One word? When seven would do…

One of the people that I was distracted by yesterday was a woman who came along with Neil, who wants to live here with his wife Grace and may one day do so if their bunkhouse project ever happens. He didn’t introduce her but we chatted and she said ‘nice to meet you’ as they left. It turns out she is a foraging expert and when chatting to someone else down in the village last night she offered to do a wee talk this evening about the stuff we have on Rum that we can eat and sell etc.

We all went down and she was so inspiring – she was full of passion and zeal and enthusiasm, bubbling over with knowledge and genuinely delighted to be sharing it with us. I feel quite overwhelmed at some of the possibilities she was talking of and it was one of those times when you sit listening to someone talk and want to jump up and cheer and agree and make them understand that you agree and already believed lots of what they were talking about before you met them so that they understand you are a bit like them because you think they are cool.

Or is it just me that feels like that about people sometimes…

Anyway, it’s been a good day. Pissed with rain from morning til now and continues to do so but a great day indoors. We did Popmaster, made soup, baked stuff for Market Day tomorrow, made signs and talked about poster design and marketing, talked about ideas for the kids to make to sell, Ady is all enthused about an off grid incubator shed so is researching that. Loads of conversations and chatting and just feeling like stuff is back on track again now I’m here in the mornings again.

I did some polytunnel stuff in the late afternoon before we went down for the talk so had some semi-outdoor time aswell.

We watched a really good Grand Designs this evening too – a revisited one going to a housing co=op in Brighton from the very first series. That was all very affirming and positive too. Much needed warm fuzzies 🙂

I remember telling Ady and the kids way back at the start of our WWOOFing year that I’d like to do without a washing machine and return to the olden times of having a day a week as laundry day. I can safely say that of all the modern conveniences I miss a washing machine is top of the list. The expense, the trashing of clothes that happens in big, tough commercial washing machines and above all the hassle of the two mile round trip with washing and the 40 minute hang around while a load goes round conspire to have me thinking wistfully of the days when bunging a load of washing on was a five minute job of grabbing dirty clothes, checking pockets and shoving it in, twisting the dial and then forgetting all about it and getting on with other stuff until it had finished and then just nipping out the back door to hang it on the line, or distributing it around the radiators in the winter.

Washing machine – very, very high on my list of stuff I want to get sorted out asap.

The washing had built up thanks to Ady and I sorting out our wardrobe and getting some musty clothes out so it ended up being three loads and with the weather forecast poor all week I could envisage my parents arriving on Friday and us all struggling to find clean pants to greet them in. Today was nice so it was the ideal day. We listened to Popmaster and then Ady, Bonnie and I took the washing down leaving the kids doing drawing and DSing. Scarlett has exploded into reading thanks to the National Geographic kids magazine she has a six month subscription to. As predicted long ago it was animals that got Scarlett reading. Given she has had even less in the way of phonics training or formal reading instruction even I am amazed at how she seems to know letter sounds and can blend so easily but it seems to be coming fairly naturally. Hurrah for two nearly reading children without me ever having to say kicking K and curly C 😉

Ady and I bumped into Sandy so had a cup of tea with him, a chat with Mel at the castle, a wander round to the shop to see Claire and Sean the rat and a quick word or two with Jinty. We came home long enough for Ady to collect Davies and take him with him to go to Kilmory with Sandy to do some maintenance on the deer hide down there. Scarlett and I took all the beads off a big box of necklaces and bracelets Rachel had given us and sorted them into colours. Scarlett made lunch for her and I, cups of tea and chose some music to listen to while we chatted and then we went down to the animals and the polytunnel and the animals. We fed all the birds and put them away and then I tried to do some general maintenance in the polytunnel but keot getting distracted by visitors – three sets came along and chatted.

Ady and Davies came home and we all went down to the village to collect veg and attend the RCA meeting but due to there not being anyone there it was postponed. We stopped for a beer and chat before coming home just as the rain came in. Ady and I managed to grab all the washing off the line in the nick of time so it’s all now dried and put away. Dinner was a lovely chicken stew and dumplings using leftovers from yesterdays dinner.

Tomorrow is forecast to be dire weather so we have various indoor stuff planned for my first Tuesday of Freedom including uploading some of Davies’ films to youtube, some looking at cabin options, croft grant application forms and cleaning out Scarlett’s hamster.

After we got in last night the wind started howling and hasn’t really stopped since. It reminded me of the nights in winter when that was all it did night after night and I didn’t sleep well.

Today is has been rainy showers, plenty of wind and the odd half hour of sunshine. It’s cold and doesn’t feel at all like summer but the plus side is the midges are not out!

The weather prevents you from getting stuck into any one thing really, I keep thinking I’ll wait for it to decide and then either commit to an indoor or an outdoor task. I guess I need to just decide for myself. We all had showers this morning, I made bread and we had lunch. We’d said we’d go down to support the community teashop but the kids were not bothered about going so they stayed home watching a film and doing plasticine stuff while Ady and I took Bonnie down. We sat outside with her in the sunshine and were joined by various people at various points before going to collect the car which had been at the workshop with the batteries on charge. Sandy appeared while we were there so we called in for a cup of tea with him before heading home.

Ady and Scarlett had been tidying up her bedroom in installments over the course of the day so they finished that while I got roast dinner on and made a syrup sponge for pudding, then Ady and I went down to feed the animals, water the polytunnel and I fixed the fruit net cages over the raised beds as they had been blown about a bit. I sneakily ate the two ripe strawberries in the polytunnel and they were delicious 🙂 The stuff I’ve planted outside is all looking rather yellow and stunted. Reckon it’s either too cold outside still or too wet or perhaps both 🙁 Learning that self sufficiency in food is an unlikely dream here without a massive injection of cash to improve the soil which would negate any saving on food shopping for probably all of our lifetimes!

Tired and cold so need to go to bed but trying hard not to lapse with the daily blogging.

Not a lot day today really – this morning I looked at some stuff with Davies online on maps of the Small isles. He’s been commissioned to do some postcards of Eigg by someone so has been coming up with ideas for that and thought a map of the four isles might be good as his map of Rum postcard has been a good seller. He did some designs for that, still to finish off before getting them ordered.

We had lunch and then the kids headed off down to Art Club – they’ll break for a few weeks for the summer as Coryla is around and about and off and on island during the summer holidays. I’m not entirely sure what they actually all achieve down there but all three of them seem to really enjoy themselves together.

I watered the polytunnel and pottered in there for a bit. I need to collect some sticks to stake the tomato plants, I was most amused to see a big parcel in there addressed to Gav and Laura which they had had bamboo canes delivered in. To Rum – where we have woodland all around the crofts! I’ve collected all my sticks for peas and beans from the woods. Maybe a job for tomorrow that. I made some bread dough for later, although I’ve not managed that tonight so it’ll prove overnight instead. I also made some home made amaretto from a recipe I’d seen. Cheap vodka, a sugar syrup of one part water, one part white sugar, half part brown sugar heated to dissolve the sugar and a mix of vanilla and almond essence. Vokda in first, then the essence, then the sugar syrup. It’s actually really nice and tastes exactly the same as amaretto. I’ll get two bottles out of my cheap vodka so it’s definitely cheaper too. Hurrah!

Then it was time to head down to collect the kids. We called in to see Fliss and Sandy as the kid wanted to collect their cash from stuff they’ve sold at the craft shop so far this season as Davies wants to reinvest. He’s sold 18 postcards at £1.50 each so made £27 which is pretty good. That is only half profit and he owes me the £30 start up loan but I’ve agreed he can reinvest all of his first takings and repay me at the end of the tourist season. Scarlett has sold 3 pieces of her seaglass jewellry and made £15. My agreement with her was £1 per item to cover the cost of the jewellery findings I had supplied from my stash. They were both really pleased with what they’ve sold so far – I’m really pleased they’ve both done well and are very motivated to continue. I reckon they’ll do really well at the Market Days selling direct to tourists from this Wednesday for the next few weeks too.

I’ve already sold the first midge pendant, they are definitely going to be winners, and more of my scarves. I’m saving all my sales up for a big load of pay at the end of the summer otherwise it would just dwindle away and I shouldn’t need to buy any more materials this year I don’t think.

Home to feed the animals and get changed and then we all went down for Rachel’s leaving party. It was a catered party so we all ate there and the food was good, the usual Rum bring and share deal. We took salad. There was some delicious fish from Marcel caught this morning – pollock and a crab rissotto which was so good. Plus venison burgers and stuff like coleslaw and savoury rice.

The party seemed to be struggling to get going so we played musical chairs which was a real winner. It got folk up dancing too and when we left at 10 it was going well. I imagine it will be a late one.

I’m looking forward to a night off tomorrrow – I’ve been out every night this week at a meeting or training or something and on Monday we have two meetings in the evening but at least I’ve got my mornings back again.

Last day at school. Woo hoo, hurrah and yipee.

It was all most anti climaxical really, which is good I think, I’d far rather that than anything else. I spoke to Stuart twice, set up an out of office reply on my email to say ‘please be aware I no longer work for Rum Primary’, saved all my documents to a USB stick, deleted files and folders and images and quietly cleared my desk.

There is nothing about being there I will miss at all. It’s been a bleak, sorry three hours every day that I am delighted to be reclaiming. Davies and Scarlett are thrilled to have me back and I think being £350 a month down financially is a small price to pay. It gives me an amount to aim for to earn anyway with other pursuits – writing, growing, crafting.

I joined Coryla, Joss and Eve for some sweets to celebrate end of term and then walked home with Fliss and Ali. Ali seems to have decided everything has blown over which I am quite happy to run with. So I’m feeling generally okay about all of that and happy to write it off as end of term madness that I have hopefully headed off now.

Back home for lunch and a bit of a catch up with the others before going back down to the village to take part in some facebook and twitter training workshops with Lucy from Eigg. To be honest I didn’t really learn much I didn’t already know but it has given me fresh enthusiasm for trying to build up social networking stuff to support what we’re doing here.

Inbetween workshops I went home with Fliss and had a cup of tea at theirs. I discovered our diesel had come back today (due Sunday) and was down at the boatshed at the pier so hizzed down there to collect it and then went back for the second workshop.

Home just after 9pm, ready for dinner, opening the first bottle of our elderflower fizz and looking forward to some time on the croft, in the polytunnel and generally hanging out with the kids in the next few days. It feels like I’ve barely seen them this week.

After this morning’s upset I spent the time at work slightly agog. I then got an email to say the meeting I was at this afternoon which meant I couldn’t go on the Sheerwater and therefore Ady and the kids had decided not to go either had been put back to 3pm which meant we could go after all. A speedy phonecall home to galvanise them into action and we were on the boat! The mist was really hampering visibility and it was a drizzly trip but we saw LOADS of seabirds including several large rafts of shearwaters and probably the closest puffin sighting we’ve had. Some good chats with Mike and a nice couple of hours spent cuddled up to my children was very restorative and theraputic. Something quite magical about Rum looming out of the mist as we got close coming home again too. I do love our island.

And so to the meeting. It was a productive and constructive session for the Visitor Management Group at which I represent the community. I like that group, I feel very much a part of it, valued and respected and important. It does my ego good 😉 A quick chat with Vikki at which she reassured me about the whole Ali nonsense thing and then a second tagged on meeting with Sarah who is the Operations Manager for SNH about PR and joint stuff between SNH and the trust. Again productive and good. I like Sarah and find her helpful and approachable. We had a good general chat about life too which was really positive – nice to talk to someone who is not from Rum but totally gets being on Rum! From there I popped to Vikki’s for further reassuring chats and then walked with her to put my veg order in. Ali was there and being actively friendly so perhaps that is all now blown over and dealt with. Fingers crossed eh.

Home for dinner, popmaster and quite likely an early night. Last day at school tomorrow along with two social media training workshops mean it’s another long day ahead.

A later night than planned getting home last night meant I ate dinner, watched The Apprentice, listened to Popmaster and went to bed rather than doing any online stuff.

School was the usual three hours of finding things to do, ever conscious that as soon as I leave I will recall all sorts of things I should have made use of this time to do but failing anyway.

Ady collected me as the Wednesday boat is 1135 so by the time he had collected stuff from it for us it was midday anyway so he came and had a coffee and we left together at 1230. Home for lunch, unpacking and putting away the shopping – we’ve just discovered that Asda direct delivers here so have done a couple of Asda orders including George clothes – the kids now have jeans, t shirts, socks etc again and having managed to break the underwires in two bras in the space of a week I now have new bras too. Hurrah for Asda, I can feel okay about still patronising supermarkets when it is this infrequent!

I then went back to the village to put a wash on and catch up with a couple of people, back home to hang it up and then trimmed some grass with scissors around the base of the willow hedge I planted. It’s doing really well and I’m proud of it but I made the error of not mulching around the base and the grass has grown really high. I now either have to accept long grass at the bottom or regularly trimming it. I did about a quarter before the hilarity of cutting grass with kitchen scissors in an 8 acre field stopped me. Still not sure what I’ll do but wondered about putting a line of stones along the base to suppress the grass….

Scarlett and I let the goslings out for the first time. They are big and almost feathered rather than fluff now and stick together so we thought they’d be safe from the hoodies and keeping them in is not what we want to do long term. We let the big geese in and they herded them out. They seem to be keeping them in line with slightly bullying techniques but the goslings also seem to want to hang around with them so we’ll just keep an eye on things. We put them away again at feeding time and will let them out again today to roam. The turkeys are also growing quick so we’ve increased their enclosure to give them more space while still keeping them under a mesh roof as I’m not confident they are big enough to see off hoodies just yet. Mrs Broody Duck is still sitting on her 7 eggs – I think they are due to hatch next week, fingers crossed the drake has done his job and they are fertile although I think she would have given up if she didn’t feel / hear / somehow know in that way that birds do that they were viable, fertile eggs. The chickens always kicked out any non developing eggs, even ones that were fertile but not doing things properly inside.

I did a bit more moving stuff abut and sowing in the polytunnel, giving some of the spent crops and pinched out tomatoe leaves to the piglets who were very grateful.

Meanwhile Davies and Scarlett were watching Trapdoor that had arrived on dvd and making plasticine models to create an animation with. There is a film making day course happening on Eigg next month which I have hopefully signed Davies and I up to.

I made some labels for my midge resin stuff and then took it all down and put it in the craft shop, had a quick cup of tea with Fliss and Sandy and then Fliss and I went round to the hall for a directors meeting. It was slightly fraught as Ali spewed out a load of stuff which took me rather by surprise and I have had another conversation with her this morning at the school which has left me feeling much the same. Still processing all of that so won’t blog it just yet but it’s all rather scarily reminsent of the Jenny saga of many years ago. Argh!

Rachel who is leaving next week was there and pretty drunk and emotional so we stayed for another couple of drinks which meant I was later home than planned, which is where this post started…

The croft is stag tastic at the moment. Last night Ady and I watched a pair mosey past the static at a very close distance and leisurely pace, today there was another down at the riverside watching us for ages.

Ady and the kids left me reading in bed this morning as they went down to the village to take part in some moth monitoring that Ranger Mike was doing. There was not as many caught this time as the last event but they got some emperor moths again. I walked down half an hour or so after them and called into the hall to see if anything exciting had been found before walking on to school via Fliss and Sandy’s to collect Joss.

School was fairly nondescript – I spent over half an hour on the phone to Stuart the headmaster and another 20 minutes on the phone to Ady. I did some googling of cob houses and that was my three hours gone really. I walked back with Ali, Fliss and their girls which is always fairly tedious – it’s a long time since I was tolerant of 3 and 4 year olds pace, dramas and demands and I suspect I was not actually that tolerant of them even when they were Davies and Scarlett executing them ;).

Back home for lunch and then we all headed across to Croft 2 to track down Gav who is moving his hardcore and cement with a power barrow from the village to the croft to sort out his foundations. Well he should be, but the barrow was not working. We met up with him and Laura and Ady had a look at it but between us all we failed to get it going again so after an hour or so we all went our seperate ways.

Ady and I walked around our croft trying to find best locations for a cob farmshop and a log cabin and have earmarked potential sites for both. We came back up for cups of tea and further chats. We are about to engage another estate agent to try and sell Osborne Drive again but are thinking we may be better putting it back up for rent again if it doesn’t sell fairly soon. Much discussions with Mum and Dad planned for next week when they arrive.

I made bread dough and then we went down to the village – Ady to meet the joiner who was here with replacement glass for our broken window. Now all fixed and us £60 the poorer – eek! Me for a meeting with Lesley about information for the camping Kabins which we combined with a wee pow wow about venison processing and castle options. I like Lesley a lot, she is an oasis of calm in an otherwise crazy island at times.

I walked round to meet Ady and they were just finishing so we came home together. I sorted out dinner, Davies nipped back down to the village as he particularly wanted spaghetti rather than farfalle pasta with his meatballs so he went and bought some. Ady and Scarlett fed the animals and we all sat down together. We watched the first episode of Manimal which I’d been telling them about during our 80s Saturday night TV talk and I’d recalled watching. It has not stood the test of time and advances in special effects at all well and was entertaining in it’s rubbish-ness but not entertaining enough to watch the rest of the dvd so that will be going back to Lovefilm tomorrow.

Ady and I listened to Popmaster on iplayer – looking forward to hearing it live again every day from next week 🙂

As of next Monday it will just be a Monday like any other rather than the day before I’m back for another week of school shifts.

I was woken far earlier than I planned getting up by Bonnie leaping on the bed but managed to get back to sleep. I’d been having a vivid dream about losing a whole row of teeth top and bottom and was torn between being keen to get back to dream world and resolved it with a visit to the dentist and happy to be awake and therefore fully dentally intact!

I looked at a game Davies had downloaded with him and chatted to the kids before it was Popmaster time and Ady came back up from strimming round the pig fence (the grass had grown and was earthing out the electric fence in a couple of places) to listen to that. My planned jobs for today were planting out some more herbs in the herb spiral that have been brought on in the polytunnel and giving the spiral a bit of a weed where my cardboard sheet mulch had not quite been comprehensive enough and some grass was growing through. I also wanted to rationalise a bit in the polytunnel – thin out the salad leaves as some lettuce was getting a bit mildew, chuck out some ungerminated seed trays that have had long enough and not done anything and maybe sow a few more bits and pieces. I want to create some more raised beds too but we’re out of timber so that will be a stone collecting task to build some dry stone beds which will look fab and be very sensible with their heat storing capacities but time consuming.

Davies played with Bonnie and Scarlett and I were chatting in the polytunnel while I sorted out the salad leaf trays and Ady strimmed. The pigs got all the thinned stuff and were most grateful. The wee piglets are very cute and so friendly, Scarlett can pick them up and carry them around and they come hurtling towards us when we call them for ear rubs and strokes. I don’t love them to the point it will be too hard when it comes to bacon o’clock but I do feel really happy that they are having such a nice life. Pig keeping is a nice past time 🙂

Suddenly a man appeared at the entrance to the polytunnel so I said hello and that he was welcome to come in thinking he was just a random curious tourist. He came in and said he was looking for me and had been sent by Fliss. He turned out to be John Humphries, owner and editor of Scottish Islands magazine who was here looking to make contact and find writers for the magazine. He’s asked me to do a guest columnist article and possibly write more regularly for him. Hurrah!

We chatted for half an hour or so about Home Ed, our lives, his life, the islands and life in general and while he erred on the pompous side I quite liked him. Fliss said later he had been very anti Home Ed when she talked to him before sending him here but he appeared very open minded and interested in us, having been a teacher for 38 years.

John left and we went back to the static for lunch. After lunch Ady stayed at the static to tidy up a bit while I went down to do more in the polytunnel and planted some seeds. Scarlett and I were companionably chatting and singing while sowing when Fliss and Joss appeared with our post which included a new pair of rigger boots for me. I’ve missed having steel toecapped work boots the last few weeks with various stuff we’ve been doing and found some cosmetically damaged (ie leather has marks on it and a security tag hole right at the top of one boot) on ebay for £12 which is a bargain given they are over £50 new. I love them, I wore them down the shop this evening and threatened to kick anyone who messed with me. I do heart work boots!

I showed Fliss around the polytunnel and then we came up to the static to drink tea. They ended up staying til it was veg box collecting time so we walked down together, collected our car and I dropped them in the village before Fliss and I went to the shop. We had a nice evening down there with lots of laughs and then I came home. Ranger Mike had been here taking pictures of Ady and the kids for a new nature trail leaflet that’s been printed.

As it was not midgey thanks to a breeze I planted out the herbs and weeded the herb spiral that I’d not managed earlier thus completing all my weekend jobs in the end anyway 🙂

I rang my parents as we’re trying a different estate agent to sell Osborne Drive and they are doing all the liaising so caught up with them before dinner.

And back in the blogging zone! 🙂

Me, here again, within 24 hours. I’m determined to get back into daily blogging.

Today was Community teashop Sunday number one. It’s a multi purpose initiative this. Firstly its fundraising as we need £10k to fix woodworm in our village hall. We already have nearly half and have been coming up with various ideas to hold events to raise the rest and Sunday teashop run by volunteers was one idea. The teashop on Rum is one of the biggest hot potatoes here – Claire currently runs it and has for the last 3 years. She does a really poor job, never opens as many hours or with as varied a menu as she should, could, says she is going to and really abuses the use of the hall and kitchen. But as no one else ever wants to do it when the tender goes out each autumn for the following year she keeps getting it. She refuses to do Sundays, saying there is no call for it so a second reason behind the community is to demonstrate that there is a demand.

So after a brief meeting and some emails a few of us have agreed to take a turn every so often at doing teashop on Sundays. Ady and I went first. The idea is you open 11 til 3, serve whatever you want, have an ingredients budget of a tenner and everything after that is covered goes to the hall fund. We made carrot soup, bread rolls, quiche (actually that was dinner earlier in the week so I made extra and froze what didn’t sell for dinner next week!), two sorts of cupcakes and some flapjacks. Tea, coffee and juice is also on offer but we have that bought by the RCA (Rum Community Association) as a floating stock.

We did pretty well for the first shift on a grey and drizzly Sunday. The bar had been swinging until 5am so the few people who were on island as tourists were not really up and about today so our trade was almost all islanders but we sold at least four portions of everything. It was nice with various people calling in for cake and chats and the day passed fairly quickly. As it goes it was a grey and dank day anyway so although we’d have still been out on the croft doing stuff I didn’t feel too cheated at being in doors all day.

Back at home I collected some eggs and took them down to Fliss and then fed the animals on my way back up. Ady did the washing up mountain from last night that we’d not tackled last night and then put dinner on the barbecue to cook which our current condensation busting method for roast dinners on Sundays – cook it outside!

It;s been a productive week, with the exception of the Rum Venison website which I have still failed to sort out I have done everything else on our list of stuff to make happen this week.

Not at all sure how I ended up being a monthly blogger. I even miss blogging daily, I have a gap in my day where my 15 minutes spewing out my thoughts and accounts of the day used to be. Not a hope of catching up properly so will endeavour to do it in brief and then see how we go.

Life marches on. The new birds arrived, the goslings are doing fine, the turkeys had a bad start with two dead in four hours last Friday morning. It appears to have been the gitting hooded crows which is good in some respects as at least we can make runs crow proof, it’s way harder to make things rat proof. We now have an air pistol and my parents are bringing up an air rifle so we are armed. We have very little chance of actually shooting them but may be able to deter them and warn them off with a few warning shots. Learning how to shoot is on my personal list of stuff I’d like to be able to do properly anyway so some lessons from Marcel may be on the cards at some point soon.

Anyway, we have netted the turkeys and so far they are doing fine, feathering up well and seeming happy. Scarlett adores the goslings and spend loads of time in with them. When she’s not in with the piglets who are growing so quickly but still manage to be very cute. She can pick them up and walk around with them in her arms, they adore her. If she sits down they clammer to get on her lap, fighting with each other to chew her hair and get her to tickle their tummies. She definitely has an amazing way with animals, it makes me so happy to know we are providing her with such a dream life.

Crops are going well. After initially planning to leave the ten raised beds to condition the soil ready for next season I have grown peas, beans, sweetcorn, courgettes, cucumbers, pumpkins etc so well from seed in the polytunnel that we decided to plant them out and see how they do. We have tatties in two of the beds too, so only two are still empty. We’ve netted them (essential here with the crows, our own birds who free range and scratch up plants and of course the deer) using pea and bean netting on frames made from old tent poles. Very permaculture 🙂 We’ll see how it all fares – I think the ground may be a little waterlogged and nitrogen rich for some of the crops but happy to take a punt and see. For all the soil testing wisdom sometimes you just need to suck it and see.

We have a load of ex SNH metal wire fencing which we took to be roof material for the bird enclosures but Ady had the genius brainwave of constructing a giant fruit cage from so we’re planning that as our next big construction. We’ll move all the soft fruit we got last year into it and are looking into more fruit trees and bushes too as that is one crop that loves our sort of soil. Brambles / blackberries are probably the biggest naturally occurring crop around the crofts. Stuff in the polytunnel is doing pretty well, we’ve been getting strawberries and salad and the herbs have all grown really well from seed.

House news? Well there is loads and none really. Osborne Drive still hasn’t sold, we’re getting another agent involved as financially we’re a bit ruined trying to pay the mortgage without tenants in there so we plan to have another push at selling and then get some tenants back in if we don’t sell. We’re out of time for a proper house build this year on Rum, our deadline was July to be started by. We keep reconsidering just what we want to build anyway. My dream is still a cob house or something else similar, quirky, individual, made from stuff on Rum, designed specifically with the four of us in mind. We’ve looked at kit house timber framed stuff, at metal sheds and I keep coming back to a dream of a house that will cost all of our funds and actually be about us. We’ll see. In order to see just how feasible my dream is I am planning a wee cob structure build this summer – a little produce shop near one of the croft gates. It will be a good experiment both in building and in seeing how it fares over winter. Watch this space!

Rum news… we continue to be very close to Fliss and Sandy who have their ups and downs in a very spectacular fashion. If we didn’t live here it would make no sense so I’ll not try to recount any of it here. We often feel friend sick, for people who are uncomplicated and have known us prior to who we are now. I long for the times when we are able to host people better and have more frequent visitors – living so far away from people is by far the toughest part of this life. In the main the good bits make up for it but real life hugs and company takes a lot of making up for…

I’ve been rationalising my committments and along with jacking in the school job – four shifts to go – I have resigned from helping with the isle of rum website. I don’t work well with Ali, the other person involved with it and a few minor clashes which could have easily become major clashes if I’d not kept my temper were enough to have me deciding that relationships on island with co=islanders are more important than scoring points with people. I think I’m being sensible and mature but as that is most unlike me maybe I am not… 😉

Tomorrow sees Ady and I do our turn at Sunday Community Teashop which I will aim to return and blog about tomorrow. For now I am tired and have drunk an extra glass of wine or two as i was on the phone to Jill and felt the need for a glass in hand.

The blogging discipline seems to have just upped and gone. Not sure why, it’s not as though things don’t happen and I can’t even pretend I don’t have internet access when I sit at the school for 3 hours four mornings a week doing nothing but online stuff.

Chris and Julie had a good visit here, it coincided with me having a real low point. I think a combination of struggling to have people here, the loss of the three piglets that didn’t make it (we have four going strong and the three dead ones were never seen alive so many have been born dead for all I know but I mourned them nonetheless, both with guilt incase we could have done more and with regret that if we can’t breed animals then we don’t really have a livelihood) and the seven chicks that that poor tenacious broody hen hatched out and lost all of – to the mud, the rain, the rats, the crows, the Rum factor, who knows. The school job totally sucked everything out of me and after the last blog post I cried in the office for about half an hour then went home and had a blazing row with Ady who failed to spot that the correct response to my state of mind was a cuddle, some reassurance and support rather than listing my faults for me 🙁 I insisted on meeting the ferry with him despite looking like I had a severe attack of hayfever, swore at various people, totally lost it when a bag of flour came off the boat for me leaking and ended up being cuddled by people all of which kicked the Rum rumour mill into overdrive and means nearly a month I am still getting people asking ‘How *are* you?’

It’s taken lots of sunshine, a stern talking to from Fliss about making things happen and a hefty dose of my own positivity to get me back on track. As ever the cure for feeling disempowered is to get on with things and then look back and see your achievements. The polytunnel has been great for this, I love being in there and have loads of stuff growing and doing well. We’ve been eating salad since 13th May and are even selling bags of salad at the shop. We moved the pigs who are all doing really well and have cleared a large area on the croft that was just a heap of stuff looking untidy. All of the animals are looking really healthy and thriving and we have turkeys and more geese arriving next week with another sow to follow soon. We’ve constructed ten raised beds on the land that the pigs had turned over and have been selling out of eggs. I have posters up around the village advertising produce, my scarves have almost sold out in the craft shop and we are generally able to claim a success. I was interviewed for the Mail on Sunday last night which is the journalist is to be believed should be a positive, happy story appearing about us this weekend.

The compost loo is finally here. It is so big it doesn’t actually fit either through the bathroom door in the first place or in the actual bathroom which has led us to plan to install it in the horsebox – a job for the next week or so in putting up a false wall to split the horsebox in two, shelving out one half for tinned food storage etc and the other half to be a compost loo.

It’s Friday morning. The school office is really cold and dark and miserable. Since I handed my notice in I have not had even one single second of doubt that it was the right thing to do. I should really enjoy these three hours four times a week to myself, with internet access. I should be blogging, writing, researching crofting stuff and being all productive. Instead I feel stunted and bleak and just miserable in this environment. It’s like being back at school on the longest, greyest, wet play in the morning so all the rowdiest kids are even more crazy for not getting a run around, afternoon full of the most tedious subject ahead and someone threw up on their desk so the classroom smells of a combination of vomit and dettol type school days. Were I to sum it up in one word ‘meh’ would be it.

So it’s totally for the best I am getting out in 7 week time! I bottled out explaining all this to my parents and have told my dad that the contract (which genuinely is temporary) runs out at the end of the school year so when the proper teacher comes back they won’t need me. I did say I was relieved anyway because I hate it though – I just can’t bring myself to answer the questions about quite why I am giving up a paying job!

So Chris and Julie are here which is mostly lovely. They have brought A Cold with them, of course. So both Davies and Scarlett now have a cold and because of the chest infection of doom, nebuliser, steroids and antibotics experience of last year for me I am super paranoid about colds now and have lost sight of the fact that we always used to have colds too and now have the common cold virus on a par with leprosy! I’ll let you know as soon as I get diagnosed, my prediction is Sunday.

Scarlett is enjoying Maisie being here, Davies is mostly enjoying Jack being here although he walked home with me last night and mostly just ranted about Jack so I think two weeks will be sufficient exposure…

What else is going on? We moved the chicken house after we lost all four hatched chicks. One was found dead, the other just disappeared. Not sure whether they drowned in the mud, got taken by crows or rats or if one of the other chickens (either the mother hen or possibly Dave the cockerel) might have killed them. The hen has hatched another three though and was out scratching about with them this morning and looking all happy and healthy so fingers crossed. Okay, scratch that Ady’s just rung me to say a hooded crow just took them all. I can’t believe that’s seven chicks that poor hen has hatched and lost 🙁 🙁 🙁 Next step I guess is to pen any more so the crows can’t get them.

The piglets are doing fine – Gav wants to buy two and we’ll keep two, we have already agreed with Marcel that he will ‘do the deed’ and we’ll process them when the time comes.

Hmm, the chick phonecall has now got me in tears so I’ll finish – this is turning into a bleak blog post which is not what I intended to write.

It’s lovely having Lynda and Stuart here and Fliss and Sandy are away til tomorrow so we’ve been left in charge of breakfasts for them in return for using the house all day including for dinners which has been great. Electricity! TV for the kids! A great big kitchen to cook for six people in with ease along with the conservatory to sit in.

It has meant a lot of dashing to and from the croft though and yesterday when the weather was lovely all afternoon and I really wanted to get sorting out animals and planting in the polytunnel it meant I was slightly reluctant to go back down to the village when I took a load of washing up to hang on the line.

As ever L&S have been great company though, always so supportive of our craziness and proud of our achievements. It’s funny how people come into your lives for odd reasons and end up staying in them. Something reminded me this morning of our time at Evergreen Farm which wasn’t even a wwoof host and we ended up at by accident for those 3 weeks but played such a big part in our choices. We’ve been talking a lot about Glastonbury these last few weeks too and I had a lovely facebook message from Jill to say they miss us and are proud of what we’ve done in our first year here – another chance meeting resulting in good friends for life.

Fliss and Sandy are back tomorrow though which means breakfast on Saturday, Sunday and Monday is not down to us and we can have later starts ebfore catching up with L&S. We’ll be cooking dinner for them up at the static on Friday and Sunday but we’re all going to Fliss and Sandy’s for dinner on Saturday – our first ever evening meal ‘out’ on Rum 🙂 On Sunday there is a band playing in the hall so we’ll all go down to that and then on Monday we wave them off and have a week of ‘back to normal’ whatever that is – before Chris and Julie arrive. I’m desperate to clear up a bit on the croft, sort out the honesty box tables (they got rained on and blown about, the signs have all washed clean and the boxes need some attention), spend some time with the piglets and generally hang out at home again. I’ve been learning about the grants and subsidies and funding which we are eligible for and trying to form some sort of coherant plan for that too. Gav is coming to spend some time with me tomorrow morning here at the school to chat about grants and we can share knowledge and research on that, on the basis that two heads are better than one!

I told Stuart (at the school) yesterday that I’m intending leaving at the end of this school term. He was unsurprised and grateful for the early heads-up. Given our tenants told us yesterday they are leaving next week so we are suddenly without rent it feels slightly foolish to be jacking in a paid job but I am so desperate to not be here, to be with the kids again and to be focussing properly on the croft. This is our make or break year and I have this underlying feeling of desperation in making sure everything that needs to happen does happen both in terms of building the business into a livelihood, sorting out a house and getting a better vision of what happens next and which direction we’re headed in. I think a revised business plan / life plan would be a really good idea for Ady and I to sit down and rustle up as would give us some clarity on the things we can be doing, the things that need to happen when and help us feel like we’re in control again. It’s odd that this office environment with access to the internet and the photocopier / printer etc does not inspire me to make that happen but it doesn’t – I think I need to be looking out over my croft with Ady to bounce things off of rather than feeling cold, dark and a bit depressed about listening to the nursery in the background!

Davies and I had some interesting chats yesterday. He was asking me about how the croft actually works. He knew we had submitted business plans and has been listening to all the talk of grants and funding and wanted to know who checks on whether we are doing what we said we would do. I explained a bit more about it all to him and he was telling me what he would do. His thinking on business matters is pretty clear and I can see another change in him starting to think ahead and start planning his own life. I think 13 will be an interesting age for him and he is starting to get a feel for what he thinks he might want to direct himself towards next. Last night he was asking me about why humans have taste buds and different likes and dislikes to each other when all food is good for us. We had interesting talks about different cultures and having a taste for the local food that is available and how a diverse palate probably was essential for our ancestors and if you listen to your body closely it is still possible to work out what your body needs rather than what your taste buds think you want. We talked about processed foods, refined sugar and stuff that we have created rather than is available naturally and how we have trashed our own instincts with regards to what is actually good for us and we need versus what gives us an artificial high or tingles our tastebuds but has no actual nutritional value. I am aware that the kids’ diets are slipping back to less adventurous and less balanced lately and I think it would be a great opportunity to try and actually *taste* what we eat and learn a bit more about what our bodies need.

We used to be *so* much funnier! Just found this http://quickquickslow.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/12-twelves-are/#comments

I blame facebook! Or something 🙂

What’s been happening? Davies and Scarlett have been doing some maths workbooks I picked up from the school. Davies hated them, got the idea of what the book was asking but found them tedious, repetitive and pointless once he’d grasped the concept. Scarlett really enjoyed them, particularly one using money. She was less keen on one to do with estimating, weighing and measuring 🙂 She’s decided she might bother learning to read as she finally sees some point in the idea but is now worried it will be too hard. My plan is to spend some time with her on it as soon as I can as I think once she realises how easy it will be for her (which I am sure it will now she wants to do it) she’ll lick it in no time and that will be the end of that.

Davies sold some postcards from the craft shop and Jinty has offered to sell them from the shop and Rachel offered to sell them from the castle. I reckon he’ll be doing really well on them this season.

I’ve been looking at grants for the croft and realising there is lots we can access which unfortunately mean yet more of my time needs directing somewhere else in researching that more and then applying but at least things remain finacially viable for us which is of course key to making this life work, particularly given I am intending jacking in the only actual guaranteed income generating thing we do between us!

We have Lynda and Stuart here with us this week which means life is more disjointed than ever – they ar staying at Fliss and Sandy’s B&B but |Fliss and Sandy are away til Friday so Ady is cooking their breakfast in return for us getting to use the house and kitchen for the rest of the day including cooking our dinner. Much easier in terms of bigger kitchen, dishwasher, electricity and more space, not to mention not needing to trek Lynda and Stuart up and down to the muddy croft but meaning we’re away from the croft all day long and need to remember to take all ingredients down to Fliss’ each morning. The kids are enjoying unlimited access to Lynda and Stuart, TV and internet though 🙂

The piglets are doing well – I know I’ve not announced their birth on here but I’ve done it everywhere else so it seems a little pointless to make a formal announcement here. It is very exciting to have them here at last, makes me feel like a real crofter 🙂 Losing three was hard – we’re not sure quite how they died but two out of the three had been mauled and eaten by rats which was very unpleasant. Lessons learnt for next time and we’re focussing on the positives of having four, knowing Tom and Barbara are both fertile, she can carry and birth piglets and seems to be a great mother happily feeding and tending to them. We always intended keeping two to fatten ourselves and have sold the other two already so that’s good. We’ll let them go at 8 weeks or so and will be moving the remaining pigs to a different spot with a more permanent home and plans for a better maternity area for next time too. I’m hoping we’ll manage a second litter this year. The broody hen had two pipped eggs under her last night so fingers crossed there are chicks on the way too which will be great – hens can join the egg laying flock, cocks can be fattened for eating. Turkeys are on their way in June so it feels like the livestock side of the croft has really come to life just in time to mark our year anniversary :).

We’re off for a few nights at the end of May, mostly so we all visit the dentist but will also look forward to a little off-island respite and time to ourselves. Everything feels so much more possible now the sun is shining but I know we are all still slightly reeling from such an intense first year and a long, kept having relapses winter. This is definitely the right life for us although we still have a few tweaks to make to the details but a chance to grab some perspective and some deep breaths without feeling bad about sitting down is much needed. Gav will croft – and Bonnie-sit – so we can actually do that at the end of May I hope.

Just when we thought the winter was over it’s been back to bite us on the bum again this week. Literally as the boat pulled away on Saturday night it started raining and got windier and it’s not really stopped much since. The winds have been SSE rather than easterly or westerly which are the worst ones for us up on the croft so it’s not been scary, just wet and noisy with the straps over the roof vibrating lots. It’s pretty mild so not totally miserable but the condensation is back and so is the mud.

Poor Barbara is thigh deep in it and I am worried if she has the piglets just now they’d probably drown in it. Yesterday we collected three old mattresses from the castle which we’ll put down in her pen just as soon as the river is low enough to get across to bring them to the croft. Mattresses are such a bugger to carry, like a great big sheet of jelly! We also had a big Harbo delivery of compost, grow bags, animal feed and straw yesterday, along with some food from the Co-Op. It’s amazing how quick we’d forgotten the grind of trying to get large and heavy things up the muddy hill. The mice have gotten into the polytunnel and eaten loads of my seeds – gits!

We had Vikki and Sean the Rat up for dinner on Tuesday which was really nice. We had a great evening, chatted about introverts vs extroverts after Vikki had linked to an interesting TED talk on the subject, Sean did a myers briggs test and we talked about that and then we (mostly Sean and I actually) had a long debate about politics which I really enjoyed. Have not had a good old rant like that in years! Sort of strange to realise I do still really passionately about these things even though I’m pretty removed from that world these days. Also quite odd to be discussing such stuff with someone so much younger than me. I also ranted about birthing choices (rather topical on island just now with Laura pregnant and lots of people tutting about how she’ll not be able to have the baby here, live in a shed etc.) I was the most extreme in my views and felt a bit like I was being a nutter but comforted myself that I was the only one in the room that had actually *had* a baby so I was allowed to speak with more authority 😉

I hate the school job. I’m sat here now typing this while I charge up phones and torches and I got to print off a load of housebuild stuff this morning and use the school phone to arrange dentists appointments but those sort of perks are just not enough. I walked down the road to the school on Tuesday morning just utterly resenting with every step that I am here. I’m away from home for four hours four mornings a week. I earn about £20 per shift so it only works out as £5 an hour and one of those is walking around in the rain. In the winter it will still be dark when I leave. I either take the car and use diesel and leave Ady without it (not feasible on boat days if we are expecting something anyway) or walk and even if I do take the car I’d be wet by the time I get to it parked on the other side of the river. Plus I just hate being here. I hate Stuart talking to me about how he tells the kids they have to do the ‘boring stuff’ like maths and history so they can do the ‘fun stuff’. I hate the stickers and certificates for meaningless stuff. I hate listening to the kids being told they can’t go and explore the pine cones or do painting because they ‘have to do this now’. I hate the taped nursery rhymes that get played every morning and I hate being captured in a depressing building with other people’s kids four mornings a week while my own children are missing me and missing out on the time I used to have for them. I hate missing Popmaster and having half the day already gone by the time I’ve gotten home and had lunch. I hate that it means I struggle to arrange stuff like the dentists appointments and won’t be around for half of the time people visit when they come to stay and it’s just not what we moved here to do. I’m here for freedom, for being outside working my croft, if not beating the system then at least ignoring it! Yesterday my tasks included some photocopying, organising the sugar paper storage system and ordering playdoh and fabrics for the dressing up table. Life is too short!

Fortunately Coryla is interested in the job as she will probably lose her job in September when Stuart comes back and the school opens for Eve. The council (rightly!) cannot justify a nursery assistant, a teaching head and a clercial person along with running two buildings for two children in a school! I told the kids my decision to finish at the end of the school year yesterday and they were delighted 🙂 So I get to skip away at the end of the summer free once again. I just need to explain to my Dad now why I’m planning to give up a perfectly good job (in his opinion) – I need to find something else to bring in the money instead and justify it that way.

Poor Gav has been rained and winded out of his tent and is staying with Neil and Lesley down in the village until the wild weather passes over. He seems in good spirits still but is clearly finding this a testing time without Laura or a home. Saturday is our anniversary of a year on Rum – I have this feeling that it will either be an amazing day – sunshine, new piglets, chicks hatching and maybe a bottle of fizz and some venison. Or it will rain, there will be problems with the animals and the polytunnel will blow away. Fingers crossed it’s a day for celebrating!

and in under 48 hours!

Yesterday it mostly rained and was windy. We had a couple of breaks in the weather during which Ady went up to check the water pipe in the now very fast running burn and I chopped some wood. We all went outside and gathered some strimmed reeds, rushes and grass to put in Barbara’s pen as she was now thigh deep in mud thanks to a small space, lots of rain and plenty of pregnant pacing.

Around all this we watched War Horse, ate popcorn, had a roast dinner, watched Nims Island, made bread dough, did some crochet, did some drawing and generally had what for us is a fairly restful day. It was quite nice not to see another living soul, no one even walked by on the nature trail. In Sompting we could go a whole day without talking to anyone else but we’d only to look out of the window for 30 seconds to see someone walking or driving by or a neighbour (remember our neighbours?!? 🙂 ) out in their gardens.

I also didn’t get out of bed til gone eleven having enjoyed returning to bed with a mug of tea to finish a book I was reading. I do love my lying in bed reading mornings when I get them every so often. They are often interupted by Tarly climbing into bed with me to chat which is also lovely.

Today I spent some time before Popmaster with Davies looking at a lettering book he got for Christmas with him. He has a range of postcards for sale in the craft shop and Jinty has offered to take some sale or return aswell. she also paid him in sweets and coke on Friday to make a poster advertising the bar on Saturday nights which was classic Davies and very funny with people getting drunk, snogging in the toilets, necking wine out of the bottle and more on it along with the actual writing Jinty had asked for. It’s on display in the hall now. I love how these little touches from my family shape Rum and the village 🙂

I then went down to the village as I had arranged to call into the IRCT office to get caught up on some being a director stuff. I was there for an hour or so and then walked out with Fliss. Ady had come down to meet me and we had enough time before the boat to call in to Fliss and Sandy’s for a cup of tea so did so. We had nothing off the boat but were sending jerry cans of diesel off so needed to go. Jinty had a huge delivery so we loaded some into our car and dropped it round to the shop for her before heading home for lunch.

After lunch I got chatting to Davies who was drawing in a graph paper exercise book (I nicked a whole selection of exercise books for the kids from school; lined, plain, half and half, graph, squares, handwriting etc. Scarlett said to me ‘can you get me a swimming book if the school has them please?’ Eventually we realised she thought that all the books were named after types of exercise and wanted to know what a swimming one might look like! 😆 :lol:) and trying to create a bar chart having had the idea explained to him the other day. I drew him one with hours of sunshine per day over the course of one week. We then drew a graph and plotted the same date on that and I then showed him how to do a pie chart which involved ratios, multiplication, addition and getting out a compass and protractor and teaching him how to use that and about degrees in a circle. Highly educational 🙂 Scarlett is much more mathematically minded than Davies, always has been, she just gets numeracy concepts so muck quicker but Davies really liked the idea of graphs and charts and was trying to think of other information he could put into graphs and charts 🙂

This afternoon Scarlett watered the polytunnel plants and spotted the first sprouts of seeds in the lettuce and salad leaves :). Davies spent time with Bonnie training and teaching some new tricks. Ady did some Barbara pig pen repairs, I tried and failed to clear a couple of the ditches that are blocked at the bottom of the croft and then cut and gathered some more reeds and rushes. Then I left them all to it and went to collect the veg box and had a couple of beers at the shop with Fliss. I walked all the way back up the hill with the veg box plus four cans of beer for Ady, a pack of butter and various other bits, stopping on the way up to put the ducks away and feed the pigs who had already been fed but had decided if the birds were getting some food they had better have some too. Oh and going back down to the river to refill Barbara’s water bucket which she had knocked over.

Back to school tomorrow. Boo.

What a week (or maybe slightly longer :oops:)

We had a good visit from Mum & Dad. I got slightly fed up with them by about day five but they left on day six and I kept Jan’s perspective warning from friendfeed uppermost in my mind so kept my temper. They both looked to have visibly aged since they were here in October which I find tough. Parent’s mortality is always hard to come to terms with but when you know you will only see them once or twice a year at the end of one or other of you doing a full day plus of travel it hits slightly harder than when they lived a mile away. For the first time we had a fairly frank discussion about the fact we moved here after they messed us about with our proposal to them to do something in with them. They both conceded (in their own unique ways) that they may have been wrong not to take us up on that idea really, particularly since it ended up with us moving so very far away from them and I think we may end up with them moving closed to us at some point.

We did an otter walk, visited the bar open on Easter Saturday briefly with them and generally fed and looked after them very well. Ady and I slept on the floor in the lounge while they had our bed but Dad was keen to sit up chatting with us most nights, with a couple of 3am finished which meant although I was, as ever, sad to see them go I was also glad to get my own bed back and have an early night when they left!

They left on Wednesday, Thursday was an RCA meeting, Friday we had Ranger and Gav up for pizza night which ended up a very rowdy boozy evening with lots of youtube clip watching of literal videos and interpretative dance (Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn?), Gav trying to get home without a torch and me retiring to bed but needing to be ill out of the bedroom window. Classy…

All of which meant that despite an early start and an invigorating shower the car didn’t start quickly and then only managed about 5mph so Babs and co were already starting to walk to the village by the time we arrived at the pier 😳

Chris and Ady drove back while Babs and I walked with kids back to the croft. A fab day trip visit with them which ticked everyone’s boxes. Ady and I got to sit and chat with dear friends, drink tea, catch up on gossip and pretend we are not totally cut off from the rest of our friendship circle, have a wonder down into the village, catch up with various islanders who of course Chris and Babs have met before when they were here last summer. The kids all went off exploring and playing in the castle and managed some screen time connecting, some lego playing, some soft toy worship, some animal stroking, some hanging out on the beach and by the river and more.

A daytrip is lovely, a full 10 hours on a Saturday with no feeling that we don’t have enough space or facilities to accommodate people as they leave to go and do sleeping elsewhere. It feels sad to have them leave though…

On Sunday we could really have done with a day off. The end of a very full week, a deferred hangover for me from the day before but it was not to be as it was putting the plastic on the polytunnel day which as the polytunnel sits on our land at the bottom of our croft meant we had to be there really. So we went down and joined in with ten hours worth of plastic putting on, plastic clip manhandling and general bodging what has already been quite a bodge job of a community polytunnel. At 6pm there was just Gav, Vikki, Ady and I left so we came home, had a large glass of cider each and then Vikki stayed to finish the bottle while Ady and I co-cooked dinner. I suspect the fact that most of the other people putting it up were able to go home to a bath and not have to cook dinner for their two children was lost on everyone but us but it was one of the rare days when I feel the burden of our many responsibilities.

Dinner was lovely though and we all slept really well that night!

This week has been a super productive one. Meetings, planting, making a maternity pen for Barbara Pig, penning the ducks over night which means we get all the duck eggs each morning now, marking the 10 eggs that the broody hen is sitting on and hopefully hatching, getting loads of seeds sown in the polytunnel, the potato council seed potatoes in, digging over my first raised bed and finding four worms in it. Getting the newsletter finished, printed and distributed, doing some work for the ISCAPE project, meeting the man from the Big Lotto grants funding for lunch to talk about the bunkhouse, getting co-opted as a director of the IRCT, doing venison stuff and loads more. The only thing carried over is the ongoing saga of how to get the compost toilet from Ed in Tarbert to us on Rum…

Which about brings me to today. When Marcus, Michelle and Chloe came. The friends with whom we first came to Scotland (not including Melrose which now we live here is so Not Scotland ;)), who helped us with the business plan which won us the croft and who have definitely been a big gap in not having been here before now. So, so pleased they made it in our first year 🙂

We’ve had a lovely day with them. Done the now famous walk to the croft, talked about how the static got here, introduced them to the animals, the kids took Chloe off for their child’s eye view of Rum and introduced her to their world here and we snuck in a little private tour of Kinloch Castle too 🙂 We had the last of the venison sausages we’d been saving for a special occasion and even a tot of whisky in our afternoon cup of tea on the sporran. We did manage to point out an eagle but failed on the red deer. It will not please Mich that on the drive back from the ferry a stag ran across infront of the car at the bottom of the croft. Or maybe she will just choose to disbelieve 😉

Home for leftovers, a bit of youtubing of some shadow ballet artists from Britains’ Got Talent that was being talked about on facebook which led to me finding some of the sand artist from Ukraine’s Got Talent that did the rounds on facebook a few years ago and I was reminded of by the shadow stuff. We also watched a Horizon Special documentary about Tomorrow’s World Science stuff which was very good.

And now to bed. Tomorrow we are all having lions. Unless of course Barbara Pig has had piglets in which case we’ll all be standing around in the newly back mud (rain! First rain in eight weeks!) cooing at the new life on the croft.

Oh for that cloning machine!

Off to school this morning where we were having an Easter event and had invited all the island kids and parents. In the end this only actually meant Davies and Scarlett, Fliss and Ali as Sean and Sandy didn’t come so I sent Ady away and Dave, Sylvia and Andrew didn’t appear. This made for a fairly stressy for me morning as the odd juxtaposition of theoretically being at work and therefore sort of responsible for being a hostess and helping with the activities for all the kids while also having my own kids there who wanted to do the activities but were being thwarted by Joss being wild was all a bit much. Argh school! 😉 Coryla had put loads of effort in and there was egg painting, bonnet making, drawing, egg rolling and egg and spoon racing. She’d also done some food which Davies and Scarlett didn’t want but on the basis that the little ones are being taught to sit nicely and eat together I felt they should at least sit with them for. I think I need to choose one loyalty and stick to it rather than trying to pull off all things at once sometimes…

Ady arrived as we were doing the egg racing outside so hung around for that and then we left at 1ish to come home for lunch. It was nice to actually have a breather and sit and chat to my kids for an hour. I don’t recall them being particularly hard work ever (although I do know I struggled with Scarlett as a toddler but I think a lot of that was in comparison to Davies) but they are a joy to be with most of the time these days. Then I was back down to the village for an ISCAPE meeting with Fliss. We divided up some of the tasks, I did a blog post for the Small Isles website, we both set up new pages on facebook for businesses – Fliss for Rum Crafts and me for Croft 3 and sent some emails out. We also drank lots of tea 🙂 From there on to a Bunkhouse / Rum Enterprise meeting and then home.

Mum & Dad made it to Fort William so by the time I get home from work tomorrow afternoon they will be here – Mum reminded me the other day that this will have been the longest we have EVER gone without seeing each other, Actually six months without seeing my parents has felt like a long time. I finish work for the Easter holidays tomorrow too and am looking forward to spring properly getting here, feeling like I have more of a grasp on stuff and getting into a rhthymn of what should be happening when.