Saturday – post office in the morning for me. I couldn’t find my keys in the morning and had a sudden flash of realisation that they were probably in the back pocket of my posh mainland jeans which I would have been wearing the previous Saturday having worn them home on the Friday and knew they were in the back of the Jeep in a white sack ready to go in the laundry. I hoped this was the case and dashed down to find Ady, rummaged in the washing machine in the castle and sure enough, there they were! Phew.
A quiet morning shift at Post Office and then along to the hostel to meet Ady. Not sure what we did in the afternoon but we had a really early dinner and then headed down the hill in the pouring rain to see Elsa Jean McTaggart. She first came to Rum just after we arrived in the summer of 2012 and we loved her then. This time she was even better and hugely excitingly sang with me when I was trying to persuade Dave to play The Gambler. Most starstruck! Even more so now she is my facebook friend and we have had some facebook chats 🙂 Also on the bill were the Boathouse Blues Band (Rum’s Jed, Sean the Rat and Chainsaw Dave) and Danny (Clare’s boyfriend). It was a cracking night 🙂 Ady got probably the most drunk I have ever (in 22 years!) seen him, drinking most of a bottle of whisky. Davies and Scarlett left to come home around 11ish and me and Ady got home at 2am. How we got home in the dark without torches and Ady in the state he was I am not altogether sure but we did…
Sunday morning the kids and I laid in. Ady was up to feed the animals and go to the pier to send diesel cans off. I did some stuff in the walled garden / polytunnel and we had an early, very delicious, hangover soaking up roast dinner and an early night all round.
Monday – Ady and I walked down to the village in the morning, stuff to post, things to buy, food to get from the freezer. We stayed awhile as various folk were out and we quite like the morning chatter at the shop. Home for lunch of wraps and the new series of Dragons Den on iplayer, then lots of stuff on the croft in the walled garden for me. More beds weeded, netted and with seedlings transplanted, sweetcorn potted on, leeks planted out. Dinner of venison bolognaise.
Tuesday – castle shift in the morning for Ady and I. I was incredibly bored as we were dusting and hoovering the castle. We entertained ourselves for a while but four hours is a long time to kill… eventually it was home time though so back to the croft for lunch. I had a whole afternoon of baking – flatbreads, bread and cookies for Market Day / Teashop and steak pie for an early dinner. We then walked down to the village for the Hawaiian shirt ceilidh which some visiting musicians were laying on. Another excellent evening of dancing, music and craic. The kids left at 10 ish, we were home just after midnight. Ady made toast all round. I remember taking a 4 month old Davies to the 24 hour Tesco on Christmas Eve to do our Christmas food shopping at 430am because that was when he’d woken us up for a feed so I’d fed him and then we’d taken advantage of being up anyway to do our sprout purchasing without crowds. Nearly 15 years later it’s nice to be reaping the rewards the other end of having kids old enough to sit up and eat toast and talk nonsense with you in the early hours (their nonsense is down to being teens and therefore fairly random, not being inebriated I hasten to add….).
Wednesday – I was Mrs Post from 10 til midday as Jinty was off for a quick mainland visit. To my (and her) horror her Dad Pete has taken away the kettle. Yes it leaked water everywhere when it boiled and was therefore probably a huge peril of death to us but I can’t possibly function at post office without my tea. Bad Neil says if it is not back for Saturday then he and I will go on strike like the Calmac workers. Bad Neil does not actually work on a Saturday morning but he does drink at least 2 cups of tea with me so has a very important role….
Fortunately my next role of the day was Mrs Teashop with Ali. It was bedlam! We had queues and queues of folk, sold out of everything and had to turn the last few folk away. Made over £100 each 🙂 Hurrah for that. The early customers and the aftermath customers were really chatty and I love that side of life here 🙂
We finally cleared up, moved our stuff back to the craft shop and were ready to finish by 4pm. Davies was a star this afternoon, he and Scarlett came down, he chatted to tourists about the weather forecast, sorted out the hall PC which had been unplugged, took Eve round to our freezer and gave her an ice lolly and was generally awesome. Love that boy 🙂 The kids and I walked home but I had agreed to check my emails expecting to be called back for a brief meeting at 5pm. So I was home long enough to move two dog crates up the hill in readiness for tomorrow’s arrivals before going back to the village for a meeting at Ali’s with Dev O Steve and some housing blokes who are over doing audits on the housing stock.
Back home to water the polytunnel and have dinner.
Tomorrow is Sheerwater day and the cats arrive 🙂 🙂