rough this morning from FW to Mallaig neither was actually ill.
Once there we parked up and hit the shops. In retrospect we would have been better planning our day more as we have been to Inverness several times before so do know the rough lay out. We ended up parked too far to nip back to the car with shopping and then went to Primark first where we did the bulk of the shopping so had three really big heavy bags to cart round for the rest of the day. We did kit Davies out with long sleeved tops and pj bottoms, Ady and I both got a new top and Scarlett got pants. Then we split up for lunch as Ady and Scarlett wanted McDonalds while Davies and I wanted KFC. That was quite nice, I enjoyed a nice lunch date with my fast food buddy and I know the other two enjoyed theirs 🙂 Davies observed that sitting in just the small seating area we ate in were more people than on the whole of Rum.
Further looking round shops before we hit a point where we’d all (mostly me!) had enough so we called it a day for Inverness centre and went to the big Tesco complex just outside the town. There the kids got a 3ds kit each (stylus, case etc) reduced to 99p in Argos, I got a top in the New Look and we got lots of food shopping, some trainers for Davies, a t shirt for Scarlett, some more tops for me and a tablet for Ady. We were totally done in by the time we’d finished there and the drive back to FW felt very long in the dark.
We got in at 9pm, had baths, a Goddard o’clock dinner and then bed.
Wednesday morning we walked into FW first going to the vets to visit Bonnie who was utterly delighted to see us and very sorry for herself with her cone. She was bright and fine though so that made us all feel better and reassured. We walked into the town and in M&CO managed to get more tops for Davies and some bras for me. We then all got a few bits in various charity shops and I stocked up on nail varnish in superdrug before going back to the cottage for a late lunch of leftover stuff from the previous two days dinners.
The kids had got a couple of dvds, Davies had a new lego set and Scarlett some new playmobile so they stayed behind again while Ady and I went to do the final Lidl and Morrisons shops. This time mostly cheap alcohol (Morrisons amaretto and ginger wine is less than half the price of the branded stuff Jinty gets) and leftover Christmas stock of things like twiglets, peanuts, olives and other nice snacky stuff that we stash for miserable days to have as treats. The ‘treat cupboard’ is now suitably groaning again having not had the usual injection of Christmas fayre that we’d have had on the mainland. We also have the sofa storage filled with own brand stuffing, gravy, stock cubes, instant noodles and other value supermarket items that cost pence versus pounds when compared to what Jinty has in.
Back home again for an earlier dinner. I made lasagne, everyone had baths (Scarlett had bought Lush stuff in Inverness, I dare not use it incase it gives me Nicface) and we all left Ady with the TV for his last night of enjoying it having packed the car up really well to fit everything in.
This morning was an early start to be out of the cottage and at the vets for 830 when they opened to collect Bonnie. Last time there had been a lot of faffing when we collected her so I’d paid yesterday to ensure that didn’t need to be done and made it clear we had a ferry to catch so we’d not be able to hang around. I think being there before they even officially opened meant we didn’t end up in a queue of patients too. I went in on my own – the kids were wedged in by stuff anyway and we thought it would keep her calmer if it was just one of us. She leapt over the seat to get to the kids anyway and split the journey pretty much equally between Scarlett, then Davies, then my lap. We’d originally planned to go into the CoOp in Mallaig to get meat for the freezer but we’d run out of money! So we loaded all the shopping into the Calmac van and then paid the freight on that and also settled up for the last lot of winkles which Tony had not paid. Again, it’s so nice to be an islander and known by all the Calmac staff 🙂
Steve was on the ferry with us so we spent the journey chatting to him. The first mate came to talk to us about collies as he is thinking about getting one and I spent the last 15 minutes or so out on deck as it was such a beautiful morning watching Rum grow closer and chatting to Jinty’s dad who was over visiting about house builds and chasing dreams.
We stepped off the boat and Chain said ‘welcome home’ which was lovely :). We managed to fit everything into the Pajero including us and the several deliveries that had come for us on Tuesday’s boat, called in to see Vikki who has been animal sitting for us and we are now cat feeding for her as she was off on the second boat and then home. Ady carried Bonnie up the croft and then he brought everything up the hill while I sorted it all out and put it away. We took a break in the middle as we had a birthday present for Carole and Paul was off on the second boat to meet her for a break at Loch Ness so we wanted to send that off with him. We then called round to put stuff in the freezer and dropped in to see Fliss and Sandy and meet Keeva – Sandy’s eldest daughter who is over visiting. More house talk to be continued tomorrow.
Back home to carry on putting stuff away, Ady cleaned out the log burner chimney and flue as it was clogged up – this one is small and cheap but does require regular maintenance. I got dinner all sorted ready to go in the oven for later and then Ady and I went down to feed Lisa the cat, collect our veg box and attend the monthly RCA. It was really poorly attended – Lesley & Neil, Sean & Ali, Ady & I, Fliss and Rhys. A real shame as we did have some fairly important stuff to discuss and it’s almost impossible when you only have about a quarter of the people there. Really looking forward to Gav & Laura coming, they will shake things up a bit with new enthusiasm, energy and ideas. Slowly we will get to a point where there are more of us here who care and want to drive things forward but it will take time.
One thing to come out of today was that I am taking on a community newsletter. We have had an IRCT newsletter for a few years which started with the right intentions to keep everyone informed of what is happening in the community but somehow morphed into yet another big chunk of workload for Vikki when she could just be spending a morning a month knocking out a column for it rather than the whole letter. It’s just the sort of task I enjoy and I should be able to do it while working at the school too which is even better. I’m looking forward to getting that sorted for February :). The other thing making me smile today is starting the first payment for the Rum Christmas Club. Fliss and I came up with the idea of paying in a few quid every week on veg box day to Jinty to keep for us to be spent at Christmas. I’m doing £3 a week which I’ll not miss at all but can blow on loads of nice Christmas food in December. This year I spent about £60 in there on Christmas Eve and I’d far rather give all that to Jinty and spend more if I’ve spread it through the whole year :). A new notebook was started and Fliss and I signed out money in for the first weeks contribution :).
Ady and I were back home even earlier than we expected – we bought new torches in Lidl while we were off and we love them. I have a pretty good headtorch but these are even better for a bigger beam lighting the muddy path up the croft. We got dinner on, I sorted out the bedroom, just clothes and bathroom stuff to put away in the morning but it can wait til daylight. We watched Africa on iplayer – really annoyed to have forgotten that was on last night and just caught the last ten minutes on the big TV screen at the cottage 🙁 I did some crochet which I missed while we were away, another hexagon done :).
We’re expecting a nice few days of weather so looking forward to getting some outside stuff done on the croft along with various indoor tasks too for house planning and form filling. I need to get my ID sorted for the school forms so that is in motion too. It’s good to be home 🙂