One word? When seven would do…

Erm… Can’t recall at all the first couple of days but on Good Friday 3rd it was a mad busy Calmac for the first day of the summer timetable. 2pm arrival, it’s always late on the summer Friday boat and this was no exception. There were a fair few of us gathered at the pier waiting for people – and when the ramp came down everyone drew in a breath as there were about 100 people getting off! The most people we have seen in months and months! You forget just how few of us are here for most of the time.

Off came Lesley & Ross who had been off island along with their mum, younger brother and nephew. Off came friends to stay with Sorcha (Fliss’ daughter) who’s 18th birthday it was that very day, off came the band playing a ceilidh that night, a bunkhouse full of guests, a load more for the hostel, the first walkers and campers laden with tents, off came Big Dave and his new girlfriend (not at that point actually his girlfriend yet…) and off came my parents.

There was also a stack of stuff, deliveries for the shop, a load of stuff my parents had loaded on, our animal feed delivery and more. We had driven to the pier in both vehicles so as to let Big Dave drive one with him, Faye (new GF) and everyone’s stuff while we loaded the Jeep up with all of us. We followed him along, and just about managed to get everything up in one trip. We got Mum & Dad unpacked and settled in and then BD and Faye came over for hot cross buns. We had all been debating the ceilidh but the weather was changeable, Mum & Dad were tired from the 2 days travelling and Ady and I were working in the morning. In the end after much discussion we didn’t go down and it turned out neither did BD and Faye.

Saturday morning the weather continued to be poor so Mum & Dad did not have their planned walk down to the village to meet me from work. Instead I had a very quiet morning with Ross & Lesley’s brother reporting on some of the goings on from the night before, Trudi who was on clear up the hall duty, Norman who had not been out, BD and Faye. I walked along to meet Ady and we were home for late lunch. BD and Faye took the Rangerover to Kilmory and arranged to come and call for us for an evening beer.

We all went down for a drink and it was a nice evening with only a few folk out and guitars brought out for some singing. Home for a curry.

Easter Sunday – the kids had chocolate eggs aplenty and then eventually we headed over to the cabin for a late shared breakfast. We all sat on the decking for hours in the sunshine just chatting and soaking up the sun while drinking lots of tea. It was lovely 🙂 We arranged to meet for a beer at the shop before roast pork for dinner back at ours. It was a fab hour or so at the shop in the late afternoon sunshine and everyone was in a great mood. Mum & Dad chatted to Norman for ages and Dad bought him a beer, everyone was on good form. We wandered back to the croft and finished off dinner which I had put on low.

BD and Faye joined us which had seemed like a great idea until I’d realised we didn’t actually have 8 plates or sets of cutlery so hastily Ady fetched some from the horsebox. Dinner was lovely, much fizz was consumed and BD and Faye were by now obviously a couple.

Monday – All the days are merging together but this was the day BD and Faye headed off so Ady and I took them to the pier to wave them off. Ooh it was also the day that Ady fed the animals over at Harris and took Mum and I along for the ride. It was bumpy and I was feeling a little overserved on fizz from the night before but the views were worth it and Mum loved visiting as they have only been to Kilmory previously.

Tuesday – Ady and I worked on  building a new birdhouse, Mum walked lots, Dad ‘helped’ with the birdhouse. It was nice having them here all the time the weather was so lovely and we could all get on with our own stuff outside.

Wednesday – Ady and I both worked in the morning – Ady in the hostel, me doing my first castle tour of the season with Nicola. We had been anticipating up to 60 but in the end it was just 5. Mel was happy for us to still do the tour together and it worked really well. Before the tour we did some sucking flood water out of the castle tower and had a good old chinwag about stuff generally too.  The tour was fun, I do like chatting to tourist and these were a really nice group.

Back home to the croft for lunch and Mum and Dad had decided they would leave that day – the weather was looking iffy for later in the week. We had lunch and then headed down to the pier to wave them off.  As always it’s good to see them, it’s good to wave them goodbye. We had more than the usual share of drama with them this time and indeed their drama continued with all sorts of shenanigans on their way home but I am utterly exhausted by their behaviour and really disinclined to share it all here. Suffice to say some things never change with them and the issues which have mellowed with age have been exacerbated by their growing years in others. Argh!

A lovely evening all to ourselves. 🙂

Thursday – we had a skype call arranged with the producer and director of this Ben Fogle show at 11am. After various internet and tech related messing about we finally had audio and visual contact and had a very long chat with Kate who is lovely. Ady took a phone call in the middle of the skype chat which had him looking rather shocked but we carried on and made some good arrangements for their visit next week. Once we had said goodbye Ady shared with us the news that Norman had been found dead in his house. We were all pretty shocked, although he was not well and had a very poor lifestyle in terms of self care. We had lunch but none of us were really hungry and all felt rather shell shocked. Ady had the doctor and I had semi-organised a meeting with Steve the development officer so I walked down with him. The mood in the village was very strange with lots of residents sat around looking shocked. Lots of cuddling, some tears and inevitably a fair bit of drinking too – island life…. The doctor who had been coming on a routine visit for appointments was taken to Norm’s house to do the death certificate (which he was happy to do, citing no suspicious circumstances and diagnosing a fatal heart attack). The wheels of the after life procedures were all set in motion in official channels, meanwhile islanders started working out the more pressing logistics such as who would take Norman’s dog and thinking about the people we needed to inform from here. Norm has a brother down in Newcastle who the police would inform as next of kin and were very clear they needed to be the ones to do that rather than anyone from here ringing. Until we had heard that had been done we were all a little cautious about spreading the news too far but there are lots of ex residents, regular visitors, friends of Rum and others in the wider local community who knew Norman well so that grapevine started to hum with the news.

Ady saw the doctor and then we came home. Steve followed us up the hill and came in for a cup of tea and chat with me. After some debate Ady and I decided we should all go down for a beer and gathering at the shop which felt fairly inevitable. We were glad we did as when we arrived at the shop there was only Ross, Jinty (the two people who found Norm) and a WPC at the shop, everyone else had gone to the pier as the police boat had brought the funeral directors across to take the body away. Everyone had gathered at the pier, with cans of T (Norm’s drink of choice) to wave him off. We got a lift with Jinty and went to join them. It was very surreal. We went back to the shop, as did lots of others to have a few more drinks and talk about the days events. Sylvia who had a real love hate relationship with Norman either best friends or fallen out with each other in spectacular fashion decided to send a packet of tarragon up attached to a rocket as that had been Norman’s least favourite herb. We stayed until about 10pm and then came home for a stupidly late dinner.

Friday – we were supposed to have a volunteer arriving but she never came off the boat. I have heard from her tonight that she had last minute plan changes and had not got my email address with her to let me know. As it goes it was a bit of a relief really as it’s been an odd few days. We helped Jinty with her delivery which was HUGE, waited for the post and then came home.

I rang my parents for the proper catch up on their epic adventures home and while on the phone to them saw two of our cockerels fighting. They were really going for it and I latterly wished I had tried to break them up as the following morning they were both covered in blood. One was clearly the victor though and the other one knows it, running from him when he comes near which is good as they can just fight to the death with neither giving in. Scarlett found the loser and caged him over night with food and water and he seems ok, just way down the pecking order.

Saturday – work in the morning for us both. Odd to not have Norman in, he was my most regular post office customer. I can’t quite believe he’s dead and I’ll never see him again with his various affectations…

We were home for lunch earlier than usual as Ady had finished earlier. We started watching Hell and High Water, a Ben Fogle documentary so that the kids at least know who he is.  It’s actually pretty good and we’ve all gotten quite into it. Claire came up for a chat and cup of tea. Ady did some work on  the chicken house and I cleaned out the wardrobes in our bedroom, de-moulded them, gathered all of the clothes which stank and put all the stuff which was ok back in again tidily.  Curry for dinner.

 

Today – I hung all the nasty smelly stuff out on the line to air / rinse. I then took all the netting off the herb spiral and weeded that and the bed which had borage and nasturtian in ready for this year. Ady did more work on the chicken house putting perches and nesting boxes. It was intermittent hail and sunshine so we kept ducking back in and out of the caravan. Finally we called lunch at about 1ish. Just as we sat down and started getting into the Hell & High Water dvd again Bonnie barked and there were Beppie and David. An Australian couple who have been reading the blog for about 2 years, travel a lot and decided to come to Rum to meet us. They have donated to our Masterplan fund and wanted the croft tour. They spent the afternoon with us chatting, drinking tea, had the grand tour of the croft and met the animals, Beppie got bitten by  a goose and they took loads of photos. Always lovely to meet with someone like that, coupled with a bit odd that they know so much about you while you know very little about them. They are just here overnight and seem lovely people though.

It did rather take up all our afternoon though. When they left I got dinner on,  Ady did some more chicken house stuff and then we fed the pigs together before coming in for the evening. I want to create a mini greenhouse so I can at least get a few seedlings started off so we have been debating ideas for that and think we have a plan to have a go with tomorrow. I also want to put a geodesic dome somewhere on the croft in lieu of the ill fated polytunnel, maybe something to do while Ben is here filming…

 

And that’s me – all caught up, yay!

Saturday – work for Ady and I in the morning. Thanks to many power cuts over the last week the post office had crashed again and took about six reboots and nearly an hour to get up and running again. Lots of folk came for coffee and chats which was nice though. I walked along to Ady and when he finished we went and measured up the bridge across the river which the Kinloch Castle Friends Association have asked Ady to do some work on.

The ferry had been cancelled, as had Thursdays so there was quite a milk and fresh food shortage at the shop leading everyone to discuss who could become the baron of what on island. Ian and Kate appeared to have the most milk, we were good for venison and cheese, there also appeared to be a bit of a shortage of cigarettes but that is never really on our radar.

Back home for lunch and plenty of Barbara watching but nothing to report. I cooked dinner. There may have been knitting.

Sunday – the clocks had gone forward and the cancelled ferry from Thursday and Saturday had been rescheduled. We knew we would have various stuff on the boat but decided against going to meet the ferry and planned to head down a bit later instead to collect everything. Sure enough we had a text message from Fliss to say stuff had arrived for us and was in the boatshed so we drove down and collected it, picked up our washing from the castle laundry from the day before and the veg from the shop which had also arrived along with various post items including Lovefilm.

Back home for a fairly late lunch and then the hourly Barbara check. It was nearly 4pm and Scarlett came along with me. This time she was already lying in her straw nest in the pen breathing heavily and not very aware of us. As she slipped further into her trance we were able to creep closer to her until we were able to touch her. She had the first piglet at 430pm, a spotty little one which slipped out, wriggled like mad and was walking without moments finding its way round to her belly to start feeding. It was amazing. I’ve already blogged about it all over on WW so won’t replicate but it was a really memorable experience.

Finally got into the static just before 1030, freezing cold, soaked, knackered and actually slightly traumatised from the whole experience. It was at once exciting, draining and a tiny bit disturbing somehow. I had a shower and thought I was famished but halfway through dinner I crashed and couldn’t eat any more. Slept heavily if a little dream heavy.

Monday – Two dead piglets which was tough 🙁 We went to meet the boat as we were sending petrol off, also Abby had come on a flying visit and we’d not made it down to see her on Sunday night with all the pig midwifery. A catch up with village folk and we helped Jinty with her HUGE delivery before coming home. I rang my parents. Davies ordered some postcards ready for the start of the season.

Tuesday – Another two piglets lost – yesterday it was two spotty ones, today it was two pink ones meaning we’re down to 7 in total and just one pink one. Both of these had been crushed. Lots of online reading shows this is very common, particularly when kept as we do with freedom and no segregation. A suggestion is to try a farrow crate, either penning the sow (effectively trapping her and meaning she just lies there feeding, I have seen these in real life and find them barbaric) or creating a separate pen for the piglets to creep away from her safely attracting them there by a heat lamp. We cannot do that lacking power. Again I am not sure we would want to anyway. Part of the massive litter of 11 is natural selection which is very sad and disheartening for us but also means everything is as close to natural as possible. We’ve discussed it a lot, all feeling very sad at the loss of four, particularly after the high of 11 live births but feel we would do the same again. It would seem that the first 3 days is the critical time so we are still not out of the woods in terms of more crushings but it tends to be the weaker piglets who get crushed so we will continue to be hopeful of the others surviving. The weather has been particularly unkind today with gale force winds, huge hailstones and snow – inbetween rain showers! Not at all helpful.

Ady worked this morning at the hostel. I had a rant at the kids for a bit and then we talked that out and all was better for it. Davies worked on a story idea he has while Scarlett and I made 3 batches of candles (24 total) which used up all her wax and wick supplies. She now has a healthy stock to start selling and tonight ordered up some more supplies from ebay to make some more and has some good ideas for moulds which she is looking forward to trying.

Thursday – Ady was working in the morning, painting at Foxglove Cottage. I spent some time doing online stuff and then he was home for lunch. We all ate together and then I headed down to the village for Crafternoon. It was just Deb, Fliss and I as Ali was stranded on the mainland and we actually had a really nice few hours. I usually sit mostly silent but without Ali there conversation turned to education and it was really interesting and enjoyable to discuss and debate stuff.

Ady spent the afternoon spring cleaning in the caravan on tasks like kitchen cupboard doors, walls which get sprayed with mud when Bonnie shakes and general post winter clearing.

I got home just after 6pm to an email saying that the trip to Muck had been cancelled. No progress with Barbara Pig.

Friday – Barbara’s actual due date. Despite hourly checking and plenty of time spent hanging out with her nothing has happened maternity wise. I made bread dough, pizza dough, tortilla wrap dough and rolled out 20 plus wraps all of which does my upper arms lots of good. Outside we moved 10 galvanised metal sheets and 8 fence posts from various locations at the bottom of the croft to a spot right at the top of the croft ready to construct bird housing, It’s the time of year when we need to pen the chickens and ducks after their evening feed to ensure we collect as many eggs as possible before letting them out in the morning to spend the evening free ranging. We won’t manage to pen them all, which is fine but should secure sufficient egg layers each day to satisfy demand for fresh eggs on the island. After some debate about design we have settled on a plan but have decided to construct with screws rather than nails to allow for deconstruction, moving on and reconstructing as required. So a task in progress awaiting parts.

We broke for lunch and then went back outside to finish off, finding ourselves at 430pm finished that but with nothing ‘small job’ enough to start before the day was through. So I came in and did a few rows of knitting on a scarf for sale. And cleaned another window – I have been gradually working my way round the caravan inside scrubbing off all the green and black stuff after the winter using an old toothbrush. That is everything except the kids bedroom windows done now.

The kids were very productive with Davies creating two new postcard designs and Scarlett designing a logo for her candles. We discussed drafts and experimenting and she did a couple of versions before deciding. Probably the first time she has grasped the idea of not just striving for perfect first time and then considering something finished.

Pizza and some down with the kids tunes for the evening. I suspect we are now embarrassing parents. We are delighting in this ;|)

 

Monday – I was Mrs Post Office in the morning, Ady and Dave were on Trailer Fixing duty so they dropped me off at work and then headed back to start on that. We got it from What-you-want-to-do-Dave and took it to Harris before the track was fixed and the axle broke on it. WYWDD brought up a new pair of wheel holder things but it’s been one of those jobs that never made it to the top of the priority list until now.

Post Office was good fun – loads of folk came in and I made tons of cups of tea and coffee. I finished up and walked up the hill to meet Ady and BD.  They had made good progress with the trailer but it turned out the wheels no longer fitted so some modification was required. We called lunchtime and all came back up here for food, then we left Dave arranging to meet up later and Ady and I went down to the village to meet Sean the TV dude.

We walked up with him, telling the story of the arrival of the static then had a pleasant couple of hours with him chatting and drinking tea. He had given up caffeine for lent so was on the wanky hippy teas, fortunately we have a box labelled wanky hippy teas for just such eventualities.  He was a nice guy and answered all of our questions and concerns about the documentary. Davies and Scarlett went ahead of us and Sean and Ady fed the animals while I knocked up a quick bread dough to take down with us and we all walked down to the shop. Sean stopped for a beer before needing to get along to Fliss’ where he was staying, for his dinner. We had another and then went along to the hostel as I had offered to cook. Venison spag bol followed by ginger and lime cheesecake which is BD’s favourite and we were celebrating his birthday a couple of days early. We had a nice evening, with Sean the Rat joining us impromptuly as he walked past as I was about to serve up and had not yet eaten. Not too late a night, and BD, Ady and I walked the wheels up to the cabin on the way home.

Tuesday – Ady and I went along to the cabin where BD was angle grinding the wheel inner to make them bigger to fit on the trailer. We walked then down and they were still fractionally too small so we walked them back up again and had breakfast and Popmaster in the cabin with BD before heading back to the croft to meet Sean the TV dude for some further chatting. Davies and Scarlett (who to be fair had had a run of very late nights) had gone back to sleep and were still in bed! So we roused them quickly and then had another couple of hours chatting to Sean. By the end of it we had set dates for them filming and finer details aside I think we’ll be doing the documentary. Quite exciting and means Ben Fogle will be staying here with us in the caravan!!

We walked down with Sean, met Big Dave and collected Gill and Graham from the hostel to take everyone along to the boat. There was quite a crowd of folk there either leaving or waving people off, so plenty of hugs all round for Gill, Mairi, Big Dave, TV Dude Sean etc. Finally they had all gone, Ady and I loaded the Rangerover up with a gas bottle and headed for home. We spent lots of time with Barbara Pig, got the gas bottle up, made bread,  made cookies, chopped some wood and enjoyed just being the four of us again after all the busyness.

Wednesday – I’d been convinced we would wake to piglets but no, Barbara is very slow lumbering around the pig pen but still pregnant. Maybe tonight… she’s actually due on Friday. Ady had been up early to check, gone to the village to collect a few things and put a wash on. After Popmaster and much checking of Barbara Ady and I walked back to the village to collect something for dinner from the freezer and deliver some goose eggs to Mel & Em. Back home again  for lunch, followed by an afternoon of wood chopping for me and compost loo finalising for Ady. That is now all fully installed and operational and aside from the utter luxury of a flushing loo it also seems to be working really well and will save (Ady) hours every week in emptying loos. Hurrah!

I made a really lovely steak pie for dinner which had us all feeling really stuffed. It’s pouring with rain and blowing a hooley outside so I fully expect Barbara is giving birth as I plan to head off to bed.

Thursday – I was Mrs Post Office. Ady and the kids were booked onto a first aid course in the hall from the visiting GP surgery so they came down at 11 and I followed them in at midday when I finished cashing up. It was reassuring to realise just how much I have retained from First Aid training at work over the years. Ady went off up home to carry on with flushing loo installation while I took the kids to the GP as they both had appointments.

Scarlett was first, she has had several warts come back up on the knee which she had one frozen off of last year and I had tried to let the doc know that we wanted more frozen off in advance so she would bring the stuff to do so as the previous locum GP had refused to prescribe the stuff for me to do it at home. This woman is much more relaxed and had been unable to get it to bring but said she would send some over on prescription so we could do it ourselves. Scarlett hurt her knee when we were off on the mainland – she had gotten lost in the museum in Edinburgh and been running looking for us on the slippy museum floor in wellies and jarred something in her knee which has never recovered.  Mairi (who is all sorts of medical having been a nurse, midwife and now more in admin roles but a sportswomen herself and with a daughter who plays rugby for Scotland knows about sports injuries) had given her the once over and a deep massage when she was last over and proclaimed ‘something’ the matter and suggested not running in wellies any more. Scarlett was still hobbling on it of an evening, particularly after an active day so we had it looked at. The GP said it was visibly inflamed and some injury of the patella. She felt it would heal itself but suggested watching it for another month, treating with ibuprofufen gel and a mix of gentle, regular exercise with sensible resting and nothing erratic. She is also sending over a tubular bandage for wearing when cycling or walking lots.

Davies was due two booster jabs so had needles into both arms and I chased up his appointment for the paediatrics which possibly by coincidence has now arrived. The kids went back up the hill, I went to have a quick catch up with Mairi who had arrived and then headed round to Fliss’ for Crafternoon. We had a nice afternoon of knitting, crochet and chat followed by heading to the shop for a few hours, Cosmic Mike’s eclipse talk and finally on to the hostel for dinner with the friends. Unfortunately no food all day, white wine spritzers at Crafternoon, a very late dinner following far too long at the shop and finally cocktails including whiskey did for me and I was most poorly…

Friday I awoke , quite rightfully, feeling pretty rough. I sucked up all of the ribbing and managed to watch the eclipse with all of the Friends over at Daves. He fed me chocolate and tea which probably kept me going…. they all went off to do Friends stuff, we came home for Popmaster and I spent the morning baking – bread, cookies, wraps. We had a very carb-y lunch, I drank lots of tea and did knitting, I had a shower, I was not up to much more than playing Home Maker to be honest. Ady was productive out on the croft though. The kids walked down to the village, Dave called for me and we walked down together, where I held out on non alcoholic drinks for the first round until Ady joined us and then I moved across. I did stick to my pledge of alternating with water though and felt hugely better for doing so, while still very tired the next day.

Saturday – I was Mrs Post Office. I had various visitors before walking along to the hostel to meet Ady and the Friends. We had lunch there with them and then Mairi and I came up to the crofts for a cup of tea and chat. She headed over to Dave’s to do some planting, the kids went out for some fresh air and exercise and I had good intentions which all went to seed when I got immersed in a good book Michelle lent me and read that in the sunshine instead. Mairi had asked me over to drink fizz so having left it as late as possible without appearing openly avoiding I went over about 430pm. Ady and Dave had been working on the Rangerover and actually got it fixed 🙂 Yay! So we all met up at the cabin for fizz and a beer before going our separate ways – us home for pizza, Friends and an earlyish night – Mairi and Dave back down to the shop and hostel for more of the same.

Sunday – I got a bit of a lie in and then we were all off to Kilmory. via the hostel to look at some work on a bridge that the Friends want Ady to do (very lucrative, hurrah!) and collecting Mairi and Gill. Dave drove and enjoyed driving his old car very much. The new track is fantastic and meant we were there super quick. We worked our way down to the beach, wandered about a bit, had our communal picnic of soup, rolls, tuna and mayo, chocolate, then wandered about a bit more before making our way back. It was lovely, if very cold and blowy. We dropped the kids off at the croft turn off with the dog, took Mairi and Gill back to the village and then Big Dave, Ady and I cleared more firewood from the fork in the track down to the crofts and bought along some scaffolding boards too that Billy had given us. Ady and I came home – he got dinner on, fed animals, brought in firewood etc. I made apple pie, read more of my book. Dave went to the shop for a beer and then came up for dinner.

A pretty mad weekend, I could really do with some recovery time!

Yesterday morning I spent some time baking – wraps for the kids lunch, bread dough for later and several batches of peanut butter cookies for general snaffling through the week.  Ady was doing stuff outside. At midday we got changed and headed down to the village to attend the annual Familiarisation Day lunch. The Rum Visitor Management Group (which I used to sit on until one of my rationalisation of all things voluntary a year or so ago) holds them every spring when all sorts of local tourist services and accommodation providers from Fort William to Mallaig and inbetween are invited over to Rum for the day. Trudi the ranger meets them in Mallaig and the Seafari Orion boat is chartered to bring them all across. They get a castle tour, visit the bunkhouse, walk along the front to see the various Rum sights, have lunch at the teashop where they meet local business people and then have a bit of a walk out onto the NNR before being boated back to Mallaig again.

Ady and I went to talk about Croft 3 Produce and Rum Venison. There were various folk there, from Calmac, Skye, FW tourist office and so on. There was free lunch and nice cakes, lots of general chatting and promoting Rum and gently easing ourselves back in to answering tourist questions again.

We heard that our animal feed delivery had arrived the previous day so walked back up to collect the car and went to the pier to pick that up. Ady brought that all up to the croft in 3 wheelbarrow loads while I chopped a load of firewood. We spent some time fiddling around with water tanks and starting to work out how to make the flushing loo in the caravan we’ve been talking about doing but started to lose light so went no further that talking and planning. Tom & Barbara did a bit of leaping from one pen to the other as Ady had separated them in the morning which they always take a while to settle in to the idea of.

I made dinner and we watched the last episode on the Lovefilm disc of Eureka! I’d been getting text and email alerts of a good chance of northern lights so after dinner the kids and I went outside and sure enough there they were 🙂 We took some photos and later after everyone else had gone to bed I went back outside and took more. The caravan rather annoyingly is in the way of north so you can’t sit on the sporran with a hot chocolate and watch – another design fault we never appreciated! 😉

Today was All On The Croft. Ady had been down to the castle first thing and done a load of laundry  and brought it back up so I got that hanging out to dry. Davies and Scarlett headed off down to the village to do some cycling while Ady and I made a start on Operation Flushing Loo. Predictably some bits we expected to be tricky were really easy and other bits we thought would be straightforward proved difficult. But by the end of the day we had a loo which fills, flushes and is suitable for weeing in with the flushed liquid draining into a tank below the caravan, a basket inside to catch solids and filter that and the liquid flowing in a pipe under the caravan and right away down the hill. Next step for that is to dig it in and create a drainage sink for the water but for now it is very, very diluted wee which is fine to just drain out and run away. Tomorrow we will perfect the basket to catch the solids which will then need emptying once a month or so into a composting system we are creating with another old water tank which will be filled with composting matter such as leaf litter and sawdust and a whole load of worms. That will get topped up by the drained, dry (ish) solids as the tank under the caravan needs emptying and will then compost down ready to be used on crops. All very exciting and potentially a massive improvement both to the caravan but also to the general list of tasks we have to get through each week just to survive here. By tomorrow evening that should be set up ready to use, after a few weeks we will know how successful it has been in terms of a longer term option. I mostly had a big tidy up of the bathroom, taking absolutely everything out of it, going through it all and chucking out and reorganising and cleaning everything before putting it all back in. We need to do that with every room really, it’s a great way of properly clearing up.

The kids came back for lunch so we all stopped and ate together, then they headed back out again and Claire appeared with the sad news that Mad Ben the Fencer who we met a few times when he was over working here in our first year here and we even did a bit of paid work for has died.  Pretty shocking and poor Claire who was quite close to him was very upset so I made her a cup of tea and stopped to chat with her for a while. Claire then headed off to feed the pigs some scraps she had brought up and then the kids walked back down to the village with her. Ady and I tidied up, fed the animals and headed down to the village for a few bits of shopping and a beer. Alistair, from Eigg, who got our caravan up onto the croft is over doing road repairs so we bought him a drink and had a general chat with the various islanders who were at the shop. It was a nice atmosphere down there – a sunny Rum day :).

Back home for showers all round, mammoth hair brushing for Scarlett, a collaborative dinner effort from Ady and I and my planned early night not quite panning out. A busy day tomorrow with Post Office in the morning, followed by First Aid training, doctors appointments for both kids, Crafternoon and then dinner with the Kinloch Castle Friends including Mairi and Big Dave who all arrive tomorrow on the boat.

Didn’t realise it had been so many days.

 

Thursday – dreadful weather again, ferry cancelled so no veg, no milk and the shop was pretty much bare. Ady and I put on waterproofs and went down to the village for various supplies from the freezer and shop. I know we had curry for dinner and I made naan breads but I can’t remember anything else about the day. I suspect I spent time knitting and I’m fairly sure I tidied up in the bathroom and got rid of some of the empty bottles of shampoo etc which seem to collect in there.

Friday – I think the weather was better, infact yes it was. The kids went down to the village, we did some wood processing and filled the wood store back up, Ady scythed the pig fence line and put some wooden posts in then we went down to the village to say goodbye to Billy the roofing contractor who has been here all winter. We got to know Billy when we came for our interview back in Feb 2012 and he was staying in the castle, he was still here when we moved up in the April and stayed in the castle for the first 5 days til the caravan arrived. It was his mats which we used to get the static up here in the end and he has been back every winter since and always been very kind to us giving us leftover materials from the various building jobs. This time was no exception and in addition to all the firewood he has given us this winter he also have us a load of plastic sheeting, some scaffold boards and several bags of lime render, gravel, sand and cement which will all very useful for the cob build. We love Billy.

We made a start on the wooden archway for the walled garden and were out til nearly dark getting it up. Pizza for dinner.

Saturday – work in the morning for Ady and I. Ady got loads of washing done which we brought back up to dry on the line – yay! The ferry finally came bringing loads of food supplies and the electric fence widget things we’d been waiting for. After lunch we put them on the wooden posts Ady had put in and laid out some paddock posts inbetween then finished putting some more bits onto the archway. It looks really good, I’m pleased with it :).

I came in to start dinner as bagels had been requested earlier in the week and they take a lot of faffing, while the others headed down to the village on a Top Secret Shopping expedition.

Sunday – Mothers Day. The kids gave me cards and presents which made me cry :). Ady and I completed the Big Pig Move and it was a glorious day. The kids brought us out supplies of tea and coffee but we missed lunch. The pigs are really happy in their new area. Lovely roast dinner and fizz in the evening.

Monday – Gorgeous weather in the morning. Davies and Scarlett went down to the village to meet Trudi to collect rock pool creatures to put in an aquarium in the visitor centre while Ady and I moved Tom’s pig ark from the old pig pen to the new one, set up the dividing fence to split them up, probably tomorrow. Spent some time in with them stroking and petting them, I do love the pigs. We’d planned to have pizza oven pizza and made the dough and lit the oven but not for long enough and it clouded over so we decamped back indoors for lunch in the end. The kids went back down to the village, Ady and I planned to do some wood processing but got distracted by looking at a plan for a flushing loo in the static so worked on that instead. We think we have it sussed so that is tomorrow and Wednesday’s task. I walked down to the village to meet the kids and collect some bits from the shop, dinner of cold meat from yesterday and potato gratin.

Wednesdays are Crafternoons at Fliss’. I don’t really like them. It’s me, Ali, Deb and Fliss and while I do get to drink tea, chat and catch up on the gossip while being productive on the knitting front (almost a whole scarf done today) it’s all a bit nicey, nicey and far too much talking about parenting stuff and schooly things I don’t agree with.

I can’t avoid going really though without it being obvious I am not enjoying it, last week they even moved the day for me. This week the main topic of conversation was volunteering and WWOOFing though which was actually quite nice and I did more talking than I’ve done in weeks and weeks. Rum folk who have been here a long time are very bad at living in their Rum bubble and forgetting there is a world outside of our island and that people had real lives before they came here, some of which may be more interesting than what happened here on Rum yesterday or last week.

Working backwards though Ady went off to finish painting this morning and came back at lunchtime with the happy news that Lesley is pregnant. We sort of suspected she was back at Christmas but I asked and she said she didn’t know yet and a couple of times I’ve sort of asked and she’s not said so I assumed maybe she was not after all. It’s lovely, happy news and has made me smile all afternoon :). Les told Manager Mike yesterday for work purposes and then Neil said actually they didn’t want him to know before we did so Neil told Ady this morning. I caught up with them later and whispered Congratulations to Neil who then gave me a lift part way to the croft so we had a bit of a chat and I emailed Lesley to pass on congratulations too. I guess they will announce more publicly soon.

I spent the morning doing the final bits on the monthly community newsletter and getting that emailed out.

This evening Ady cooked (venison) steak and chips which was delicious.

Monday – the weather was hideous. 60mph winds with 80mph gusts. Ady insisted on going outside a couple of times but could barely stand up out there. It tipped with rain too and we were getting regular text messages from people in the village checking if we were ok so unusually it was also pretty blowy down there too which futher discouraged us from venturing out.

Ady made a string thing across the shelf above our bed to stop things from falling on us in the night when it’s windy. I finished knitting a scarf, checked stocks of scarves and midges in resin and sorted out yarn for another 3 more scarves. I also made bread, rolls, soup and did some work on a croft3 website. Davies and Scarlett did some drawing, watched some stuff on iplayer, connected on their tablets, did some balloon modelling and chatted about their plans for crafts to sell this year.

It would have been a nice indoor day were it not for the rain entering the caravan at various  doors and windows, the condensation dripping off the windows, the roof and walls rattling and the trees swaying outside. I was feeling a bit ‘bring it on!’ about the whole thing which is probably silly, you don’t really get to be defiant against the wind but never mind.

Today Ady was painting with Bad Neil so he was up and away. I spent the morning doing the newsletter, replying to a few emails and clearing my inbox and then went outside to start repairing the fruit cage. I stopped at a natural break in the repairing to come in for lunch and we had leftover soup and listened to the tail end of something on the radio. The sun was still shining and it was a gorgeous afternoon so the kids took Bonnie off for a walk down to the village to check for post while I carried on with the fruit cage. I didn’t get my after lunch cup of tea because Tom and Barbara pig had gotten out and were up by the caravan though. The kids and I snuck over to their pen and I shook the food bucket and called them while the kids stood by and raised the fence for them to come in and then closed it behind them. Excellent teamwork 🙂 I strongly suspected they would be out again but they stayed put all afternoon and Ady swapped the battery over when he got home.

Ady and the kids came back together so we all had a cup of tea and sat on the sporran in the sunshine. Hard to believe it is the same world as yesterday let alone the same place just 24 hours later.

I went back to my fruit cage while Ady did some more work on the Big Pig Move. It is now just waiting for some fence holder things we ordered off ebay and a whole day of forecast decent weather to do the actual move – hopefully Sunday I think looking at the forecast at the moment,

We were outside til 630pm tonight and it was still light 🙂 I cooked dinner and made bread and we listened to Popmaster on iplayer.

The wind is supposed to be really bad this coming week, with gusts over 80mph tomorrow. Sigh.

We’ve been making lists of all the things we love about life here, fortunately they are long lists.

The wood shed was disturbingly empty so we grabbed the opportunity of spells of sunshine and non gale force winds to top that up a bit with Ady bringing the wood up the hill and me chopping and stacking it. I also made dough for flatbreads for lunch, pastry for an apple tart for pudding and prepped the roast dinner (venison, yum!). The kids tidied their bedrooms which were in quite a state – too much stuff, too little space.

After lunch they walked down to the village to collect the post from the car which is our unofficial post box. Ady scythed the grass ready for the pig fence to go up and I made the tart, washed up and then got distracted on my way to go and chop a bit more wood by the state of the window frame in the bathroom so ended up cleaning that instead, which led to cleaning the two window frames in our bedroom too. The caravan is leaking water / dripping condensation / dire combination of the two infront of both doors and is just feeling generally very tired and in need of some TLC – it seems to get battered from the inside and outside. In the style of a womens magazine readers tips page I actually used an old toothbrush to scrub the fiddly bits and it worked really well.

Bad Neil turned up then so Ady and he came in for a cup of tea and chat which pretty much took us up to animal feeding time. I went out with Ady and checked on Barbara who is looking beautifully pregnant and very happy. Ady showed me what he had scythed and we talked about a slightly different way of doing the electric fence this time and came in and ordered some bits for that. I got dinner on and fiddled with some nail wrap things that had come in the post. The kids watched back to back Doctor Who on the disc that had also come in the post (lovefilm), I had a shower and went back to my bicarb shampoo and vinegar conditioner as my hair has been horribly greasy since coming back from the mainland and using ‘normal’ shampoo and conditioner.

Dinner was lovely, as was apple tart for dessert. Tomorrow’s plan is Big Pig Move continuing if weather permits and some getting stuff ready for the tourist season craft wise if not.

Been feeling a bit meh the last couple of days and I did start typing a really whiny blog post but actually having just read it back it annoyed even me let alone putting it out there for other people to read, so we’ll move past that.

We went down to the school yesterday for the World Book Day event. It was actually a really good turn out with Deb, Eve and Joss (obviously!), Fliss, Ali, Claire, Nicola, Trudi, Mel, Em and the four of us. We’d been asked to bring along our favourite book to share. Ady took Hobby Farmer, I took a copy of Barefoot Diaries, Davies took Mr Gum and a Roald Dahl and Scarlett took a beautifully illustrated old copy of a book on birds, eggs and nests. It was ok – Deb tried really hard and in theory it was a nice morning but it was just so bloody schooly and contrived and false that it makes my teeth itch. First we were supposed to mingle and drink tea and eat cake and talk about our favourite books. I sat and read a book to Scarlett instead. Then we sat in a circle and all talked about what we had learned about other people’s books and what we had brought with us.

Then Deb handed out some pictures of dragons with the writing taken away and asked us to get into groups and write our own words. They were gorgeous illustrations and most people wrote beautiful tales to go with their picture. I worked with Davies and Ady. Davies, who channels quite a lot of his inner Nic decided to write about how the dragon was a merdragon who kills mermaids and was working with a gangsta vigilante dolphin called Bob. It was quite dark 😉

There was then an option to stay and do some art but we wanted to get back for Bonnie really so after reading another book to Davies and Scarlett which we had read years ago when I worked at the library and remembered as lovely (Deb does have very good taste in books) so we headed off.

Back at home we had lunch and Ady tidied the bookcase while I did some knitting.

Today was work for Ady and I in the morning. It’s been crazy windy all day, a real WTF feeling about life here this week a couple of times. Various reasons but it all feels a bit hard when the weather is like this, particularly as it is supposed to be spring!!!

Post Office was ok, I walked along and met Ady, we came home for lunch and have been in all afternoon and evening. Actually we talked ourselves out of the WTF feeling over the course of the afternoon and evening and had a good chat with the kids. And now finally the wind has dropped and although Monday is looking scarily windy it is supposed to be quite nice tomorrow so we may even get outside and get some productive stuff done.

I had a full board meeting this morning at 9am – a time I am not used to being somewhere for these days ;). So up, out, with travel mug of tea and plenty of layers as the White House (SNH office where meeting was being held) has no heating at the moment and is freezing. It was Lesley, Ali, Fliss and I from the island, with video conference link from our chairman Allan and our development officer Steve, both at different locations. So the VC screen looked even more high tech than usual with split screen of Steve, Allan and the four of us all in different corners.

The meeting was productive, quite possibly more so because it was so cold in there 😉 and we were done before 1130am which was when we were scheduled to finish. I hung around for a bit waiting for Ady and then we walked up to Vikki’s house as we’d offered to help load her van that she was bringing over between boats to collect the last of her stuff. We were joined by Sean, Nicola, Mel, Ross and then Vikki and her friend Mairi who was driving the van. We got it all loaded up pretty quickly and waved them off. The rest of them headed along to Mike & Debs for coffee and cake but it was really, really windy so we headed home to check on Davies and Scarlett and have lunch.

Davies was supposed to have a doctors appointment but the doctor didn’t come over as the weather was so bad, so we had a quiet afternoon in. Then it was back to the village for Ady and I for the monthly residents meeting. The kids stayed home as it was still pouring with rain so they spent the time skyping with Ben while we bought some wood in, fed the animals and walked down to the village.

Another very productive meeting with a newly elected chair and secretary for the RCA (Rum Community Association) as it was the AGM and both of those postholders had stood down (one being Vikki who has left the island). That should make for interesting times ahead… Ady and I had both been suggested for posts but we declined, maybe next year when I am not a director and life is a bit less hectic.

Back home for dinner. Another early start (for us!) tomorrow as we’re going to the school for a World Book Day event – obviously should have been today but as Ali, Fliss and I were having a meetingtastic morning it was deemed better tomorrow.

I made bread dough this morning and finished off the newsletter for the Friends of Rum – a Trust run organisation which anyone can join for a tenner a year, gets them two newsletters a year and various discounts etc. Set up mostly to harvest contact details and get support from various people who love Rum and want to be a small part of our community without actually living here. It used to be a winter and a summer newsletter but I took it on last year and wanted to hold back the summer one to announce the opening of the bunkhouse which meant it was more like an autumn newsletter so the winter one slipped to spring and actually I think spring and autumn may be more appropriate to update on news of the coming season and report on the one just passed.

Ady was out gathering together materials to build a pig pen – I was waiting til 11am when I had arranged with a TV researcher to be somewhere with phone signal so she could call me. That ended up taking about an hour, she was very friendly and easy to chat to and we talked about all sorts of things. She confessed to being really interested in Home Ed so we talked about that a fair bit. I expressed my usual concerns about sensationalist TV reporting and was assured that was not the sort of show they are looking for. She is hoping to come up and meet us and scope things out a bit more but it all sounds quite promising – and we’d get paid! 🙂

Scarlett was out checking out the goats who are still hanging around the bottom of the croft, we helped carry a few more bits of galvanised sheeting up and then came in for lunch. I then left the others to it for the afternoon – Ady finished building the pig shelter, Scarlett hung out with the goats more and Davies spent hours on a Doctor Who app he had downloaded which looked really good with some excellent problem solving and logic puzzles. I went off to Fliss’ for Crafternoon – Fliss, Ali, Deb and I. Deb was spinning with her fold up wheel, Fliss was knitting, Ali was making friendship bracelets and I was knitting a scarf. Individually I do like all three of them but I always feel a bit hemmed in at these afternoons – it’s all too nice and too twee and too polite. It makes me feel a bit Tourette-y as though I want to randomly shout ‘Fuck!!’ just to get a reaction. I think I might be weird 🙂

Back at home Ady had finished the pig house – we are moving Tom & Barbara up to the top corner of the croft, they have been on the current bottom corner for well over a year now and it is very muddy and ready to recover from their time on it before starting to graze it with the geese or more likely some sheep before being ready to start growing on. Barbara’s litter is due at the end of this month so we could potentially have up to 10 pigs on this new bit within the next few weeks and two pigs are far easier to move and settle than 10 so we want to do it before she farrows. We need to separate them fairly soon too as the jostling about at feed time is not good for her the further into her pregnancy she gets plus she will start to get bad tempered as she gets closer to farrowing. The house is built, we need to create a small pen for Barbara inside the bigger pen for all of them and then do the actual move. Hopefully sometime middle of next week to give them a good 2-3 weeks in there before she has the piglets.

I made bread and then cooked dinner –  ‘breakfast for dinner’ of sausage, bacon, eggs, beans (for Ady), fried bread, mash (for Scarlett) and garlicky potatoes cooked in the bacon fat (Ady, Davies and I). Very nice 🙂 We watched the last couple of episodes of series 1 of Eureka so that it can go back tomorrow.

Early start for me tomorrow, I need to be in the village for 9am for a board meeting.

Monday – Ady and I called into the shop in the morning for a few bits and then went along to the schoolhouse as Ady had offered to help Stuart and Julie fit a sofa into their moving van. In the end they had run out of room so decided not to take it but been unable to reach us to let us know. We ended up going into the school for a cup of tea and chat with Stuart, Julie, Deb and the girls. Stuart offered us their old fish boxes used as containers for planting and a few other bits and pieces. We took an aluminium frame which they used as a chicken enclosure and will probably be useful to us as a broody bird  / nursery pen during the summer and some rolls of chicken wire. They also had an old mower which they could not get to work but Ady thinks he probably can. The irony of a mower for use on 8 acres is not lost on me even if Ady thinks it might be useful 😉

Back at home I made the bread dough I’d made earlier into rolls while Ady finished off the chicken soup he’d made from Sunday’s roast chicken remains. Lovely lunch 🙂 We watched a couple of downloaded episodes of Comic Relief Celebrity Bake off which were very funny. I did some online stuff, Scarlett did painting, Davies was looking at stuff online too. It snowed lots.

Tuesday – I had a meeting this morning and went round to Ali’s for a pre meeting meeting and cup of tea or two. The meeting went well, Ady picked me up afterwards and we came home for lunch. It has been alternately blizzarding and bright blue skies all day with a side order of very gusty high winds but between blizzards Ady and I went out and walked the area we’re planning to move the pigs to, checking the fence and working out where to put their house. We then checked on the pigs and as we were walking back along the bottom of the croft so Bonnie went mad and ran at the river barking and there were two goats. There are several hundred on Rum living feral mostly out in the wilds so this was a bit of a shock.

The kids (my children, not the junior goats!) and I walked back down to see them some more and get a closer look. Later Ady threw them a handful of pig feed, not sure if they’ll stay and frankly we don’t need additional mouths to feed if they are not actually of use on the croft but Scarlett is delighted at the prospect of goats 🙂

I spent an hour or so chopping wood which was really difficult in the wind – it kept blowing the wood off the chopping block. Later I rang my parents and had a good long chat with them. Eureka had arrived from Lovefilm so we watched a couple of episodes of that this evening.

Work for both Ady and I yesterday morning. Post Office was quiet – Norman came early and stayed the whole time which was tedious as I wanted to chat to other people and he monopolises me. Fliss came in quickly before the boat and said that it was Stuart & Julie’s last day as they were heading off on Monday so did we all want to come to hers on Sunday for tea and cakes and a goodbye?

Ady was up the castle tower emptying water buckets and taking photos (the photos were for him, not actually part of his work) and managed to nip along to the boat to collect our amazon orders. I walked along to meet him when I finished and then we drove part way and walked the rest of the way in the pouring rain.

That was me done with outside for the day! We had loads of wind turbine power so I did various online things and then made dinner.

Today Ady and I went down to Fliss’ to say goodbye to Stuart and Julie. The kids stayed home as they rightly assumed they would get caught up with Eve and Joss if they came, when we got back they showed us the science youtube clips they had been looking at.

Ady cooked dinner AND pudding, all of which were very nice. We made a list of things to be doing when it actually stops raining.

Boring as it may be I am adamant I am fighting this cold off properly and not wearing myself out. Sleeping in a very cold, very damp room with no bath and other home comforts means a simple cold can turn into something more sinister here really easily.

So I’m heading to bed early every night, which means waking early every morning but I’ve been staying in bed and reading for an hour or so before getting up so still getting plenty of rest. Ady was off to meet Ross as he was going to Harris (other side of the island) to feed the SNH cattle and ponies today. They ended up gone for way longer than expected and didn’t get back til gone midday.

Meanwhile I got up, drank tea and answered loads of emails, read lots of online stuff and did some general volunteer organising writing when people are booked in on the calendar and creating different folders in my inbox to keep track of things. Then I went out to chop some firewood which was my fresh air and exercise for the day.

This afternoon has been showery and very cold so I didn’t venture out again but instead cut up three old pairs of jeans and crocheted a rug for the kitchen – Ady had taken up the the old coir mat from the kitchen to sweep underneath and give it a bit of a beat and clean as it was looking grubby but it disintegrated as he lifted it and the kitchen floor is really cold on bare feet if you are standing in there cooking so I decided to make a rug for it. 3 pairs of jeans doesn’t go very far…. need to find some more.

I made pizza dough and later pizzas for dinner but there is a Rum cheese crisis so they were not as cheesy as we usually have them. We started rewatching Friends and the kids spent ages looking at optical illusions on the internet thanks to the whole black and blue debate…

All yesterday afternoon I was dreaming about home made soup and freshly baked rolls so this morning that’s what I made. And it was good. So good I had two bowls of soup and three rolls. So, so medicinal! 🙂

Ady and I went to meet the boat which came against all odds – we had some amazon orders arrive and collected post from the Rangerover in the village. Back at home we had lunch and watched all the Junior Masterchef episodes we had missed while we were away right through to the final. Funny what shows we deem worthy of downloading and watching 🙂

Then I was feeling ready for some fresh air so I did a couple of hours of wood chopping and sorting out the woodstore. Hopefully we are coming to the last few weeks of fires lit all day and only another month or so of fires at night. Worth chopping it all up though as we’ll need it for the pizza oven and campfires for volunteers. I did over exert myself though thanks to the magical properties of the soup and had to sit down and drink lots of tea while shivering a bit after that.

Ady meanwhile brought up more firewood and did some general tidying up around the croft. I made dinner – in the week we have been back everyone has been hankering after our normal food which we all seemed to miss when we were away – there are only so many fast food restaurant fries you can have before you crave real food I guess. We have no Lovefilm to watch just now – finished Eureka which everyone likes and waiting for the next disc, only Ady and I liked The Middle so that is going back. so we watched some Will & Grace.

See, I told you it was boring.

Friday – erm… I genuinely have no idea at all what we did. There would have been some firewood processing, I have no idea what else. I do recall heading down to the village to get pepperoni for pizza and beer for Ady and collect the keys for the shop ready for the following morning.

Saturday – back to work! Post office for me, so a good catch up with Bad Neil, Ali, Trudi but a quiet morning generally. Ady was at the hostel and went off to the ferry to collect Big Dave and Mairi who arrived. They walked along to me, we said our hellos and then they headed up to the cabin while I went to meet Ady from work. We went to the shop for beers and I cooked ridiculous amounts of cheesy pasta bake for dinner with sufficient leftovers for the following night for Davies and Scarlett who were unlikely to eat the curry Big Dave was cooking for us. A fun evening at ours.

Sunday – Mairi had brought us up a load of croissants and pain au chocolats so we had lovely Sunday breakfast. The weather was abysmal for most of BD and Mairi’s visit this time so we didn’t manage much outside stuff at all. I think there was more firewood processing and definitely tea drinking and chatting. I’m fairly sure Ady was coming down with the Mainland Cold by then so we caught up on some iplayer stuff in the afternoon too. BD and Mairi went to the shop for a beer then came up to us and cooked dinner for us – chicken curry which was very lovely. Other than Adam the WWOOFer no one has ever cooked for us in the caravan before so it was a real treat. People on Rum don’t do a lot of eating at each others houses somehow so dinner made for you feels very special. I think that was the latest of all the nights – I recall watching lots of music videos on youtube and being very silly.

Monday – Ady and I went over to the cabin for breakfast and Popmaster, except Dave’s radio wasn’t working so we didn’t listen to Popmaster. The breakfast made up for it though – red onion, chopped up bacon, haloumi cheese and eggs all fried up in one pan and served with toasted pitta breads. Due to lack of furniture or crockery we all ate straight from the pan sitting in a circle on the floor 🙂 After that we went along to Vikki’s house as we had various lent items to retrieve from her and Dave was collecting a few bits for the cabin – Vikki is leaving, not sure I have mentioned that on here. She’s off back to the mainland, which is a little sad as it’s someone who has been part of Rum for all the time we’ve been here but also exciting because it frees up a house for movement on the island and means changes are afoot which is always good in my opinion (for Rum and for Vikki).

I went to the shop with BD and Mairi for a beer and to put in my veg order – we stayed for a couple and it was good fun down there. Ady got a roast pork dinner on (I had made an apple pie earlier) then we all came back here. Another late one with me starting to come down with the cold too.

Tuesday – Ady went over to Harris first thing with Manager Mike as he is being trained to feed the cattle and ponies over there on his zero hour castle contract while SNH are short staffed. In the end I don’t think he will do it because the landrover is not running and he’s not covered to use the polaris (covered quad bike vehicle type thing) so can’t get there anyway but he had a nice ride out to Harris. I made some cheese scones and had a failed attempt at some honeycomb which didn’t set (not boiled long enough I think but I used too small a pan really so couldn’t let it boil up, will try again another time). It was Vikki’s work leaving do which had been combined with the postponed work Christmas party. It was Vikki, Em and Mel, Nicola, Ross, us four, BD and Mairi and we’d all taken various food contributions so ate and drank tea and then Mel had done one of her famous quizzes. We split into four teams of two and answered the 30 questions and amazingly Ady and I won 🙂 The prize was a bottle of fizz which we rather unsportingly took away with us rather than opening to share 😉

BD and Ady went back to Vikki’s to help carry some heavy things down the stairs, Mairi and I went along to Fliss’ for Crafternoon, tea, cakes and chat with Fliss, Ali and Deb. We called at the shop on the way back for ice cream and came home. I made venison pie for dinner which was very lovely but the gravy had not thickened so the pastry was a bit soggy bottomed. A slightly earlier night all round. Mairi and BD had been hoping to go off but the boat was cancelled – an amended timetable was due for the next day though.

Wednesday – The cold has fully kicked in 🙁 I made bread dough and flatbread dough this morning, then Mairi and BD came over for final Popmaster and tea. We went down to Vikki’s for the men to help carry her bed downstairs and then along to the pier. Loads of Rum folk were heading off – Sylvia, Andrew, Sean, Vikki, Mike, Deb along with BD and Mairi plus Jinty’s Dad and Dave’s Mum so it was a busy boat with lots of folk there to leave or wave off those who were leaving. Our animal feed arrived which was good as we were running low – people always over feed the animals when they are croft creature sitting for us and then the delivery we expected last week was delayed. Back home for a late lunch, showers for the kids and hairbrushing for Scarlett who may finally be accepting that doing it twice a week means it takes five minutes whereas doing it fortnightly can mean well over an hour. Mostly I sat infront of the fire and dreamed of home made soup though which is what I think I may plan to do tomorrow morning.

Am now feeling grumpy and intolerant of the world in general so probably need to come off the internet, have dinner and go to bed early!

Really need to catch up otherwise I’ll be catching up on Rum stuff too…

Sunday – having ascertained that there was NO public transport at all on the Sunday we were rather scuppered for collecting D&S from Outward Bound. We had gotten a quote from a taxi for the trip (6 miles) and it was £25!!! Our plan had been to walk there to collect them and then see if there was any chance of a lift back.

Lynda and Stuart offered to take us out for breakfast in the morning so we gratefully accepted and then as they offered to run us along the road to the OB centre leaving at the same time as we’d have had to leave to walk we took them up on it – a five minute car journey versus a two hour walk, no contest really! Which meant we were there with over 2 hours to spare. We sat at the station for a while and ate polo mints but then got bored so went off for a walk. We had spotted two of the groups doing stuff on the loch and came across another group doing climbing. We looked from a distance at the kids on the ground and decided Davies and Scarlett were definitely not among them so it was safe to walk past. Only to get closer and be hailed by the leader – we thought he was holding up a hand to stop us coming closer but it was a hand raised in a greeting wave and then he said ‘come over, it’s fine’ at which point two of the four children actually doing the climbing yelled out ‘Mummy!’ and there were Davies and Scarlett :). We went to walk on so as not to distract them but the leader beckoned us over to watch so we did. We were eyed with curiosity by the other kids and when they came down Scarlett dashed over to cuddle us and say hello and was followed by another girl who introduced herself and chatted. She reminded me of Megan Sambrook – a really lovely, charming girl with beautiful manners and a great way of talking to adults. She said she had made friends with Davies and Scarlett and has lots in common with them, then listed the ways which included love of animals and having moved up to Scotland from West Sussex 4 years ago 🙂 Having since accepted a friend request from her Mum on facebook I see we share several mutual friends in Sussex from Home ed circles although Jenna and her younger sister are schooled. Small world.

The girls were called back to their group to carry on and one of the other course directors came over to introduce himself and offered us a cup of tea back up at the centre so we headed off up there chatting to him. He also offered a lift back to FW when he heard about our plight. We were installed in the staff lounge with tea and coffee and had a steady stream of visitors including Emma the contact from the school, a lovely instructor who later was the person who ran us all back to FW and someone who Ady didn’t understand at all thanks to his very broad accent but I gathered drove lorries for a living. We were invited in to watch the kids given their attendance certificates and then they said goodbye to everyone before we were given a lift back.

They both enjoyed it and had plenty of stories to tell. They had made friends with Jenna and Davies had been rather taken aback by the laddishness of the other boys on the weekend. He is so not a lad. He did get said goodbye to by several of them though and said no one had been mean to him, he just had nothing in common with any of them. They were both utterly knackered – the Friday had entailed a jump into the loch and swim back to shore, the Saturday was packing up their kit and then hiking up to a campsite, setting up camp and sleeping out overnight. The Sunday had been coming back to base and then the climbing. Pretty full on. Davies said the week long events had the same activities but interspersed with loads more down time and low key team building stuff. They both said they’d go again next year.

We went to Morrisons for some lunch – they had not enjoyed the food which had been all boil in the bag stuff for the camping expedition. Back to the room for baths and then McDonalds for dinner.  We met Marcus, Michelle and Chloe from the train at 10pm and despite best intentions of early nights all round it was about 1am when we finally parted company I think.

Monday – a lie in for us. Davies seemed to suffering a cold caught from his tent mate. We had reserved a rucksack at Argos so walked along to collect that and then headed to the dentist. Everyone was fine except me – I had lost a chunk of tooth on a toffee a couple of weeks ago so knew I would need that sorting out, sure enough it was a drilling out of the old filling and a new one to fill in the extra gap. As always the worst bit is the freezing up which had me dribbling and not talking properly then not able to eat or drink for hours.

We had debated various food options and decided on McDonalds that night again. Davies was feeling rough so declined to come instead heading to bed and actually was fast asleep when we returned to the room. Chloe was also not feeling right so it was an early night all round which was probably most needed.

Tuesday – Ady and I did Easter egg shopping and bought a drill from Lidl while the kids slept in again, then we met up with M,M & C and went off charity shop shopping. I did well getting a couple of pairs of jeans, we tried to stop for coffee in a Wetherspoons and a McDonalds before ending up back in the Premier Inn. All the adults went back out in the afternoon – me for bra and toiletries shopping, the others for various things. Ady and I bought battery toothbrushes. That was picnic food for dinner night so the men and kids went off to get that while Michelle and I hung out in the room. Another late one.

Wednesday – Ady and Marcus were off to the Nevis Distillery for a tour, there was a plan to walk with them but actually it was raining and not terribly nice so the kids and I decided that crap TV and a bath was far more attractive a proposition and lazed around in the room. Michelle and Chloe went on the walk and came back so we had tea with them and then parted again so I could have a final long bath with a glass of wine. We were out to the Premier Inn adjoining restaurant that evening but ended up eating really late as they claimed to be full so we went back to the room. We had far too much to drink before the food so were quite rowdy but very happy. Not a crazy late night but late enough given the early (for us!) start the following morning.

Thursday – Home! We walked into FW station and saw Lesley and Bad Neil. Sean the Rat and Nicola were also on the train so it made for a lovely journey back catching up on everything. I dashed back across to the CoOp for bread, milk and doughnuts and saw Sean, Ali and Eve in there too so all 11 of us sat on the boat together like a sort of Rum field trip. It was lovely. I am sure I have blogged before about loving being on the boat with fellow islanders as you feel part of a special club. We took over half of the top of the Calmac and there was lots of banter and chatting. It was a pretty rough crossing and as we pulled into the loch of Rum so Nicola sat up (having been prone for the whole journey) and announced ‘I was not sick!’ to which we all cheered, then Sean came back inside with wee Eve as they had been outside the whole time as Eve gets very seasick and Eve shouted ‘I was not sick!!!’ so we cheered some more 🙂 🙂

Back on Rum we were very warmly welcomed home by Bonnie dog, everyone’s cars started – we’d been debating on the boat who might have to jump start who – and away we went home. We got back to no real dreadful surprises and all animals present and correct. Scarlett made lunch, we unpacked everything and put it all away and then Ady and I headed down to the shop and stopped for a beer with the folk who were down there. Another lovely welcome back with more than one person commenting on how it was lovely to have us home. A splendid curry cooked by Ady and a blissful nights sleep back in our own beds.

 

I got to Wednesday didn’t I…

That was Zoo Day. I’m sure I’ve blogged before over the years about my feelings on zoos. I like the conservation work they do and as the parent of a child who is all about the animals I do love the opportunity that UK zoos have afforded Scarlett particularly to see animals in the flesh if not in their natural environment. I think we have probably done a large percentage of the zoos on mainland UK – Marwell, Drusillas, Port Lymphe, Chester, Longleat, Knowlsley, Africa Alive! British Wildlife Centre and now Edinburgh. Notable exceptions that spring to mind include Colchester and Whipsnade. My favourites are Africa Alive!, Knowlsely, Port Lymph and Longleat as they are more safari style and tend to focus quite heavily on natural enclosures and conservation work so you feel far more that you are getting a privileged peep into the animals world rather than them being on display for your benefit.

We walked up to Princes Street and caught the bus along to the zoo – super convenient and a bargain at just £1.50 each. Actually the kids should only have been 70p each but it was exact change only and the driver didn’t tell me a price just smiled and nodded at me so I paid £6 anyway and only realised when I collected my tickets with a price printed on. The zoo had the off duty air of any major tourist attraction in the UK in February with most of the catering places shut and keepers more likely to stand and chat with you as they had so much time on their hands compared to peak season.

Edinburgh Zoo’s main draw is obviously the pandas and the enclosure standard reflected that with loads of interpretation, signage and keeper always on hand to talk about the pandas while much of the rest of the zoo was a bit tired. There was a newly opened chimp enclosure with loads of good interpretation and interactive stuff but we just walked through there at the very end and thought the chimps looked a bit sad anyway. The big cats area was very small and the tigers (always my favourite, such beautiful, beautiful creatures) did lots of caged tiger style pacing and looked uneasy. We only saw a male lion who was also looking a bit edgey but rather amusingly eyed up all the children who walked by and barely stopped short of licking his lips :). The saddest bit was the sea eagles though – a pair in a very low ceilinged enclosure with a sign all about Rum and the release project. We spend so much time here watching them soar overhead, high in the sky amazing and free it was really sad to watch these two in their cage. The male sat and flapped his wings for ages as though he knew he was supposed to do more. I don’t know the history of the pair there, presumably they have been captive since hatching so have probably never flown. Surely eagles above all else are just supposed to fly 🙁

All of that said the keepers we chatted to were amazing, clearly proud of the zoo and very knowledgable and caring of the animals in their charge.  It was fantastic to see the male panda, we went back several times during the course of the day and he was very active and looked just like a man dressed up in a panda suit :). The female was close to in season and was staying put in her sleeping area off show. It was also great to see the koalas, again the only ones in the UK including the only UK born koala who very obligingly sat and ate eucalyptus infront of us. I also liked the wallabies who were in a great enclosure that you could walk through and one of them had a joey in her pouch. There were pygmy hippos, rhinos , tapirs and red river hogs all of whom were good to watch. The penguins were fab, Five came out for the daily penguin parade and there was a hilarious episode with a black headed gull who tried to nick some of their fish at feeding time and thought he’d got away with it only to have the penguin mob close in on him and reclaim it.

The sunbears were also quite sad, one came out and paced lots doing lots of standing up on hind legs and looking mournful.

In all though it was a great day and we enjoyed it a lot. Scarlett loved the level of keeper interaction and spent ages chatting to them about various things, particularly a penguin who was poorly and separated from the group and the rhinos who she noticed were both male rather than a breeding pair so wanted more information on the dynamics of.

Both the kids spent some of their money in the shop at the end – Davies bought Scarlett a panda toy which was rather sweet 🙂 Big Dave picked us up as arranged and took us along to his flat in Queensferry. He lives right on the beach of the firth of Forth between the road and the rail bridges with spectacular views. We had a cup of tea at his, then walked along to his local pub for a drink before getting a cab back into the city to meet Mairi. Dave had offered us dinner and we went to the Hard Rock Cafe, via The Dome  where Mairi was waiting with a bottle of fizz on ice :). Even the loos were posh! We had a drink in there before heading next door to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner where the kids got to pick all the songs for the evening – they chose several classics including American Pie and various Beatles songs, Dave and Mairi ordered cocktails and the kids and I spent ages wandering round looking at the memorabilia on the walls and in the gift shop talking about Hard Rock Cafes in Vegas and Niagara that Ady and I had been to. A slice of a previous life a million miles away from our current one!

Poor Scarlett was feeling the effects of the mainland finally catching up with her along with too many car and cab drives and ended up being sick 🙁 She dealt with it really well and felt almost instantly better but I did feel sorry for her. We all went back to the flat where Mairi had restocked the fridge with loads more fizz. Mairi stayed the night and we had breakfast with her in the morning before she headed off to work leaving us to pack up before our taxi arrived to take us off the station.

Thursday – was the train back up to Fort William. Another gorgeous train journey although Scarlett was exhausted from being ill so slept lots of it and I was mildly hungover from excesses of cocktails and fizz the night before so also slept a bit of it. We got in just after 4pm and Lynda and Stuart who had driven up from Glasgow met us at the station. They were ready for dinner when we arrived so after hugs and hellos they headed off to eat while we settled into our room and hit Morrisons for picnic food for dinner. We went up to their room for a cup of tea and chat but everyone was tired so it was an early night all round. We did indulge in baths though – such luxury 🙂

Friday morning we met up with Lynda and Stuart again before it was time to head off to the station to take the kids to Outward Bound. There is only one train a day (weekday) so we were super early but planned to have a look around and orientate the kids a bit. We took them in, showed them how to use the payphone incase they wanted to call us and were then ushered out by the course leader who obviously felt that two children an hour or so early was far preferable to a prolonged family goodbye. So we hugged and left. Scarlett had been pretty wobbly about the whole business but we’d had a good pep talk the day before and in the end they were both far better at the slightly hurried farewell than I think either Ady or I were.

We sat down the bottom of the lane wondering what to do with ourselves and feeling a bit bereft! Lynda and Stuart had insisted on picking us up rather than us waiting for the train to bring us back four hours later (it goes to Mallaig and then comes back past again) but we had no phone signal to let them know we were ready early so ended up sitting and chatting and waiting instead. At least it wasn’t raining! Lynda and Stuart took us for a late lunch / early dinner which was very nice and included wine and beer so felt most holiday-ish.

They went off for a nap while Ady and I had a wander round Fort William for a bit before getting picnic tea from Morrisons and heading back to the Premier Inn. We met up with Lynda and Stuart for a couple of drinks in the evening which was nice, before making the most of a hotel room to ourselves with TV and bath.

Saturday – we were broke and waiting for rent money to come in on Monday having splashed out in Edinburgh and blown our budget so we walked lots and planned what we’d buy when we had money back in the bank. Very odd to be without the kids even though we spend a fair bit of time together on Rum without them these days. I had applied for a writing job one day a week which I was fairly hopeful about so we talked about that too. In the end I didn’t get that job (I heard on the Monday evening). We also talked about Rum, house builds and general stuff for the future. It’s good to get off the island every so often to gain some perspective.

We met up with Lynda and Stuart for tea / coffee and arranged to have dinner at McDonalds later. More crap TV, leisurely baths and fast food later and we realised it was Valentines Day 🙂

all of which brings me back to bedtime for today again, so this will definitely be at least one part longer before we get back to Rum.