One word? When seven would do…

Monday – TV day. Having heard we would not be getting a disc of the show in advance we, well I, spent most of the day in a state of heightened anticipation. I was worried about the general reaction, worried about what the show would actually contain and most worried that everyone else would see it and we would not.

In the morning Ady and I went down to the shop to send some post and get various bits. We had lunch and then because I had a bit of an inkling that it all might get a bit mad after the show aired we went for a walk out into the island. The idea was to get some perspective, to be able to walk far enough inland to look back at the croft and see the sum of our years here, to see it all in perspective to the rest of the island, to see how small the village really is and that what often feels like our whole world is small even by Rum standards, let alone the world. I also felt it would help to be away from phones and internet and the obsessive need to keep checking both.

It was a lovely couple of hours. We talked and laughed and teased and were just us five (Bonnie was with us obviously). We took our perspective photos, walked past a couple of visitors (one going and one coming), had a moment looking at the croft discussing whether it had all been worth it, walked in various configurations of twos, threes and fours and enjoyed just being us.

Back at the croft the kids and I gathered rucksacks and headed down to collect the veg while Ady fed the animals. Except our veg order had not been put in – Jinty found it today actually, lost in the pet food section of the shop :rolls: So all that walk down for nothing. And no veg or fruit this week. Poor children will have rickets along with no friends 😉

So home, for an early dinner ready to be sitting down at 9pm. Renegade TV had refused to send us a disc but agreed to send a link pre the show actually being aired, it came through about half eight but I didn’t check emails til just before 9pm. So we ended up watching at pretty much the same time as everyone else. We didn’t have adverts on our link but it buffered several times due to super slow internet which meant we actually finished watching around 10pm too, the same as on TV. Within 20 minutes my email had gone crazy with loads of messages from people who had found a way to email us including friends from school days. Facebook was mad with load of messages and tags and comments, about 8 friend requests and loads of messages in the others folder.  We rang my parents and then everyone else went to bed. I stupidly checked twitter after someone had mentioned the hashtag for the show and so slept badly mentally composing retorts in 140 characters to the handful of people who had said mean things.

Tuesday – woke to more emails and friend requests but ignored it all and went off to work. We were doing the final move of the SNH office but a boss from the mainland was over so it was far more efficient that usual :). Lots of chatter about the TV show as everyone had seen it and then home for lunch. I spent the afternoon baking, the kids played outside and Ady did loads of outdoors stuff to sort out the pig fence for a pig enclosure expansion we are waiting on some fence components for.  In the evening I replied to all the messages and emails and friend requests.

Wednesday – Teashop – My penultimate one and financially my best so far with over £100 taken. Woohoo! It’s not massively lucrative given the amount of hours of baking the day before and being in the teashop on the day, not to mention ingredients and gas usages at the caravan but it’s cash nonetheless. Ady went and did some work on the bridge and then went home, the kids came down to hang out in the hall. We had a mini tea party afterwards with leftover cake before heading for home. In the rain.

Our new caravan curtains had arrived so once we were dried off we took down all the old curtains, organised the pelmets and while Ady cleaned and bleached away all the mould Scarlett and I cleaned up the curtain hooks and threaded them on all the new curtains. Davies sort of helped but mostly played on his tablet. He did organise the music though, which is a pretty key role to such things ;). It all looks so much nicer and more homely now 🙂 And less moldy.

I ended up starting dinner prep while Ady fed the animals and we watched lots of Eureka. Final disc still to come and that’s us done with that series – an excellent recommendation.

Thursday – debate on whether to Sheerwater or not, there are only about 4 left I think. Stuff has been seen, a basking shark just last weekend, pods of whales and dolphins, just never on a Thursday afternoon it seems. Ah well. This week was no different although there were lots of rafting shearwaters and diving gannets which are always a delight to see, particularly when that’s all there is. Ronnie didn’t charge us either, so a free ride at least. Ady and I had been playing mechanics before and after trying to fix the terminals on the battery of the Jeep which were worn and corroded away. It’s not entirely sorted but neither did we break it irrepairably ether which felt like a victory.

Today – Adys first day of being a ghillie. He’s doing it tomorrow too and then will be again in the coming weeks. He wanted to do it if only to say he’s done it as it seems to be a bit of a Rum rite of passage. I’d have a go myself if I were not scared of the ponies. He headed off, leaving the kids and I home alone. This happens so infrequently it felt quite retro and old skool and we almost fell into old dynamics which was sort of nice if just for one day. I made some flapjacks and cheese scones and we had lunch together, then I headed off to meet the boat. When I got up the littlest piglet, Wattles, had beenout roaming and I’d woken Scarlett to help round her up but she’d gone back in to the pen by herself. She is slowly winning me over to the idea that we may not kill her for meat, which is what everyone else on Rum – and Croft 3 – is campaigning for. She does a fine line in Wilbur-ing 😉

The Jeep didnt start so I took the Rangerover and collected the meat from the ferry, dropped that off in the freezer and then went to the shop to collect animal feed from the van as it had been driven round there. I stayed and helped unload the van too and Derek & Jinty helped load the animal feed into the car for me. I drove back, across the river and unloaded it all, loaded some of the delivery of loo rolls into the Pajero and then took the car back across the river. I left two sacks of pig feed out to bring up to the feed bin next to the pigs (over 50kg in weight- a harsh barrow-load to get up the croft hill) and brought the other stuff up the hill. The kids helped put stuff away and then got the kettle on while I went to take the wheelbarrow down to load up. When I got back to the top of the hill it was to discover that Barbara Pig was now out. Argh!

The kids managed to sneak down to the pig pen and rattle the feed bin and she legged it back in. I bought the feed over and put it in the bin while they checked the fence for damage. Then back to the caravan for my cup of tea. I unwrapped the post which was new crocs for Scarlett, new wellies and trousers for Ady and some hanging shelves for the kids wardrobes. Then Barbara got out again. I was fed up by then and just wanted to make pizza dough for dinner and have my cup of tea so Scarlett, wonderful girl, went and dealt with Barbara while I did that. I love that girl 🙂 And it worked, she didn’t come out again this evening.

I spent some time organising another trip off for a check up for Davies which is on a Wednesday so annoyingly means four nights off! One of them we can stay at friends but 3 will need to be in a hotel in FW, we should get some of the costs back though.

Finally Ady came home, covered in blood and knackered but having had a really good day. So glad he enjoyed it 🙂 Pizza and Doctor Who to round off the ‘working week’.

Thursday – Ady went down before us to watch the ponies being tacked up. He is doing some ghillieing next week and Good Neil the Farrier was over so the ponies were being shod. The kids and I packed up a picnic and followed him down. We walked along to the pier with Trudi and Debs walked part way with us for a chat too.

There were high hopes for a good Sheerwater trip but to no avail. We sailed all the way around Soay but Ronnie the usual skipper was off and the skipper was not chasing anything even if it was there. On Saturday they saw a basking shark so they are out there, just not on our watch it seems. Plenty of manx shearwaters though and lots of diving gannets, a couple of porpoises doing their thing and one of our fellow passengers on board being seasick…

On the walk back we collected enough raspberries to make a single sacred jar of raspberry jam. Ady went home to feed the animals, get dinner on and give Bonnie some time outside, the kids and I went along to Sean & Ali’s for Eve’s 7th birthday party. The kids spent the time playing mostly outside. Ali is so funny, she always makes such a point of how well they all get on and is utterly oblivious to the fact that Davies and Scarlett are playing babysitters – they more or less enjoy doing so and have fun but it’s not as though they are getting their teenage social needs met by the two little girls… Fliss stayed too and we chatted to Sean & Ali and updated them on all they’d missed while they’d been away (they’d been off for two weeks, getting back the day before). They told us tales of the mainland and also having been at Kilmory meeting Dermot O’Leary and Gordon Buchanan  who were on Rum for a night filming over on the other side of the island. Various folk met them, I’d have quite liked to meet Gordon, we really enjoyed his polar bear and wolf documentaries.

Ady joined us and loads of other folk down at the shop for a very late night. Most of the village was out I think at some point but the die hards were us and The Neils, Jed, Sean and Nicola. It was a really good evening and I think we finally made it home just about by midnight having had emotional goodbyes with Good Neil and Bad Neil, who were both heading off the next day.

Friday – morning the potential new family came up at 11ish and stayed til about 130pm. They were nice and asked lots of sensible questions. They are also interested in Home Ed and we talked a lot about that. I always forget how big a part of our lives that is, it feels so much an incidental but is one of the biggest things about us (well maybe not since we moved here I guess). Ady and I had a quick something to eat and then headed off down to the pier. The boat was running a half an hour late according to Calmac but the Friday boat is often late anyway and it was actually a full hour late coming in. Fortunately our petrol came off after the walk all the way down and the wait. And it was sunny and not midgey! We waited with a father, son and son’s friend who had been here for a few days. The boys were the same age as Scarlett, attached to their phones and ranting about lack of signal and wifi – a good reminder to Ady that our simple life and unconnected from social media kids is no bad thing. Calmac left the van so we drove Jinty’s van back to the village and Jinty drove that, we helped unload the van, took Bad Neil’s chicken food along to him which had arrived and chatted for a while to folk before coming home. Jinty had had some cream doughnuts come on the delivery so we’d bought them as a Friday treat and enjoyed them with a cup of tea back at the croft with the kids.

Davies & Scarlett had emptied out their wardrobes and made piles of storage / outgrown / wearing now so I helped them fold stuff up, put stuff in vacuum bags and tidily back in their wardrobes. I also ordered some hanging shelves for them both to tidy them even more. Davies made pizza dough and then it was time to head down to the shop again, this time for Nicola’s leaving party. There were jugs of cocktails and it would have been very easy to stay longer and later (several people did!) but we were all pretty tired from the night before so headed home by 9ish for pizza and Doctor Who.

Saturday – work for both Ady & I. Post office first for me. It was fairly quiet with no Neil and not many other people in. Ady was cleaning the White House so I walked along to meet him. As he had the place entirely to himself he had taken the liberty of having a bath which seemed like such a good idea that I did the same! Luxury! It probably won’t happen again as next Saturday we’re not working and after that the work on converting it back into 2 houses should have started so it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. Then along to the castle to do a tour. We had four people on the tour, two were constantly watching the clock and were actually quite rude and annoying, the other two were charming and really enjoyed it so we chatted to them awhile longer. Ady told them that there was a show about Rum on TV on Monday, neglecting to mention it was actually about us – will be funny if they watch it! 😀

Back home for late lunch and catch up with the kids. I did the last of the vacuum packing up my wool under the sofas and Ady cooked a lovely curry. A couple of episodes of Eureka and then a fairly early night all round.

Today – I had planned a lie in but woke just after 8 and read for an hour or so instead of sleeping later. Ady is starting to fret a tiny bit about his ghillieing so went on a long walk around the village and crofts with Bonnie. We realised that Scarlett’s duckling was missing so spent ages searching for it only to find it swimming on the river. Both lovely to see and amazing to realise we could have lost it as it is a rubbish walker so may well have struggled to get back up to the croft. Scarlett came down to help get it out and return it for some much needed food after it’s adventure.

We had lunch, I made some brownies, we ate some brownies… I did some weeding and sorting out in the polytunnel, a tiny bit of weeding in the walled garden and then had a walk all around the croft picking flowers, taking photos and stopping to sit and just enjoy the view for a while. Ady scythed the next line for extending the pig fence (now waiting for more electric fence wire to arrive, should be here within the week) and put in some posts. The kids had showers. I brushed Scarlett’s hair and we watched the first of a two parter of Doctor Who, then the second part with roast dinner.

Tuesday – work in the morning for SNH. Still on the office move and still not remotely organised or properly planned so lots of standing around waiting and a small amount of moving boxes and dismantling furniture. All a bit of a joke really. We went to the shop after work for some snack food for lunch and I begged a cup of tea off Jinty too, there were a few of us round there so we hung out chatting before heading back to the castle for the next installment of our work on the Japanese bridge. We planned to strip the old chicken wire off the bridge and had gone armed with tin snips and thick gloves. We should have also gone armed with midge nets and spray! It was very midgey and not very pleasant work but we got it all done and then headed for home.

It was a lovely afternoon so after a cup of tea, chocolate brownie and catch up with the kids I turned the music up loud and did my Teashop baking and made dinner, Ady went outside to water the polytunnel and strim the pig fenceline as the grass was touching the electric fence and earthing it and the kids went out to play outside. I made 30 flatbreads, some banana and choc chip muffins, a loaf of bread and a steak pie for our dinner, finally getting everything on the table just after 9pm – four solid hours of baking! The sunshine and music helped 🙂

Today was Teashop for me and Deb was working with me today. She had made soup and cakes and we did a good solid trade taking nearly £200 between us. Ady went along to meet the boat as we were expecting petrol off but it got bumped as there were more than 100 foot passengers (random maritime law which states no dangerous goods can be transported if there are more than 100 foot passengers meaning that gas, petrol and diesel will all get bumped in favour of people despite Calmac in theory offering a lifeline service rather than a tourist line plus it being acceptable to put 99 people’s lives in danger but not 100!?). Our next stash of vacuum bags arrived though so that is the plan for Friday 🙂

We have a family here this week who are interested in moving here so they called in for a chat and arranged to come up to the croft on Friday to meet and talk properly. Am slightly fatigued by Rum politics just now but will try hard to be positive and continue doing a good PR job 😉 We learnt last week that Gav & Laura (croft 2) have split up which was quite a shock and found out today that Stuart & Julie (retired headmaster and his wife who was the nursery and clerical assistant, they left Rum a few month ago) have also split up after 30 odd years marriage. Am slightly reeling from hearing about both those couples. The Locks are wanting to come and stay on the croft in our tent in a couple of weeks too and I am just exhausted at the prospect of it. It’s like meeting new Home Educators All The Time and knowing that it’s really important to help and answer their questions and assist and help spread the word and swell HE numbers and give something back to the community that helped you so much when you first started out, but also just wishing that everyone could bugger off so you could just get on with HEing you own children and living your lives too!

I caught up with Dev Officer Steve who is over and we chatted for ages and ended up going next door to the shop for Beer O’clock, then Bad Neil bought me a beer, then the IRN security guys who manage all the fire alarms on the island and come over every 6 months to service and check them and Ady and I get on really well with arrived and Kenny bought me a beer. Then Good Neil the Farrier arrived and offered beers but it was suddenly nearly 7pm and despite emailing and voicemailing Ady I had not got hold of him so I headed off with the kids home for dinner having arranged to go back down for beers with them all tomorrow and bring Ady too. It’s Bad Neil’s last night before he goes off to meet Lesley to have the baby and his life changes forever… who will I chat to on Saturday mornings?!

I rang my parents when I got home to tell them we’ve been scheduled. I had an email from Kate today so say she will hopefully have a disc on the way to us tomorrow so fingers crossed it arrives over the weekend and we get to see it at least at the same time as the rest of the country. We’ve been invited down to various houses in the village to watch it go out but would quite like to watch it just the four of us first and see what we think before watching it with other people. Hoping there are enough cringey bits to make fun of but enough good bits to have us not look like complete crazies!

 

has whizzed by…

Wednesday – Market Day for me – it was Fliss & I and we were medium busy with a few flurries of busyness but no real rushed off our feet moments. Ady went along to meet the boat and collected exciting parcels for us – new phones. Our monthly contracts were both available for upgrades so we’ve spent the last few weeks researching and had both chosen new phones. Ady went for the Samsung Galaxy s5 – he’d previously had the S3 and I’d had the S3mini so a literal upgrade for him with more or less a better, slightly bigger version of the same phone. He is really pleased with it. I prefer a smaller phone so had been reading up on the mini and compact models on the market and chose the Sony xperia z3 compact. My favourite phones of the past have been Sonys (I think I had about four in a row going back when we used to be on annual upgrades). This had the best reviews for battery life, music sound and small-ness which were the things most important to me. I also went up a tariff as I have gone over my allotted minutes a fair few times in the last year so decided to upgrade to unlimited minutes which was an extra £3 a month but meant I got a ‘free’ gift (and yes, I know, none of it is free but we justify our phones as we use them as cameras, music players and our only actual communication method with the world outside of Rum. Internet is so patchy here that being able to access phone signal and data on our phones is sometimes our only way of reaching people) of a kindle fire tablet. I’d not have bought one and have not played with it much yet but it will come in useful when we go off as I can take it instead of my kindle and be able to use it as a tablet too. Need to fiddle with it more to get used to it but have been consumed by playing with my new phone!

Davies and Scarlett came down to sit in the hall while I was doing teashop and were really helpful with a couple who were trying to use the computer in the hall but couldn’t get it to work. Such a cliche having teens understand tech better than adults but also so totally true 🙂

We came back home together and the rest of the afternoon and evening was spent fiddling with phones and getting them set up. Davies and Scarlett have now got our previous phones so I was setting them up with giffgaff cards and trying to get everyone’s email accounts, playstore accounts to download their apps and so on sorted. I had a real headache by about 9pm and had to give up.

Thursday – Also in Wednesday’s post was a delivery of vacuum storage bags. We have accepted another winter (maybe more!) in the caravan so are looking at ways to improve things and decided to declutter / make more space / ease up on the mould gathering stuff by getting some vacuum bags to keep clothes, bedding etc in. Massively more room under our bed and in our wardrobes now. Kids rooms and storage under the sofas next on the list.

The weather was pish so we had a vote as to whether or not to go on the Sheerwater. The vote was 3/4 in favour so we headed off leaving the caravan in a semi tidied state. Another one of those not really worth it Sheerwater trips but two basking sharks had been spotted that morning just off the coast of Rum so they are about and we’d have been devastated to miss them if they’d been spotted from that trip, so always worth the gamble. There were loads of shearwaters and gannets out feeding so it was not entirely uneventful. Back at home we finished the tidying and vacuum bagging then I went down to a meeting while Ady stayed to get dinner sorted.

The meeting kicked off and various people walked out. Including me! Having utterly lost my temper, shouted and sworn. So hacked off with various stuff here to do with IRCT things and certain people. Never mind, it will either blow over or I can just walk away from that side of life here. The upside is, as always, Rum quickly forgets and the same people who were all really really pissed off with each other in the meeting in the hall were all sitting having a beer together afterwards at the shop, me included, once I’d calmed down.

Friday – Can’t even really remember what we did in the morning, probably tidying of some description. Then off to meet the ferry as friends were coming to visit. Jenna, the girl Davies and Scarlett met at Outward Bound, along with her little sister Iona and parents Alison and Leon. We stayed with them at their’s in Glen Uig (about half an hour from Mallaig) for Jenna’s birthday back in April and this was the much talked about but not organised return visit. They brought two wee tents to pitch to sleep in outside on the croft and borrowed camping mats etc. The kids all walked back to the croft while we drove back with Alison and Leon, drank tea, got their tents up etc. Then the kids walked back down to the village while we gave them the tour of the croft and then Alison retired for a nap (she’s not been well), while we took Leon for a beer at the shop. Back at home I made pizzas all round and we all stayed up chatting and drinking rather too much.

Saturday – work. Post Office for me and then along to the castle for my first tour in months and months. We’d invited everyone down so we had the four of them, plus Davies and Scarlett, a family of four and a special guest family of three which included the daughter of Peter Wormall, the very first Ranger / Warden on Rum. She grew up here in the 70s, went to school and both her parents did PhDs here, as did she. She told us all about how she used to play hide and seek in the castle and when I talked about the wildlife and the reintroduction of sea eagles here she was able to share the story of how her Dad dragged her and her sister up the road to Harris to see the bedraggled birds in their cages all the way from Norway looking most reluctant to be released into the horizontal rain and howling wind that was the Rum weather that day. She told us about how her Dad made a speech about it being monumental and of great historic importance but they just wanted to go home and watch telly! 🙂 Really lovely to have her on the tour, plus she was really complimentary about our tour too 🙂 A lovely Rum moment. I quite like doing the tours, particularly as you always end up chatting by the end when it’s a smallish group.

The others all returned to the croft but Ady and I spent some time faffing as the power had gone off in the workshop meaning our freezer was off. Lots of wandering from one end of the village to the other in search of Ross had us finally buying some electric cards off Jinty. That didn’t work either but then Fliss appeared with another card and it eventually all worked and we were able to go home.

I cooked ‘wedding reception food’ for dinner – hot and cold buffet style spread of sausages, cold meats, new potatoes, freshly baked bread, cheese board, crisps, nuts etc. which went down really well. We just can’t sit 8 people down for a proper knife and fork meal so this was perfect and fairly stress free. Another nice evening.

Sunday morning was an early-ish start with them needing to pack up as the ferry was at 1050am. We were all on target and the kids walked down to the pier with us driving with their stuff. We were there in loads of time and I chatted for a bit to a bloke who is over doing some research on circular economy. He was really interesting and he and I had been aware of each other but not managed to properly chat before – a shame he was off on the boat… Goodbyes all round with all four kids quite sad it had not been a longer visit. We have invited the girls back any time, they can even come for the long Saturday stay on the summer timetable and I think we may go over to visit them again for their Bonfire / Halloween stuff in Glen Uig. They are all nice easy company and it’s great to have such local friends.

Back at home we were all pretty exhausted and Scarlett has a cold so we had lunch, then watched some DvDs and ate popcorn before having a nice roast dinner. Early nights all round the order of the day!

Monday – yay, caught up! Ady and I walked down to the village this morning to post a couple of things, get some shopping bits and collect something from the freezer for dinner. Back home for lunch and then I did some baking. It rained and rained all afternoon scuppering any plans of outsideyness so we mostly listened to music, drew, played with lego and read.

I made three dinners – lasagna for Ady & I, spaghetti and meatballs for Davies, Spaghetti Bolognaise for Scarlett, baked some bread and some garlic bread and made cookies and brownies. Ady walked down to the village to collect the veg delivery and check for post.

I had an email from Kate the TV Producer to say that she had heard this afternoon that they have scheduled our show for next week, bumping it to the current series rather than the first episode of the next series as originally planned. Slightly in shock! We had planned to go off island and be on the mainland to watch it in comfort, somewhere slightly anonymous with an actual TV, instead we’ll be hoping to have decent enough internet next Monday night to watch it up here. I have asked Kate if there is any chance of an advance copy on dvd so we can see it but suspect the answer will be no.

Castle shift for Ady and I this morning. Instead of the dusting in the castle we were helping with the office move though. The White House (current SNH office) is being turned back into housing and the office is moving to the Big Green Shed agricultural building outside of the village. With Lesley on maternity leave, Doug on holiday and Mel gone SNH have very depleted staffing levels these days, so Ady, Claire and I were on helping the Reserve Team this morning. This basically entailed moving some stuff around in the old common room / bar space in the castle courtyard and then loading the trailer a few times at the White House, then walking back to the castle to unload it again. In four hours we did very little as Manager Mike is very flappy and panicked by everything.

Ady and I went and looked at the bridge we are repainting for the Friends and started to pull off the wire which needs removing  but it was tipping with rain and we’d not brought gloves with us which we’ll need for that task. So we came home. We half planned to go back down if the weather improved like it did yesterday but it never did.

Scarlett was doing room tidying, after I gave her grief about the state of her bedroom yesterday. She is such a hoarder and in a cupboard sized room that really is a problem. She took it on board though and was doing an excellent job of decluttering and properly cleaning stuff up. Davies had tidied his room too.

We had some food and I got stuck into baking for Teashop / Market Day tomorrow making 30 flat breads, 4 loaves and some more cookies. Then I made dinner, so a whole afternoon in the kitchen. Having lived in a very open plan space for all this time now (camper van and now caravan totals 4 and a half years!) I could not imagine going back to a living space where the kitchen was separate to where everyone else hung out. Sectioning off the kitchen from the living space seems such a mad idea.  It was really sociable chatting, listening to music, Scarlett bobbing in and out with her stuff, me cooking, Davies making some mad film on his tablet, Ady doing some online research and then Ady and Davies playing a game of scrabble. A lovely afternoon 🙂

We watched the second part of Doctor Who and a couple of episodes of Friends. We’re on the last series of Eureka and hopefully the latest disc of that will come from LoveFilm in the post tomorrow 🙂

This morning it was tipping with rain. Ady went to feed the animals and I made some bread (I had sold a Croft 3 ‘hamper’ of bread, eggs and jam to someone coming off the boat) and some cookies ready for Market Day / Teashop on Wednesday. The weather cheered up so Ady did some sorting out the pig pen – he’d put a load of cut grass in for them as bedding but the random weather we’ve been having had meant instead of drying out to make nice bedding it had started composting instead, so was stinky and very wet but giving off steam! He raked all that out and put (bought in) straw in instead. Good compost fodder to go down to the raised beds area though…

We had planned to do some work down on the bridge this afternoon but the weather was still looking pretty changeable so instead we went to the boat and then came back for a later lunch. The men collecting the hamper were delighted. Nothing came off the boat for us but we helped Jinty take some of her stuff along to the shop and had a quick look round for the cat. No sign, but other people are now looking out too so that’s good.

Back to the croft for lunch. The kids washed up and then headed down to play on their tablets in the hall for a bit. Ady and I spent some time in the fruit cage as yesterday he spotted lots of problems with the fruit tree leaves – caterpillar and aphid damage and some rust on some of the apple trees 🙁 We did some sorting out of that, sprayed them with washing up liquid and I picked all the currants and the very first Croft 3 raspberry :). We watered the polytunnel and then Ady headed off to meet the kids for Film Night. I was avoiding the village and the weather remained nice so I did half an hours weeding before coming back up and getting dinner started.

The others all watched the Minion Movie – mixed reviews with the kids saying it was ‘Good, well ok’ but Ady saying it was ‘excellent’. 🙂 We watched en episode of Friends (we’re re-watching it before selling on the discs) and then one of Doctor Who.

This morning Scarlett and I walked down to the village to have a look round for the cat and write on the board outside the shop that he is missing from the croft and has been spotted in the village. No sign of him today.

Before we left I made some cheese scone mix as we were out of bread, so when we got home I baked them for lunch. Davies is struggling with his nose the last few days. He has very swollen turbinates in both nostrils which he had looked at by the doctor last year and was prescribed nasal spray and anti histimines. He doesn’t use either and I stopped nagging / reminding him after the first few weeks as he was so resistant and I decided it was down to him. If the swelling, snot and lack of sense of smell bothered him enough he would use them, if not then he would not. Suddenly he is suffering and is clearly finding it tough, I assume due to some sort of seasonal hayfever or similar so has actually used both for the last two days. But the spray tastes nasty when it trickles down the back of his throat and he says it is initially quite burny. He has agreed to try for the next week to see if there is any improvement and if not to see the doctor again.

After lunch the weather had changed and was alternately midgey and raining. I had a rant at everyone – Davies was bored and annoying Scarlett, Scarlett didn’t want to do the washing up and was moaning about that, Ady was being unsupportive of me telling the kids off and trying to make out I was nagging . Grr!

We have ordered some vacuum storage bags to keep spare clothes, bedding etc in the wardrobes to prevent them going moldy this winter and the bedrooms all need some cleaning out but it seem silly to do that until the bags arrive so instead I cleared off the bookshelves in the lounge. If you didn’t know they probably wouldn’t look any different but they are now back in a sort of order of genre and have all been hoovered and cleaned behind. If we’re doing another winter in the caravan we’re hoping to make it a bit nicer and cosier in here, starting with storage, a bit of redecorating and making it warmer. We’ve always maintained each winter would be our last so never really done any improvements to the inside at all but this will be our fourth winter and it is tired and could do with some TLC.

Ady cooked dinner, we watched Doctor Who and everyone has had a pretty early night. Think I might do the same.

Wednesday was meetingtastic. First Fliss & I met Manager Mike to chat about the community polytunnel being put up in the field near the castle. An excellent idea as it will be nice and central for everyone to use. Mike agreed although he later came back and said that there would need to be planning permission which sort of takes the whole thing back to where it all started 3 years ago when it ended up being put on Croft 3. Ah well, not our issue any more…

Ady picked me up on his way passed and we went to the ferry. We had various stuff coming off – we are repainting and repairing the little red footbridge in the castle grounds for the Friends of Kinloch Castle Association so had ordered all the paint, chicken wire and stuff for that which all came off. Ady came back to the croft while I walked back to the village with Steve The Man, our local councillor and IRCT Chair Allan and some visiting folk from Marine Harvest Fish Farms. I walked for a bit with Allan chatting to him, and then got chatting to two of the fish farm people who we’d met when we visited the Muck fish farm earlier in the year. They remembered we’d been about to be filmed by the TV crew so were asking about that.

Then it was Full Board meeting of IRCT – usually we are more speedy as Allan is due off on the ferry but this time he was getting a lift back with Marine Harvest so there was no rush and the meeting dragged on rather. Lots to talk about I guess. There was a split then as some people went down to Jinty’s new barbecue hut for the official opening / hut warming and MH had supplied some salmon. Others went into the hall to have tea and cake with Debs as it was her birthday. To be honest I think we’d have rather gone to the hut but felt obliged to go to Debs so did that. We then couldn’t go along to the hut as we needed to feed the animals and come back down for the official MH presentation at 630pm.

That done pretty much everyone else went along to the hut but I got caught with Claire and Steve to chat about various stuff from the board meeting which I was a bit pissed off about doing on my own really. Sigh. By then we decided that everyone at the hut would have been many, many drinks ahead of us and it was already about 8pm and we were hungry so we came home.

Thursday was a nice day, probably the best this week. And Sheerwater boat trip day. Sadly although the weather was lovely the only thing we saw was a sea eagle. I know, I know, *only* but where are the dolphins?!? Fliss came along with her friend who had been staying all week and her 2 children – 12 year old Scarlet (one T) and 9 year old Logan who Davies and Scarlett got chatting to and really made friends with. To the degree that they hung out with them for the whole of the rest of the day and then met up with again on Friday before they left to go home. Shame they only met at the end of their week here.

Ady and Big Dave did some stuff on the Jeep while I meant to get dinner prepped and organise the storage under the sofa where we keep food. Just as I had weighed out a batch of bread dough and left the yeast to activate and strewn sofa cushions all over the floor so Bonnie started barking and Doug and his wife and son appeared. So I shoved everything away and in they came for tea and chats. Doug was a ghillie here two years running and then got the Estate Workers post but his wife and two sons still live down near Bristol. The boys have a year of A levels left so won’t be moving until at least after that and I wonder about whether Ursula is remotely interested in moving here anyway, it’s her first ever trip here in all that time. She seemed nice and we chatted easily. Ady came home and we all went over to feed the pigs as Doug was keen to show his son them and then we went down to put in veg orders and have a beer.

Friday – it rained and rained and rained all day. Poor Manon decided to leave rather than brave out a day of rain as I’d already said she did not need to work in such weather. So she packed up, I did some baking and some reading. Manon came in for lunch. The kids went off in waterproofs to find their mates for a last hang out before they left and then BD and Faye came over with pig feed from their stay and we all went down to the ferry. We waved off Dave, Faye, Manon, Fliss’ friends, Jinty’s dad and sister, Doug and family… a busy boat for goodbyes!

We called at the shop to collect some bits and Ady spotted the black and white cat down in the middle of the village. We chased it but it legged it. This morning I spoke to a few people and it has been spotted several times this week around the village so I have now come clean and said it seems lost down there and to let us know if it’s spotted so we can try and get it back up to the croft. Hmmm, hopeful I guess.

Back home for pizza and Doctor Who and enjoying just being us for a few days.

Today – work for both Ady and me. It tipped with rain most of the morning, was sunny for bits of this afternoon but still mostly showers. Can’t believe it’s August. This afternoon Ady did a big hoover of the lounge (he bought a hoover recently that runs off the genny and is wet and dry so good for sucking up when the roof has leaked, which currently it seems to not be doing so badly after Ady’s latest fix). I mostly did stuff online and we caught up on Dragons Den.

We’re all really knackered and hoping to have a day all to ourselves tomorrow.

It feels like it should be way past Tuesday already. Not sure why though…

Yesterday I mostly baked I think. I made bread dough in the morning so we would have rolls for lunch. Then some more bread dough for actual bread to cook later, then two women appeared up on the croft asking after bread so I arranged to make them a couple of loaves to deliver down to the campsite for today so had to make two more batches of dough. And we needed cookies (having volunteers is great for keeping us right on providing a balance of good fruit and veg and nice home baked cookies or cakes too).

I had hoped to get outside and actually do some outdoors stuff too but was conspired against – I did relabel my pot pourri, finish reading my book about basket making and reply to some emails. I also cleaned some windows and got the kids to clean some more.

Then it was lunch time, Dave and Faye came over for cups of tea and chats, I showed Manon the fruit cage tasks and then further failed to get back outside. Ah well.

Down the shop for veg collection, a beer and some chit chat and then home to make dinner. The kids had got what they thought was a pack of bacon out of the freezer but turned out to be a pack of pork chops, so Davies went back down to the shop to get some bacon while I got dinner started and we watched Doctor Who and had a later than planned dinner.

Today was a castle shift this morning, with Davies, Scarlett, Dave & Faye and Manon all coming down half an hour before we finished so they could have a look around the castle. Faye has never been round before and we took the opportunity for Manon to have a look too. Then they all left to come back to the crofts – Davies, Scarlett and Manon for lunch, while Ady and I popped along to collect some carpet offcuts from Mike & Deb and have a quick look at Jinty’s new barbecue cabin before coming home for lunch.

It rained all afternoon so I spent time researching new curtains for the caravan online, Ady did some carpet laying and we all chatted about ways to make the caravan more homely / cosy / nice this winter. Showers for Ady and I as we felt all castle grimy, then a nice dinner of the pork chops!

Thursday was Sheerwater day but it was really, really windy and when Ady phoned to check it was running he was told it was but it was choppy out there. After some discussion we decided not to go. A tough one really as we’ve never  missed one before through choice, only because we’ve not been on island or its not been running. But this year we have been on so many where we have seen nothing at all and just paid a tenner to sit feeling cold and at various degrees of feeling seasick. Instead we made the most of the wind turbine for internet power. Manon and I put some strawberries in one of the raised  beds and netted it.

In the evening we went down to say goodbye to Mel & Em. There was a really good turn out with most people on the island coming along for a beer and to wish them well. They both made a touching speech and they headed off home for their last night in the castle around 8pm. Which is probably when we should have headed off too but instead that dangerous third can of cider was cracked open and from there it is a slipperly slope to the kids being given out of date kinder eggs by Jinty to persuade them to stay while we were poured complementary glasses of Baileys (me) and Jura (Ady) to persuade us to stay. And it worked! At 11pm we finally called time on the evening and I think dinner was around 1230am. Oops!

Friday morning I had a meeting in the IRCT office so I went down for that. It was productive and hopefully will be the start of something exciting for Claire and Steve who are looking at housing plots. I had not expected to be home for lunch and had set Manon on weeding the herb spiral but walked in the door just as they were all laying out food in the caravan. Manon carried on with that after lunch and then transplanted some comfrey she had dug out of the herb spiral into the space along the outside north side of the polytunnel, then she carried on weeding. She has not done as comprehensive a job weeding as I would, or as is necessary given the ground elder and rushes but she has cleared the inital grass off the raised beds which leaves the slightly more satisfying job of ferreting out the long roots of the weeds which is the bit I actually enjoy so we make a good team.

We took the kids and Bonnie down to the ferry to wave off Mel & Em. There was a good turn out of most people on island there to say final goodbyes which was nice. We will miss them both – as Bonnie sitters, as friends and Mel as someone who we genuinely liked a lot. Emily had a whole load of crazy about her which frequently meant she was a nightmare in meetings or to the IRCT but she meant well.  We dropped the kids off in the village and came home to feed the animals and make pizza dough. We walked back down and collected the kids them came home. There was a bloke over who has played at the Edinburgh Fringe and is travelling around in a milk float playing music. Usually we would make the effort to attend such things but it had not been advertised, it was starting at 830pm and it turned out tickets were £8 each. Word had it he was not very good anyway so we were glad we had not bothered.

Saturday – work for us both in the morning. A quiet one for me with just Ross, Neil and Steve plus some tourists. Steve brought me a bowl of soup to try which was lovely but reminded me a bit of Norman and his random Saturday morning food offerings… Ady met me and we chatted to Doug for a while before heading up the hill.

We had lunch and then Ady and I walked across to the cabin and Dave and Faye had arrived on the morning boat. We had a cup of tea, caught up on each others news and arranged to meet at 6pm to walk down to the shop for a beer later. Ady and I collected some water pipe that Ady had found to use for cloche hoops and spent some time working out a plan for the raised bed on the south side of the polytunnel where the strawberries have been moved to. It needs a plastic covering both to keep it warm and grow the strawberries but also to protect the fruit and plants from our own birds and wild birds. We made a start and more or less decided how we would do it, the fed the animals and walked down to the shop. We stopped for a couple of beers and then came home for a curry.

Sunday – I had intended a lie in but Ady has a habit of managing to do something noisy outside the bedroom window every morning which wakes me and today was no exception… Although I was awake I did stay in bed and read my book though. That showed him! 😉

Before and after lunch we worked on the cloches and made three frames using a dismantled pallet and the pipe hoops, then covered them with some of the ripped polytunnel plastic. They look great and will work perfectly. Really pleased with them 🙂 The strawberries are looking a bit traumatised by the move and I doubt will fruit any more this season but we now have two beds full and I have sown some strawberry seeds which are just starting to germinate too so next season should be good.

I checked the fruit cage which is desperate for some weeding and we have blackcurrants ready to start harvesting. I also made a mini rockery of all the lavender which had been getting water logged in pots and was looking quite sad. Some has flowered, some has just gone woody so it may not all come back (it was a bargain ebay purchase last year, 10 ‘seconds’ from a nursery where the plants were healthy but didn’t meet the size spec, plus a very old pot from Osborne Drive). This should give it all a better chance. Ady did some scything too.

Ady cooked dinner and I had a long catch up phone call with my parents. I was hit today while we were messing about dismantling a pallet by a wave of really missing my Dad 🙁 It doesn’t happen very often like that but when it does I could just sit and cry, or pack a bag for the next ferry, so talking to him tonight really helped.

 

Teashop shift for me today, working with Ali as Fliss is on holiday. It was not as busy as last week but we still took over £200 so over £100 even after we’d paid the community hall our 10%. Davies sold another four postcards too. Yay! I had some nice chats with tourists and Ady came along after helping load Mel & Em’s stuff into the removal van which was here between boats.  We didn’t get the second flurry rush which was what killed us last Wednesday so instead the three of us (me, Ali & Ady) sat down with tea and cake instead. Far nicer even if meant about £40 each less in our pockets!

Inbetween I had frustrating and irritating chats with Clare and Steve about housing and IRCT stuff. Sooo tedious. Not even worth recounting as if I am bored of it and I live here and am in the very middle of it all then it will definitely not be interesting for anyone else to read about or me to record for future reading back on.  Lots of emails back and forth between directors this evening too.

Manon the volunteer has been doing great work weeding and working in the walled garden. Am hoping to get in there myself maybe tomorrow although weather is looking dreadful again. At least she is replacing me in doing something on the croft this week while I’ve been busy elsewhere.

I had a really funny email from Davies this afternoon saying ‘OMG how much power? Sun tick, wind tick. All well, had lunch, volunteer fine. Loads of love from D&S xxxx’ He is totally my favourite teenager 🙂

Monday – rained and rained and rained and rained. Oh and was quite windy too. Sigh. It’s JULY! I expect, anticipate and accept this in November but July is supposed to be the trade off period, the time to be cursing midges… I’ve said before and will say again if this had been our first year here I think we would have left. There was not even really a spring to speak of, let alone a summer.

We had no bread so I took Manon, our WWOOFer down to the site of the old polytunnel and got her digging up strawberries to move across and came back to the caravan to make some wraps for lunch, some bread dough for later and then as it carried on raining I decided to do some cooking for teashop on Wednesday. Ady was doing compost loo maintenance, infact he did stuff on both the static loo and the horse box compost loo. Reason 2167 for loving Ady 🙂

I made two batches of cookies – peanut butter & choc chip, and ginger, plus wraps. I was short tempered with Scarlett for no real reason which came to a head later in the day after I made her cry, realised I was being a complete cow and apologised. What is that about? Isn’t it supposed to be her getting all arsey with me not the other way round?!! The kids were doing bedroom tidying although Davies came to my rescue and helped me with the wraps for lunch when I was struggling. Manon came in for lunch, we all ate together and then she carried on transplanting the strawberries into their new home. It started raining even heavier so when she came in to say she had finished that after just an hour or so I got her to come in for  a cup of tea and chatted to her for awhile.

At 5pm it was raining harder than ever so I decided not to go down to the village for the cinema night and to stay home instead. Ady and the kids went while I got dinner on, finished baking (I made some cupcakes and baked the loaf), read some of a book, did all the washing up, did some stuff online and just hung out with Bonnie. It was really nice 🙂

The others came home around 730pm with post and veg box and we had dinner and watched a couple of episodes of Eureka.

Tuesday = castle shift for Ady and I first thing. I’d already told Manon to get on with weeding and then to meet us at the castle as we had misunderstood the timings for the helping Mel & Em and thought it was starting earlier. So we took Manon back with us to the croft for lunch and then she did some more weeding. I made my flatbreads for teashop tomorrow and then Ady and I went back down to the village to the castle. Mel & Em were wanting a team of folk to help them move all their boxes and furniture downstairs into the Great Hall of the castle ready for the van to collect from the front door tomorrow. I think there were 8 of us there altogether and we did it in under an hour. First in relays moving stuff and then as a human chain all the way down the corridor and down the stairs passing boxes. It was heavy, hot and tiring! We did it all and then retired back to the flat for fizz and some food. Ady and I didn’t eat much ( I literally had a piece of bread and fancy balsamic, Ady ate rather more!) as we were coming home for dinner. We stayed a while to chat before coming home to cook dinner which we did together with me getting it all started and Ady finishing it off. An episode of Eureka and then bed all round as everyone was tired.

Overshadowed by the utter calamity which was Ady going to check on the cats first thing on Saturday to discover they had escaped!!!! I can’t even talk about it yet as bird lovers on Rum will be horrified at the prospect of wild cats on the island trashing the birds (they are a pair of neutered males so not likely to do any real lasting damage to the wildlife population but it is still frowned upon) and being facebook friends with Ann who sent them over to me and was so impressed with how much time I was planning to put into taming them. It was a wild, wild night of wind and rain on Friday and they must have been so scared they managed to squeeze through the tiniest gap in the crate which they had already explored several times in the 36 hours previously and decided against attempting.

Lots of online research suggests they will be likely still very close by here on the croft and if we continue putting out food we will probably recover them. I have a human cat trap on  order which should hopefully arrive this week to try and catch them or we may just suddenly see them appear around the croft. In terms of their own welfare there is probably sufficient rats and mice and birds to sustain them, in terms of the impact on Rum wildlife two cats will do very little, in terms of my own feelings I am devastated 🙁 I was so, so thrilled to have them here, so up for spending days and weeks slowly taming them and I can’t even share this current sadness or hopefully eventual victory. It sucks 🙁

In other news Ady and I worked yesterday morning – me at Post Office and Ady at hostel / White House cleaning. Ady finished really early and came to meet me from work rather than the usual other way around. The wind was so bad that all of the Saturday boats were cancelled, apparently the first time in 5 years that a July Calmac was cancelled due to the weather, crazy! Cat scaring crazy 🙁

Back at home we spent ages looking for the cats, reading online about displaced cats, looking for the cats some more… all to no avail.

Today has been some more looking for cats. We went to the boat to meet our latest WWOOFer, Manon a 24 year old Frenchwoman who lives in Belgium and is in Scotland for 2 months combining WWOOFing with holidaying / hiking / exploring. She seems really nice and is here for 2 weeks. I am not sure she will be much use for digging but will certainly be able to do some weeding, general helping around the croft etc. She had lunch with us today and then went off exploring.

I did some weeding and sowing and transplanting in the walled garden / polytunnel. Ady did some more waterproof painting on the caravan roof, we appear to have once again fixed the roof leak but as every time we say that we are proved wrong this is a tentative victory only… and then some scything. In between there was more cat searching.

Then we all went down to the castle for Davies and Scarlett to have a last go on the Xbox before bringing it home, Ady and I to help dismantle their bed and roll up their rugs (Mel and Em are both quite small) and have a last dinner / goodbye with them as they leave on Friday 🙁 I have not always loved Em’s company but will miss them both lots, as will Bonnie. It was a really nice evening with quite a lot of wine and loads of laughter.

We had a walk up the tower to the top of the castle which was cool – Ady and I have been up there before but Davies and Scarlett never have so that was fun. Then home for bed before another day of cat searching tomorrow.

A reminder of the winter ahead, bummer after a couple of nice days of actual summer. Ah well.

I checked on the cats first thing, they had eaten all their food and drunk all their water so I topped that up and then came back in for Popmaster. Ady and I walked down to the village to collect some bits from the shop and some stuff from the freezer and then came home for lunch.

I had another half an hour in with the cats – I have set up a chair next to their crates so I can just sit there, talk to them and read or whatever and get them used to me being around. Fairly easy to do on a day like today when it was tipping with rain and I had nothing else particularly to be getting on with, less easy on sunny days when I could be out on the croft or days when I have commitments down in the village but hearteningly they both ate and drank infront of me, sniffed my hand and seemed fairly calm with me there. Not sure if they have been to the loo yet despite me putting a litter tray in there – Ginger spent some time just sitting in it! I even got to touch Comfrey who is timid but not aggressive.

Ady and I went down to the pier to collect our diesel which came off and then Ady spent some time de-molding in the bedroom while I spent another couple of hours with the cats. Not really hard work, particularly when armed with my kindle and a bag of humbugs ;). Davies and Scarlett made bread and pizza dough and took advantage of the wind to have lots of internet time. Scarlett had a shower and hair wash, poor thing has her period again and it’s lasted a week this time.

I came in just before 6pm and warmed up before making pizzas for dinner. We watched Doctor Who and a couple of episodes of Friends. Hoping the weather is better tomorrow.

This morning we took Emmanuel down to the Sheerwater with us as he was heading off on the later boat. Steve Dev O was heading off today and happy to take him as far south as Perth where Steve lives so that worked perfectly. Emmanuel was planning a day in Edinburgh tomorrow before heading back to France on the Eurostar over the weekend. He was a nice enough lad but not much cop as a WWOOFer really. He left a nice comment in our WWOOFing book though. We may have another French WWOOFer arriving at the weekend.

Coming off the boat were our two newest Croft 3 creatures, a pair of cats. 2 boys, brothers. One ginger and one black and white. I advertised in our local newsletter for a cat last year and Ann, the editor got in touch to tell me about the ginger one who she had rehomed but had never settled with her. She was debating whether or not to keep the black and white one and then decided she would. The ginger one is very scared and I didn’t really think that was the right cat for us here. She got back in touch a couple of weeks ago to say she still wanted to rehome him and actually, would let the black and white one go too. After much debate (as in the kids and I really wanted them, Ady really didn’t) we agreed they could come and she sent them over today on the boat with her son.

We popped them in the car with all the windows and boot open  to recover from their journey and headed off on the Sheerwater. It was a gorgeous day, I even got a bit sunburned. The water was super calm with excellent visibility and on the way over to Soay we saw porpoises and lots of seabirds, on the way back we saw a minke whale 🙂 So lovely to see one again after such a crappy start to the wildlife year. Let’s hope it heralds the beginning of some good spots for the coming weeks, probably only about 6 or 7 left I guess.

Back to Rum and we said goodbye to Emmanuel, dropped Trudi in the village and popped to the shop for some catfood, then brought the cats home. Ann has been calling the ginger one Ginger anyway, which was the name Scarlett was determined a ginger cat should have. The black and white one will be called Comfrey which is the name we chose for our hypothetical cat while we were WWOOFing and planning the list of animals we would have. Ann called him Bertie but I don’t think he’ll mind the name change too much.

I have fixed together two large dog crates for them to be in, inside our really good chicken shed. They are scared and edgy and it will take quite some time to win them round but I am fairly sure we can do it. Comfrey will be fine and would probably even already be a lap cat so I will work with him first and build Ginger’s confidence by spending lots of time in with them. I can take a chair and sit in the shed talking to them and reading or just being there so they get used to me. It will definitely be quite a project but I love cats so much and have really missed having them around all these last few years since we lost Candle. These two are used to living with a dog so they should be fine with Bonnie although she will take some getting used to them. The idea is that they are mostly outside cats anyway although I secretly plan to have them on my lap of an evening, putting them out before I go to bed. We’ll see how long that takes to pan out…

It was really midgey this afternoon so my planned weeding didn’t happen but Ady and I fed the animals together and I made a really nice dinner with sausages and roasted root veg. The forecast rain for the next 24 hours has already started so tomorrow may well be mostly sitting in the cat shed reading and knitting I suspect.

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 🙂 🙂

Tuesday was work. Only Ady and I this time which was far better, no being cornered by Clare talking. We had two final bunk beds to dismantle and the rooms to hoover clean afterwards so I did the beds while Ady did the hoovering. Then we went through the two kitchens and reduced the crockery, cutlery, pots and pans and utensils down to smaller numbers to reflect the reduced bed numbers.

I had plans for weeding in the afternoon but never got there as I was busy baking an army of flatbreads ready for market day the following day.

Wednesday was said Market Day. Fliss, Ali and I have agreed to take on the Wednesday teashop between us too as we are there anyway for the market day. This week all three of us were there, usually it will probably be just two of us but I am there for all of them… ah well. We took a fair bit of cash, Fliss bought soup and rolls and scones, Ali bought cakes and I bought the flat breads. We shared the tea and coffee takings. I think I made about £40. I also managed to sell 4 of Davies’ postcards by chatting to someone about them. Ali sold loads of jam and I probably would have done too except I have sold out of jam already this season despite making loads and loads last year. It has been flying out of the honesty larder at the croft gate and now I am desperately checking bramble bushes for progress despite it being a full six weeks at least away before there will be anything to pick.

Then Ali and I went off to a meeting with SNH bods. Sandy was here on Rum for a few days, it didn’t go well apparently 🙁 I didn’t actually see him but Ady did and was glad to have done. The SNH meeting went well. Got home about 6pm and was knackered from a long day.

Thursday – Sheerwater trip. We saw a few porpoises and there are slightly more seabirds around. We saw a sea eagle being mobbed by a smaller birds just off the coast of Rum but it was still far from the exciting cetacean encounters we have enjoyed in previous Julys.

When we got back to the croft I tried to do some weeding but it was too midgey really. We went down to the shop for a beer or two as various folk are over visiting (Jinty’s sister, Bad Neil’s brother) so it was nice and sociable.

Friday – Another meeting, this time the first drafting of the IRCT business plan for the coming 5 years as the current one ends at the end of 2015. A good morning thrashing stuff out and some real positive stuff came from it. Slightly tarnished later today when an email has gone round requesting an emergency meeting about housing next week. In that zone of spending too much time and energy on trust stuff again just now, need to balance it against the good crofting stuff but it’s rained non stop all day today which never helps.

Pizza and Doctor Who tonight. Despite still raining heavily (and being cold and damp enough to light the fire for an hour or so this evening) the sky is really bright and glowing above the clouds.

Tuesday morning Ady and I went off to work at the hostel. We were dismantling bunk beds. I think everyone else thought I got the raw deal as I was a dab hand with the allen key and dismantled four while Ady loaded them into the trailer and moved them across to the castle and Clare drew pictures to label the various parts but I was happy with that. I love flatpacks, even in reverse 🙂 I did get caught in the really hot hostel talking to Clare about housing though which I’d rather have avoided. Never mind.

In the afternoon and evening we packed up ready for the trip to MainlandLand the following day.

Wednesday – a lovely day of weather so we went for the long boat trip to Canna. The school were on the boat too to visit Canna so we snuck upstairs to avoid sitting with them. Mean I know but the kids get fed up with the littler kids demanding their attention. Ady and I spent most of the ride out on the front of the boat and saw some dolphins , mother and calf splashing around. When we got to Canna we decided not to get off; we’d only been there two weeks ago and there is not actually much to do. The kids were watching a dvd, I was reading my kindle and Ady was watching something he’d downloaded on his phone and then having a snooze – all simple pleasures that we probably could not have justified taking time out in the middle of the day to do if we were at home. The Calmac staff are on a two week on, two week off rota and the mean skipper was on who insists on you having tickets to get off at Canna but we had not realised. Fliss and Deb came running back on the boat to offer to pay for our tickets as they thought we were not getting off for that reason… we assured them that was not the case. On the way back to Rum we sat with Fliss and had some chips. Eve & Joss presented us with a thank you card for letting them come and feed the croft animals as we’d be missing the school prizegiving end of term day the following day (which in truth we would probably not have attended even if we were on the island anyway…) which was sweet but a bit embarrassing in the middle of the busy boat.

The school got off back at Rum and Neil & Lesley and a few others got on. I sat with them for a bit on the way to Mallaig chatting about some Rum politics stuff. When we got to the office the car keys were not there as expected so Ady rang the garage and they were running late. It was with us in about 10 minutes though and we set off to Inverness. A slightly stressy journey as Scarlett felt carsick so swapped with me to sit in the front. I then felt pretty rough in the back as the drive from Mallaig to Inverness is very twisty turny. Scarlett wanted to pull over alongside Loch Ness in the layby where we first wild camped in Willow but I was feeling rubbish and just wanted to get to the hotel so refused. I regretted it later and wished we’d stopped and taken a photo. I am not often petulant these days and almost always regret it afterwards…

We got to Inverness and struggled at the end as Ady’s phone which we were using for sat nav was out of power and I was struggling to navigate from the back. I had in my head where I thought the Premier Inn we were staying was and I was right but needed help to find it. We eventually got there, stopped at Morrisons for some breakfast for the morning, some beers and some bubble bath and then got to the Premier Inn and checked in. There is a KFC just a five minute walk away which we’d already planned to eat at so we walked there and after some fresh air, food and cooling down a bit (it was crazily hot and still as anything, we were all struggling with the heat) we all felt better. So much so that we decided at 10pm to find the nearby Tesco and do that bit of our planned shopping then rather than wait til the morning. We got back to the hotel around 11ish, I had a bath and I think we all fell asleep around midnight.

Thursday – It was just as well we’d ticked Tescos off already as we all slept in til 10am the following day! Not unheard of for me and the kids but a complete miracle for Ady. The room was north facing with a tiny window facing a wall and with heavy curtain it was pitch dark in the room so we’d just slept. That scuppered our plans to do Screwfix / B&Q in the morning so instead Davies had a bath and we watched crap tv. Then Ady and Scarlett dropped Davies and I at the hospital and they went off to do Screwfix and B&Q. We had a bit of a wait and had gotten there early anyway but we sat in the paediatric waiting room watching the cbeebies channel that the TV was set to and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves 🙂 I was quite sobered by being in there actually, it made me realise how fortunate we are to have two healthy children and how different life can be for parents who don’t… That has stayed with me all week, quite haunting.

All well with Davies. The doctor was lovely, weighed and measured him, chatted at length, explained puberty for boys, then examined him and pronounced him well into puberty and anticipating a growth spurt pretty much now. For a belt and braces approach he took blood to test for thyroid function and pituitary glands doing their thing, sent us along to xray to have Davies’ wrist xrayed to give a bone age and predicted adult height and will see him again in a few months to follow up. He can also see us in Fort William next time which is fantastic, will be far less hassle / expense and can probably be tied in with a dentist appointment too. Yay. We left fully reassured which was great. We managed to claim back part of the expenses too – all of the ferry for Davies & I, £35 each night towards accommodation and petrol mileage from Mallaig. Every little helps towards the huge expense of a mainland trip.

Met back up with Ady and Scarlett and then parked the car and went into the city centre. I quite like Inverness, it feels pretty familiar as we have spent a fair bit of time there over the last five years (although only one previous visit  since moving to Rum). We did the charity shops, Primark, Game and HMV, poundstretcher etc and stocked up on all the sorts of things we had on our lists to buy. We had lunch in McDonalds just to complete the fast food jaunt of the trip and then got in the car and came back to Fort William. We came via Aldi which was the last shop on our Inverness list and I managed to ride the whole way in the front thanks to a new dvd purchase which the kids watched on the drive :).

In FW we went to Poundstretcher for various things including a memory foam mattress topper and Morrisons for picnic tea and the food shop to bring home (stuff like bombay mix, chocolates, marshmallows, own label whisky, gin and baileys, all of which cost a fortune here buying proper branded stuff through Jinty and are nice to have in the cupboard for treats) then finally to the Travelodge. We sat on the floor and watched Masterchef while eating our tea and then Scarlett had her bath (with Lush stuff from Inverness), as did I. The combination of 2 baths in 24 hours and extreme heat has bought all of my eczema on though so I have really itchy elbows and ankles now 🙁

Friday – we were all up and awake much earlier and out of the hotel by 830am. A quick stop at Lidl and then off to Mallaig. As we pulled into Morar and got our first glimpse of the Rum skyline I actually got butterflies of excitement about going home. We do live in such a very beautiful part of the world :). We detoured to Loch Morar and took some photos as I realised recently we don’t take as many pictures of the four of us any more, just lots of the croft, the animals and the landscape and I don’t want to miss photo documenting the kids teen years. We had the car back well before the arranged time and the girl ran us along to Mallaig. We left all our stuff in the Calmac office and went to CoOp for various items. Back in the Calmac office we rejggled some of the packing so we had as many bags as we had hands between us and then Davies and I ran back to the CoOp for ice lollies. We saw Big Dave and Faye on the way so bought some for them too and all sat in the office eating them.

We stayed outside the whole boat trip back and it was a glorious crossing with flat calm sea and lovely sunshine, a fab welcome back to Rum 🙂 We managed to drive all the way up the croft, stopping at the freezer to drop stuff off and then spent time unpacking and putting stuff away. Bonnie was glad to have us home and be back on the croft and all was well here. I was working at the shop and Scarlett came down with me while Ady and Davies fixed a bike and got dinner on. Davies appeared before I closed the shop to say Ady was in a flap about missing onions and rice for dinner so I sent him and Scarlett back up with them. Dave and Faye came down for a beer and we walked back to the croft together as they were coming for dinner.

Saturday – work in the morning, a very productive afternoon of planting, transplanting and weeding in the afternoon. Ady and I fixed a shelf in the polytunnel too. He and Emmanuel managed to move some more stuff which had been cluttering up and looking messy at the croft gate too. Pizza for dinner and Doctor Who plus an earlier night all round.

Sunday – more weeding for me, I got loads done 🙂 One more small bed to weed and two of the really big ones and that is all of the walled garden weeded. I actually think I might get stuff planted out in every single bed this year which is fantastic 🙂 I’m really proud of that little area including the fruit cage and the polytunnel, it looks good and is on track to be productive. Ady, Dave and Faye took down the community polytunnel which had been an eyesore and was really grating on Ady and I. The croft looks so much  better with it gone 🙂 Then we all went to the cabin and put up four of the ceiling panels to finish all of the ones above the mezzanine. It looks fab. It was unbearably hot in there but worth doing.

Ady cooked dinner – roast venison and I made eton mess for pudding with freshly picked strawberries from the croft. We had a lovely evening with them, lots of laughs, too much to drink…

Monday – Ady and I don’t have any phone signal. We noticed on Friday when we got home but it wasn’t a problem until last night when I wanted to ring my parents as it’s my Mum’s birthday. I managed to hook up via TuGo using wifi but our internet is so slow that it was a really poor line. So frustrating 🙁 I had a livechat with o2 this morning about it and it is a mast with problems in Arisaig. They are aware but can’t give me a time / date when it will be fixed. Hope it does’t take too long.

I spent much of the day doing more weeding. Ady and Emmanuel did some digging on the house plot, Ady did some scything too. We took Dave and Faye to the boat to say goodbye and then it rained and was midgey so we called it a day and watched a film with the kids. I cooked dinner and we watched some Dr Who.

 

And that’s me all caught up again 🙂

Work for me this morning. I’d tried to get hold of Jinty as I had heard she was back and wondered whether she wanted me to do post office or whether she would do it. I went down anyway as Neil & I needed to do various Rum Venison paperwork tidying and posting off. Jinty was already there but very happy for me to do post office although she ended up hanging around too anyway, doing orders and catching up with stuff. Jed & Neil were around for most of the morning for tea and chat too, it was all nice and sociable. Good to see Jinty back.

Ady came down to collect me and loads of us ended up at the pier early for the boat so stood around chatting. We were not sure if our latest WWOOFer Emmanuel from France would come off or not but Calmac (who are being arses at the moment in the post strike days, Rum appears to have lost loads of parcels including about £100 worth of Amazon subscribe and save grocery deliveries for us. I know we can sort it out with Amazon if we have to but it’s stuff like flour and loo roll that we actually just really need!) had been mean to Jinty about her delivery and tried to send it back to the supplier this morning so loads of us were there to help unload it. In the end it was on a van after all and they left the van on island between boats so it was all a fuss over nothing. Emmanuel did come off the boat – hurrah!

We came home for lunch, chats and the tour of the croft for Emmanuel. Then the weather changed to rain so we came back in for another cup of tea and he ended up sat on the floor with Davies and Scarlett playing with lego. So he will be one we don’t lose to the craziness down at the shop! 🙂 He is happy to feed the animals while we’re off this week too which is great.

 

The rain showed no signs of stopping so we walked down to the shop, showed E the hall and village centre and stopped for a beer and some chat at the shop. Jinty’s dad had managed to duplicate most of the orders and got random extra selections of some things including 48 packs of bananas (he thought he was ordering 4 bags, it was actually 4 outers of 12!) so Jinty was doing bargain 2 for a £1 sales on them which had us all competing to see who could sell the most to all the customers who came along. Very funny 🙂 These are the sort of in jokes that I would miss forever if we ever left here I think.

Emmanuel is tasked with bring wood up the hill tomorrow morning while we’re at work, Ady and I are at the hostel I believe dismantling bunk beds. We seem to have worked a lot this last couple of weeks but it does mean we tend to be super productive in the afternoons on the croft, so no bad thing.

Friday morning was a stressy one. I’d left the post office open and asked Ali to come and give me a hand doing the end of week process from Wednesday. It took us most of the two hours to do so and while I was fairly que cera cera about the whole business Ali was very stressed and shouty at everyone who came in. We did it though (I think!) and I came home for lunch.

I spent some time in the afternoon doing directorly emails and then made pizza dough and spend some time down on the plot / in the polytunnel. Friday night is pizza and Doctor Who night and we watched both of a double parter. The kids are really into Doctor Who and have rewatched all of Primeval on netflix.

Saturday was post office again but back into my comfort zone with it. Neil and Jed came for tea and chats and then just as I was about to close Fliss appeared so she came in and I shut the door but made her a cup of tea and chatted too. It meant I was later leaving post office but that was fine as I was meeting Ady at the end of his hostel shift anyway. We got various stuff up the hill including loads of clean and dry laundry which I sorted and folded while Ady made lunch.

The weather was odd, really low cloud which looked like threatening rain and not very warm but actually not raining so I went to do some weeding. It was pretty midgey so I kept stopping and waiting for the breeze to lift again but it was not particularly relaxing down there. I finished weeding a bed though, so that is now ready to be netted and have stuff transplanted from the polytunnel in the next few weeks. I fed the animals with Ady and collected some wildflowers from the croft.

We had a really nice curry for dinner.

Sunday – Ady and I had both slept really badly. I woke at about 530am and got up to go to the loo finding Ady asleep in the lounge and the bed soaking wet as the ceiling was leaking and it was pouring with rain. I assumed Ady had been woken by that too and gone into the lounge but he said that actually he’d been really fidgeting and I’d sleepily shouted at him twice that he was disturbing me so he’d come into the lounge. I don’t remember! I covered the duvet with a sleeping bag, read for a while and then found a dry bit of bed and went back to sleep. This does not bode well for winter….

The weather today has been dry (although as I type it is tipping down with rain again) but the same as yesterday threatening rain all day. It has been windy though so the kids have had access to the internet all day as the wind turbine was whizzing round with loads of power. They went to the village to collect the post after lunch and drop off a thank you card and gift to Sean and Nicola who looked after the ducklings while we were away. I did lots of knitting – I have another three scarves all ready to be labelled up and taken down to the craft shop and am part way through another – tunisian crochet is super quick! Then I went and did some more weeding for an hour or so. I would have stayed down there longer as I was very happy singing and weeding with my two favourite chicken helpers who I pass worms to but Scarlett came down to say Neil had come to visit. He needed some bank stuff for the venison company as Neil and I are standing down and Steve is taking it on but there are some final admin bits to sort out. He stopped for a cup of tea and chat by which time it was late so Ady went to feed the animals and I carried on with my scarf. Ady cooked dinner and we watched a Doctor Who and then the latest dvd of Eureka which had arrived. Very disappointingly it only had 2 episodes on it plus a longer length version of one of the episodes which we only realised after we’d watched the short version. Grrr.