There were supposed to be about 10 on this event. Two French girls who had already been quite hard work by email and negotiated a later arrival time and asked tons of questions pulled out last week at short notice, three Americans cancelled this morning! Two French guys just didn’t turn up on the ferry at all. Jen, who is lovely and was here last year and croft sat for us in February had already cancelled a while back as she injured herself a while ago and knew she was probably not up to the work after a sea kayaking break in Arisaig this week. So we have one lonely volunteer which frankly is more hassle than she’ll be worth. None of the big work party team jobs are worth starting with just one extra pair of hands and the notion of sending her off for hours each day to work alone is a bit mean. Gah! And one of the volunteers for the August event who seems very nice but has been very hard work by email with countless questions all of which I had already covered in my information sheet has just emailed to say she has booked her train tickets and given me the times. She will arrive in Mallaig after the Monday boat she is supposed to be coming here on and needs to be back in Mallaig to catch a train before she would even have left Rum on the following Wednesday… so either she finds somewhere to stay in Mallaig for two nights and comes on Wednesday, then leaves the following Monday and finds somewhere to stay til the Wednesday or she needs to rebook her train, which I bet she can’t easily do. And I send all the links to the Calmac timetable and explain it is just one boat and not every day… Argh. I try really hard to ensure I send out stacks of info because there is so much to be communicated in advance but I am sure the amount of stuff to read means people just don’t bother.
I’m even more pissed off because I had an airbnb enquiry about 2 nights this week for the bell tent which would have been worth nearly £60 but I turned down as I was expecting a bell tent full of volunteers…
Davies and Scarlett have been off all day playing with Evie and Poppy who arrived yesterday for 3 weeks. They hung out in the village and then came up here for the afternoon to bounce on the trampoline, cuddle the duckling and hang out. They are not getting together tomorrow and I think they are planning on a one day on, one day off arrangement to allow the girls to spend some time with their Dad – Dan, Claire’s boyfriend.
Ady and I finished off the base camp area. It looks really good now, very pleased with it. We need to better partition off the compost loo but have some ideas for that which we’ll sort out next week once Estelle the current volunteer has gone. For now though we have set up a camping stove with double rings and grill, the sink, a table, loads of undercover seating and space for storing food and hanging wet clothes. It will be great for up to about 8 people to use , will be a good space for the bell tent campers if we get any and will mean that next year we can do actual proper WWOOFing and just provide food for people to cook for themselves without feeling we should have them in the caravan for meals. I will try and view the prospect of all the volunteers arriving being what finally galvanised us into sorting it out even if said volunteers never arrived.
I walked Estelle back from the ferry while Ady drove back to finish things off. I gave her a village tour and introduced her to people, showed her the shop and the hall etc. I finally remembered to take the shears with me and clear all the grown grass around the wellies on the welly trail while we walked so that was productive. This afternoon I stitched up a huge rip in the trampoline net where Evie managed to fall through, poor kid :(, I watered the polytunnel and then did some baking – ginger and chocolate oat cookies and a vat of soup for lunch tomorrow, bread, lasagne for dinner – I think every pan was used with cheese sauce, melting sugar and syrup, cooking soup and the bolognaise for lasagne. I had a shower too. A new crochet book arrived in the post for me which I have had a quick flick through but not properly looked at yet, I am really keen to sit down with a hook and a cup of tea and play with that but suspect I won’t get a chance until the weekend.