One word? When seven would do…

Gav and Laura arrived safe, put up their tents (they are sleeping in a bell tent and have a tunnel tent set up as a kitchen / living / storage / decontamination zone), we’ve seen them every day for lunch, dinner, cups of tea or chats. Bonnie and their puppy Finn get on really well and Bonnie is getting masses of happy puppy play exercise along with more training from us. On Friday they told us that they have just discovered Laura is pregnant so she has gone back off again today for a few weeks to spend some time with her Mum who needs some caring for after an operation and to let Gav get their shed they plan to live in up and installed before she comes back. People never seem to come here and just settle in gently! 😉

We celebrated James’ birthday at the castle on Sunday with venison curry and lots of silly photos
My head hurts from far too much partying!

Tomorrow we have all the parents coming to the school for an Easter event – we’ve got Davies and Scarlett and Baby Andrew coming along too so it will be nice to have all the island kids together doing that. I have two meetings after that and assuming I was not black balled I would have been signed up as a director of IRCT tonight at the directors meeting too. Three directorships, editor of the newsletter, events committee member, vistor management group delegate, website editor, consultant for ISCAPE, clerical support at the school and theoretical crofter and home educator. The fall out of me not being at home is starting to show as the other three readjust to new roles. I remain hopeful we can sort out a way to enable me to do these things that I am passionate and excited about and will long term gain for all of us with support and lack of guilt in being away from Davies and Scarlett given they are older, more independant and have Ady here anyway but I think it will take some further thrashing out before everyone is okay with what they are doing…

What else have we been up to? Davies has designed some postcards and they are on their way ready to start selling at the craft shop, he and I also put some blurb about him on our croft 3 website. Scarlett has some seaglass jewellry to go on sale so I will probably do the same with her and give her a page on the website. I have been busily knitting scarves for sale and will pull out the last of the jam along with plenty of eggs. I have my midge line planned once they come out and I can collect some.

As in I’m at work skiving and thought I’d update my blogs 🙂

Mad weekend following a mad week – on Saturday morning we went to the boat and off came Sue and Tober from Tombreck who had read an article I wrote in the WWOOFing newsletter about the trials of getting drakes and offered to bring us two unwanted drakes to start us off breeding ducks. They are kharki campbells which look like big mallards (so the drakes are really pretty) which will create an interesting hyrid with our white girls :). Also on the boat was Steve who wanted a lift back to the village with his stuff so our car was full of ducks and luggage 🙂 We took Sue and Tober’s stuff to the Kabin where they were staying and then Ady took them to Jinty’s shop where they had ordered some food. Meanwhile Davies, Scarlett and Bonnie had appeared so I walked with them round to the village. We went home for lunch and then a big group of Friends of Kinloch Castle arrived at the croft organised by Vikki to help set up the community polytunnel.

That was an interesting experience 😉 We have made headway with it this weekend, assisted also by Tober who joined in and got bossed about by the self appointed leader of the friends. Many tools got broken by heavy handed use and I am not at all sure the frame is up according to how it was intended but we are close to ready to put the plastic on which we would not be without their help.

Vikki came back for a glass of wine or three once we’d waved them all off and she reduced the number of them coming back the next day to just four which helped a lot.

On Sunday we had the four friends, Tober came back tp join in, Vikki, Ady and I and we made some more progress but at the same too many chiefs not enough indians rate as the previous day. Ady got our dinner on and we had intended to be eating fairly early but things conspired against that including Sue appearing on her way home from her walk to see if Tober was still with us (he’d left a couple of hours previously!). We watched Frankenweenie which seemed classic Tim Burton and didn’t hold my attention so I got to tangling up then untangling my skein of wool from Harris instead.

This morning I’m at the school but have mostly been blogging and trying to work out stuff to do with the bunkhouse, this afternoon I have a Visitor Management Group meeting and tomorrow nursery is closed but I am letting an engineer in and then meeting Fliss for events planning and ISCAPE stuff. Gav and Laura arrive tomorrow and Kate and Ian are back for the summer too. Always busy!

Argh to not keeping up with blogging! A really busy week last week with work, meetings (vistor management group, RCA, training from a Community Trust bloke who was over and a housing meeting), sorting out the Rumble (newsletter) and getting our heads around housebuild stuff. Blogging is what slipped off the radar.

This week has been just as busy – six ferries, 400 miles driving, 3 different hotels and loads of trying to digest an overload of information. I got offered a job and we heard that we’ve been successful in our Big Lotto grant application for funding for our bunkhouse. Then back home and back to work with a meeting this evening and the polytunnel hopefully going up tomorrow.

I’ll not even try to do daily updates from the week before but this week looked like this:

Sunday – Mothers Day – home made cards, a bunch of nicked daffodils and Davies and I made a cake together with goose eggs. Lovely day 🙂 we spent some time measuring and marking out the house site. Exciting.

Monday – in the morning I went to the trust office and printed off the newsletter then dropped them off at the shop before coming home for lunch. Then off to the ferry to be waved off by Ady and the kids. It felt odd leaving and leaving them behind!

Also on the ferry were a load of Eigg folk so we sat with them and chatted and I got involved in a conversation with Fliss and one of the guys from Eigg who runs ISCAPE – not sure if he already knew who I was or if it was solely on the basis of that brief conversation but he then offered me a job! The project is short term with not very long left to run and employs people on an hourly rate for various things. There are all sorts of interesting projects to do and it looks like just the sort of thing I’d enjoy. So Fliss and I have a meeting next week and a contract should arrive in the post for me soon.

We arrived at Mallaig and waved off Vikki and Mike and went to find the car – the key safe was empty and the car was not there so we rang Mick who runs the car club (and also works for Calmac so the member of staff had his number and was happy to ring him for us from the office). It turned out I must have not clicked the final confirm booking bit and not actually booked the car for the evening and someone else now had it. Mick very kindly offered to pick us up and whizz us along to Arisaig (about 10 miles) as the car based there had just been returned so we could use that instead. Such service! He did just that, stopping via the school to collect Nell (Fliss’ middle daughter) who was coming with us for the ride. So we got to Fort William rather later than planned and with a smaller car than expected which meant what would have already been a slightly fraught shopping experience was even more so. Lidl first for coffee, olives, cereal, chocolate and Easter eggs, then Morrisons for meat, cheese, alcohol, tinned stuff and some cheap dvds. Then back to Mallaig along the twisty, turny, now dark and laden with lots of red deer road. So that was the first ferry trip, first 100 miles, crazy shopping trolley dashes in two stores and stress of the not booked car not to mention the frantic texts from Vikki who was trying to keep the kitchen open at the pub so we could get some dinner when we finally arrived back. We managed it and had a very nice Chinese Night meal at the pub along with a few glasses of wine, lots of chatting and some banter with the landlord.

Back to the guesthouse where I had a shower and watched the news for a bit in bed before going to sleep knowing the next day would bring equal levels of busyness.

Tuesday morning I bolted down as much breakfast as I could in the ten minutes between it being served and me needing to leave with Fliss to unload the car onto the van ready to go to Rum, put that car back, collect the other one and reverse it on to the ferry. We got all that done then I hugged Fliss goodbye and got in the car with Vikki and Mike to go on the ferry to Skye.

That is a shorter crossing – only half an hour. Once there it was straight to our first meeting with Maggie at the Clan Donald Centre. We spent about 90 minutes there and then headed to Portree (via a quick wee stop in Broadford). The benefit of having the ranger on the road trip was lots of pointing out birds and we pulled over twice to watch sea eagles while on Skye. Next stop was the Aros Centre which we went to when we were on Skye in 2011, we had a cup of tea (much needed by then) and met the owner who was very generous with his time and showed us all over the whole place and talked to us at length which was very useful.

Then on to Portree for lunch and a quick half an hour to do our own thing during which I nipped to a charity shop and Boots the chemist for small doses of what we can’t do in normal life these days :). We then had a two hour window as Vikki had not managed to secure a meet up with one of the visitor centers she’d hoped to see as it is closed for the season. We decided to take the slightly longer and more scenic route to Uig along Trotternish and stopped several times following the Eco Museum Staffin trail and stood in dinosaur footprints, looked at Kilt rock (been there in 2011 too) and looked at Flora McDonald’s grave and the outside of the crofting museum. We got to the ferry with about half an hour to spare and I put some petrol in the car and bought a bottle of wine incase the hotel was super expensive and we decided to head to one of our rooms for the evening instead.

The ferry to Harris is super posh compared to the Loch Nevis that comes to Rum with more storeys, a proper restaurant and a spangly lit up feature in the middle. We sat and chatted looking out over the sea as Skye disappeared from view. By the time we got to Harris it was dark and we drove around in a circle looking for our hotel before finally finding it. We’d rung ahead knowing we may arrive after they usually stopped serving meals so dropped our bags in our rooms and went down to eat.

We had a nice evening but headed to our rooms fairly early as we were all pretty tired. I enjoyed a bath and then spent about 90 minutes on the phone to Ady catching up on our days.

Wednesday morning was thankfully slightly later, we breakfasted and then headed off. Tarbert where we were staying is only just inside Harris and we never ventured further into Harris which was a shame, I’d have liked to have explored more really. We drove to the Callenish standing stones on Lewis, seeing a fair bit of Lewis which is beautiful. There seems a real difference between Harris and Lewis geologically but both have clusters of houses and then nothing for miles. Lewis is similar in landscape to Rum in lots of ways but the difference is the rows of electricity pylons which marks man’s touch even when there is no evidence of people living there. I think that is what I love most about Rum, it is still ruled by nature with us merely living alongside where we can. I hope it doesn’t change in my life time.

The standing stones visitor centre was very set up for our visit with three people there to meet us and a very comprehensive morning spent with them. So much so that we ran out of time to get down to our second visit of the day back down in Harris. We could have dashed and made it but it would have meant missing lunch and hastening through with the risk of being late for the ferry which none of us were willing to do so in the end we stayed to have lunch at Callenish and explored the stones too.

Then back to Harris to get the ferry. We arrived with enough time to dash into the Harris tweed shop next to the ferry terminal where I bought a small amount of wool and some tweed coasters which was the cheapest way to get some small amounts of tweed. I’ve not decided what to do with the wool yet, I might try a hat or some gloves, it’s pretty scratchy but nice to look at so no good for scarf.

Ferry back to Skye where Vikki and I nabbed the same back (now front) of the ferry seats and watched Skye get closer as the sun went down. The shorter drive back to Sleat via the CoOp at Broadford for some last minute supplies, then checked into our hotel and had our last night dinner. While we were dumping bags in rooms Vikki got a phone call from Rum to say we’d got our funding from the Big Lotto fund to build our bunkhouse – 3/4 of a millon!! 🙂 Lots of wine ensued 🙂 We had a really nice last evening, a lovely meal and were late to our rooms. I rang Ady and accidentally also rang my parents so had a brief chat with them, then a bath and bed.

Thursday morning was breakfast (I just had cereal and toast, of the three opportunities to have cooked breakfasts I only had it once and didn’t enjoy it then, it feels so odd eating dinner at breakfast time and having had fairly substantial lunches each day and restaurant meals in the evenings was all wearing thin by then) and then off to the ferry. The last reversing on, back on the Loch Nevis, our own boat again now. At Mallaig I dashed off with the car, parked it and returned the keys to the key safe before getting back on the boat. This time we were joined by Jinty and Marcel who had both been off so the five of us sat together on the last leg and it was really nice. I remember the trips we had on the ferry before we moved feeling quite envious of the people who all knew each other and now I am one of them :).

It was lovely to be home 🙂 The kids ran down the slip to meet me and shower me with kisses and cuddles. I missed them. We dropped Vikki off and then came home. Bonnie was delighted to see me and licked me for about ten minutes! 😆 We had lunch and I unpacked and caught up on what the others had been up to while I’d been away. Then we popped down to see Fliss and Sandy for a cup of tea and then later I went back down to collect the veg.

Friday morning I was at the school. Ali stayed behind for a chinwag – I think in the 10 or so days I have been there I have had Ali, Fliss or Sandy stop for a cup of tea and chat for about 4 of them. I did a fair bit of sorting and tidying which is my aim, an hour each shift on tidying up should have things straight after a month or two.

I walked home, part of the way with Ali and Eve, had lunch, made pizza and bread dough and then went down for a meeting for Rum Enterprise about the bunkhouse to firm up the job description for the Project Manager. Home far later than I’d have liked for pizza.

My laptop is about to run out of battery so I’ll finish with the working week blogged and try and catch up on the weekend tomorrow.

Sunday morning we all walked into the village in the morning. We saw Lesley and Cara having a pony lesson and Bonnie had some time playing with Sika, Lesley’s dog who is her best doggie friend as Sika still thinks she is a puppy too 🙂 We did a circuitous route to the village and back via the nature trail and came home for lunch. We got roast dinner on, gathered water, chopped some firewood and then Ady and I walked down to the village to call in on Fliss and Sandy for a cup of tea and cake – the kids stayed home with Bonnie.

We were back home and managed an early roast dinner and watched Teenwolf from Lovefilm. I think we watched some Red Dwarf too.

Monday morning we walked down to the village again and as the post office was open we bumped into various villagers along the way. Back home for lunch of freshly baked bread rolls and some freshly made carrot and ginger soup. Ah I love soup 🙂 Davies never eats it but the rest of us do and Scarlett is a real soupoholic these days :). After lunch I did some firewood chopping, Ady did some water gathering and down at the polytunnel site Vikki, Abby and Claire were digging final holes. Scarlett went to join them and came back with a liberal coating of mud. Vikki and Claire came up for a cup of tea, Abby was so muddy she went back to the castle for a shower.I walked down to the village with Claire and Vikki and had a couple of drinks at the shop.

Today was back to work for me. I did some cutting out, some trying to sort out various stuff like a credit card to order stationery and lots of scanning of various things. Sandy called in briefly and the morning went very quickly. I walked home rather than getting a lift, which coupled with walking back down to the village and back again twice later today meant I’ve done a good seven miles at brisk pace today and I can feel my fitness levels rising again after a slightly less energetic winter. If the terrain was more forgiving I’d think about running but I just know I’d break my ankles on all the uneven rocky ground!

Home for lunch and then Ady and I went to the village to deliver some eggs and call in at the castle to see if they want any eggs (they don’t). Back at home I checked my emails and replied to a couple and then helped Ady move some fruit bushes. We got them as a gift from Ady’s old work colleagues last year and put them in quick as they’d been in transit for days and were looking pretty sad. At the time we stuck them in at the entrance to the croft where we were putting all the livestock partially for our own convenience and partially to look very efficient to passers by as it was the most visible part of the croft. Our plan now is to move the pigs onto that chunk of land where they can stay long term with different parts of the land open to them in rotation but their house staying in one place so the fruit bushes need to move.

I then went down to the village again as we have someone over from DTAS to talk to anyone interested who was showing a film and doing a bit of a talk. I went to that and then came home for dinner. We watched a couple of episodes of Miranda as we are planning on cancelling our Lovefilm subscription so wanted to get the last disc watched and sent back.

All feels a bit mundane really – stuff is going on but there is ever such a lot of walking up and down to the village admiring the river and teaching Bonnie tricks!

My first working week went ok in the end. I think it will work out alright and the commute seems to not be quite as long a walk as I had feared. I can do it in half an hour quite comfortably.

I’m not sure how I’ll actually structure my time yet. Coryla is keen for me do so some stuff with the kids and I am happy to do odd bits here and there. Yesterday after they had had their outside time Eve brought me a pine cone as a present (she had brought me in a holly leaf skeleton and a daisy in the morning from her walk to school). I said thankyou and pointed out that part of it was closed and part was open and talked to her and Joss about pine cones opening and closing which led to us all going back outside with a bucket to collect a load more and then putting them in various hot, cold, light and dark places around the school to check up on next week and see if they have changed. The phone then rang and it was for Coryla so I was talking to Eve and Joss more when Davies and Scarlett arrived to meet me and said in incredulous tones ‘were you educating them?!’ 😆

Walking home with Davies and Scarlett and talking about education, schools, curriculum based versus interest learning had Scarlett telling me she plans to take her children off traveling in a campervan and home educated them *exactly* how she has been educated while Davies told me that he intends to travel too but will ‘always have a home on Rum’. Stuff like that reassures me we are doing the right thing by our kids.

I’d rung my Mum from the school, mostly so they have the number there and know that they can reach me on a landline four mornings a week, talked to Stuart the headmaster, sent a few work related emails and done a load of shredding of paperwork. My plan is to maybe spend an hour a day gradually clearing and tidying the office space, learning what is where and starting to inventorise the resources a little and organise where stuff is. Once I’ve done that with the office there is another cupboard and small room to do, then two sheds and then a polytunnel to do stuff with and various outside things.

After lunch I made pizza dough and then all of us went down to the shop for a Friday evening beer. It was nice and felt good to celebrate the start of spring, the end of my first working week and Friday 🙂 Home for pizza.

Today was Saturday pancakes for breafkast and then Ady and I went to the village to get stuff from the freezer. We saw Claire and Vikki who were heading up here to dig polytunnel holes and I said I would join them. Ady stayed with the kids and did various stuff while I helped dig a couple more holes – just one to go and all 12 are done. Vikki, Claire and I all had a rant about various things and then they headed off. I came in for a cup of tea and we did some training tricks with Bonnie as a new book had arrived in the post. It’s clear to me that unless we do some proper training with Bonnie we are likely to have problems with her as she seems bored so I ordered a book for some inspiration as dog training is outside of all of our scope of experience although Ady was around dogs in the years before he was with me. This books looks like a good starting point and the kids did well with it.

After getting pretty muddy and achey of arms (not to mention the cummulative effect of many, many walks to the village and back this week) I had arranged to take Vikki up on her Christmas present to me voucher of bubble baths whenever I like at her house, so I gathered up towel, kindle and shampoo and headed down there. I had a cup of tea while my bath was running which I took in with me to finish off, it being too early for wine and enjoyed a lovely hot bubbly soak while reading my kindle. I then had another cup of tea and chat with Vikki before leaving. I have been rather sucked in of late to the issues surrounding Vikki and her job at which she is not always very good but actually she is a very good friend and I am intending to focus on that aspect of her above all others. It was a good chat 🙂

Back home again Ady had tidied up and got the fire going and then he was off out to watch James Bond at Paul’s house for a lads night. I suspect it will only have been the two of them plus James but he gets on well with both of them and some sitting in a house watching telly drinking beer with blokes will have been a nice few hours for him. I cooked curry and rice (for me, the kids had plain chicken and plain rice which meant every saucepan in the house used as I also did some poppadums), we listened to Queen and Adele in concert (I’d been telling them the other day how different Adele’s speaking voice was to her singing voice so showed them a youtube clip of her in concert ‘Albert Fucking Hall’ er yes, that demonstrated it alright! 😳 ) and then we watched some Miranda. Bonnie has been very very restless, clearly missing Ady so in the end I put her in her crate where she instantly settled down.

Still getting the timing wrong for my march to school. This morning I thought I might be cutting it fine, particularly when Bonnie followed me and I had to yell for Ady to come and call her back but I was still there by 910am (I start at 920am) despite dawdling along the coast road taking photos of the geese.

We got the particulars through for Osborne Drive for our approval today, Ady and I looked at the photos of our old home both expecting to feel a pang. Ady commented that if we could just pick that house up and put it here it would be perfect but when we look out of the windows here at our view it is impossible to hanker after that house. Walking to the school this morning reminded me again how lucky I am to live here.

I drank about five cups of tea at work, got my email up and running and made a start on sorting out the office space. Having checked with Coryla that she doesn’t use the office at all and I am therefore at liberty to do whatever I want with it I made a start on making the space my own.

I have only once before had my own office and that was years ago so it’s a real novelty having a whole room to myself. Especially one with a computer, kettle, electricity and a printer / photocopier machine that has a bigger IQ than I do!

Back home for lunch and then I walked back down to the village with Bonnie to deliver some invoices and called in to see Fliss for a cup of tea. When I got back home it was animal feeding time so Davies and I did that and then went back to the village to collect our veg box together while Ady and Scarlett stayed home doing other stuff. I let Davies drive home sitting on my lap. I’d let him drive completely if the road was not quite so dangerous that if he went wrong we’d end up in the river! We’ll maybe go out onto the reserve soon so he can have a go somewhere safer and take full control.

We had dinner and watched some more Red Dwarf which the kids are loving and we are really enjoying watching again. And this morning I am back at work again.

I can’t access friendfeed or facebook but I can blog from work 🙂

Up and out this morning to school for me. Ady took me in the car as he needed to get it down the croft hill before the hard ground defrosted having come up the hill yesterday morning to load up the three empty gas bottles we had. It was a low key three hours with Stuart (headmaster, over for an overnight visit) mostly chatting about anything and everything. He did try a couple of times to ask things like ‘what are your expectations for the job?’ 😆

In terms of 12 hours of paid work a week, the chance to charge stuff up, access to the photocopier, the educational resources (which I’ve been told to help myself to anything useful for Davies and Scarlett 🙂 ) it will be good. In terms of tying me down four mornings a week, spending an hour and a half each day walking there and back and it being a nightmare when the weather is rubbish it may prove more hassle than it is worth but I need to try it before concluding anything. I did struggle with reading all the propoganda and schooly stuff and listening to Stuart talking about the importance of literacy, how we need to trick parents into doing things ‘our way’ and the smiley face sticker coercion of doing what you are told (and that was just for me when I do the clerical work well ;))

Ady picked me up and we came home for lunch. We’ll gloss over the hour or so following my return as stuff had not gone as I’d have hoped during my absence and I was rather vocal about my displeasure of that 🙁 It meant three people ended up in tears…

Ady went to visit the doctor about his (now vanished) sore neck while the kids and I had a good chat. Tomorrow the three of them are getting the donated bike Davies was given working and both children are hoping to learn to ride it. I am sure we are the worst parents ever for having such old children still not riding bikes but life has always seemed to conspire against it happening naturally and we’ve always had so many other things happening to prevent time being found for it to happen otherwise. Living alongside a busy road on a steepish hill was the main one meaning the bike would have needed loading into a car and taking somewhere to be learnt to ride on and there always being more sensible things to be loading the car up and driving somewhere to do.

My fit of efficiency at the end of last week has yet to pay off as I have not heard from Ed that the box has arrived despite that supposed to have happened last Monday to send the compost loo to us, must chase that up again. The screwfix order with the water pipe kept crashing and the time it finally went through was the time I failed to tick the alternate delivery address away from Osborne Drive so it ended up there on Saturday. Ady rang yesterday and we think we have sorted it out but it is still showing as delivered rather than re-collected. Sigh. I’m at moving, it’s at least the third time I’ve managed to send something to an address I am not at any more!

Can you tell I am less than excited about the school job? 😉

This morning Ady and I walked down to the village with Bonnie. We bumped into Fliss and Joss, Neil, Claire, Ali & Eve, Jinty and Abby. We also saw James at the castle. That is what I love about living here 🙂

We put our lovefilm in the post, put this weeks veg order in with Jinty, did a wash at the castle, bought James’ bike off him for £40 as he is leaving at the end of of March. Two hours and lots of chatting to people along the way later we were home with our clean washing to hang out on the line.

We had lunch and then the kids went off for a really long walk along the road to Kilmory with Bonnie – it was a proper walk with biscuits in rucksacks and everything 🙂 while Ady and I did stuff like chop wood, load the car up ready for tomorrow, feed the animals and other crofty stuff.

I made some bread dough and some soup for tomorrow and chopped onion, garlic and ginger ready for dinner then had a shower while Ady did the actual dinner (curry). Lots of conversations about alcoholism, dog training and life in general.

Tomorrow I start at the school. The kids are planning to walk along and meet me when I finish fairly often, we all like the idea of my children collecting me from school! 😆

This morning dawned bright and sunny but also bitterly cold (minus four I think) which meant the gas was frozen. This means it either doesn’t light at all, does light but runs at such a trickle that a kettle with enough water for two cups of tea takes half an hour to boil or it lights but flares through so erraticaly that it’s like a blow torch coming out of the gas ring. Ady tried various measures including pouring some of the precious warmed water over it which worked. The bottle and regulator is now very lagged, fingers crossed that makes a difference.

We had plans to get some tidying up done on the croft today – the area around the animals needed some attention as it is very visible from the nature trail walk and while wooden and metal animal housing looks a bit charming and rustic we were a bit crap tastic with various gathered stuff scattered about. We used up a couple of pallets to make paths across the mud to places we need to get daily (such as chicken coop to collect eggs), remounted the solar panel for the pigs electric fence on a wooden frame rather than the bright blue plastic fish box it was on, took down some galvanised sheeting from around one of the chicken houses that the chickens used to brood underneath but have stopped since we brought in another house. It looks loads better, more to do tomorrow.

I got an email from Sandy saying he had arranged to get the car that Norman was supposed to be giving us started for us but needed the jump starter unit he lent us while he was borrowing one of our leisure batteries to get his second car running. I ignored it as we were busy with stuff and he has taken to signing his emails ‘Bad Boy Fraser’ which I don’t have an appropriate response to really! We came up for a cup of tea and Sandy appeared, drunk. We talked to him for about an hour and then he went off and we arranged to meet him at Norman’s in an hour or so. We had some lunch and walked down. He was not at Norman’s so we went to him and Fliss’ where he was but had had another row with Fliss over puncturing his tyre driving back from ours. We had a cup of tea with Fliss and then came home, finished some of what we’d started and then realised Bonnie had disappeared. She’d been with Davies and Scarlett and had greeted us when we got back then just gone off. We called and called but she didn’t return. In the end we got the logburner lit, the dinner on, had a last cup of tea, fed the animals all giving her a shout every five minutes until she’d been gone for an hour and it was nearly dark so Ady went off to look for her. I’d given her raisins to eat yesterday (she shared some of mine_ but someone on facebook told me they can kill dogs so I’d been googling and scared myself silly reading stuff so was convinced she was dead somewhere.

She arrived back and I managed to reach Ady on his phone to tell him so he came home. We had dinner (which had been planned to be lunch!) and I tried and failed to read the very end of the last book in My Side of the Mountain trilogy but I was so tired the words were jumping about on the page and I struggled so we’ll finish it tomorrow. That sounds bleak and things are not but it’s all just a bit wearing at this very tail end of the winter…

We had Ranger Mike and Thalassa round for dinner last night. Thalassa is an ecology student who was here for a month last summer doing research on the newts that live on Rum. She is lovely and fitted in really well last year with the islanders. She has now finished her Phd and is job hunting but finding it really hard so filling in her time with volunteer stuff to enhance her CV and offered to come here for do some stuff with Mike. She’s been here for 3 weeks this time, staying with Mike and both of them have found it slightly straining I think. Yesterday was her last night and we’d invited them up for pizza night which Mike is always angling for invites to ;). We’d been to theirs for mexican last weekend.

I’d been down to the school in the morning to deliver the disclosure form that had finally arrived in the post (like CRB check for Scotland) while Ady went to the castle for a bath to try and ease his neck. It seemed to work and he is much better today but has a doctors appointment on Tuesday which I will insist he keeps even if he is fully recovered as he also had a nose bleed which may have been coincidental but I’d like checked over and if nothing else he can get some better painkillers as we have very little here and they would be useful to have to hand. I ended up chatting to Fliss for longer than I’d planned and walked very briskly back to the croft but was intercepted by Grace (lovely woman, talks for Scotland, much of which I don’t understand as she has the broadest east coast accent I think I have ever heard, wants to move here to run a bunkhouse, like everything here it is taking years and years to make happen). Ady had beaten me home, made the kids lunch and met me halfway in the car. We dropped Davies and Scarlett and their lunch off at Mike’s for J Ranger (where they did drawings of rocky shores and underwater species to go on display in the visitor centre and watched a dvd of British sealife.

Ady and I collected a pile of firewood and then started bringing up stones and rocks to try and create a path up the croft. It will take loads and loads and loads but every little helps so we made a start by loading the car up then reversing it up as far as we could go and unloading it into the tracks. I then walked down to collect the kids while Ady carried on. Back at home I made pizza dough and chopped some wood up while Ady got water and emptied the loo. Fingers crossed neither of these will be tasks like that within the next few weeks although Screwfix rang today to say our order has gone to Osborne Drive instead of here – pants! That means a delay.

The welly saga appears to have ended though with all returned and cancelled wellies now refunded and my new pair here and so far appearing to be suitable. The tea saga (not even sure I blogged that) is also remedied I think with a refund for the missing tea now in hand and a reorder of a replacement despatched so hopefully here soon.

We had a nice evening with Mike and Thally, pizzas much appreciated. They left about 11ish and went off singing Jessie J which we’d watched on youtube and has earwormed all of us all day today too.

Today we had pancakes for breakfast and then Ady and I went to meet the boat and wave Thally off, our Screwfix order we’d been expecting didn’t arrive although we now know why. Back at the croft we brought more wood up, I chopped a load, Ady cleaned out the chickens and we planned a few jobs to do over the next weeks or so. I am away for an overnight supermarket run with Fliss in a week, then a 3 night trip to Skye and Harris & Lewis the following week and by then will definitely have started at the school so we want to get as much done next week as possible.

We are both slightly exhausted by various goings on with Fliss and Sandy who we love dearly but are by far the most high maintenance friends we’ve ever had. I am loathe to get too involved as their issues drag me into a marriage guidance type role I am desperate to never take on again after living with my parents for 20 years – it’s very hard being a friend to both people in a shaky marriage but there are greater issues at play which the intimacy of living on an island in a small community means become everyone’s issues really. Slightly tough to see the photos on friendfeed of lots of uncomplicated friends celebrating together…

Osborne Drive is on the market, we’ll see how that pans out. I’m looking forward to family and friends starting to arrive for visits within the next few weeks to talk over plans with more impartial ears that the people who already live here!

Poor Ady has a bad neck. Not sure whether he has pulled a muscle, trapped a nerve or something else but he is in a lot of pain and not sleeping much 🙁 Classic Ady is to not slow down though so while I am trying hard to ensure he does a bare minimum rather than full speed it is proving tricky.

This morning I walked down to the village to the post office with Bonnie and then Ady drove down a bit later so we could meet the boat. We had a big delivery of animal feed, rat poison and hay bales along with another four pallets (Calmac send us over a few every so often when they have a load of excess ones). We picked up some batteries that Sandy had found for us and charged up and then came home for lunch.

After lunch we both unloaded the car although I did manage to do most of it – a solid hour of hulking feed bags and pallets around up and down the hill slipping in the mud. We likened it to our first WWOOF host Steward Wood which was mostly carrying heavy things up a steep hill nearly 2 years ago. We fed the animals and then sat with a cup of tea surveying the croft. I had a shower while Ady sneakily gatherered water from the burn (A task hopefully coming to an end once the water pipe and fixings get here).

I went to the shop hoping to meet Fliss there as arranged but Sandy was there instead so I chatted to him for a while before coming home early. Ady cooked a lovely curry (insisting on carrying on even once I got home and offered to take over) and then I read to the kids.

We listened to the newest Bad Shepherd album this evening that Ady downloaded (our first ever downloaded music from the app store, we felt very old trying to make it work!) which includes Anarchy in the UK so the kids and I had an interesting conversation about anarchy.

My disclosure form has finally come through so I guess I may be starting at the school next week. Also arrived were my latest new pair of wellies. We’ll see how these fare.

Life is settling back into a rhythm again which is good. I can’t quite see where the school job will fit into that and if I’m honest I am not really looking forward to it starting but I’ll cross that bridge when we get to it and can always re-evaluate if needs be.

We’re in a good groove of eating well – we never ate much processed food (aside from the very early days of chicken nugget parenting) and never ready meals so we’d not have been consuming accidental horse meat consumers anyway but it’s good to be cooking everything from scratch these days. We eat a lot of home made soup and fresh baked bread and while we’re a bit away from self sufficiency (as in, a hell of a long way from self sufficiency) it feels like we’re more in touch with our food than we’ve ever been before which is good.

After much debate and discussion we have a plan for the house – it’s going on the market on Friday, we have a personal lowest offer we’d accept in mind and aside from Scarlett who always gets a bit emotional about such things we are all ready to say goodbye to it and move on. It’s been our house for over 19 years but not our home for a long time. I’m so looking forward to paying off the mortgage, clearing the last of the debts and putting that whole period of our lives firmly behind us for good. We’re looking at alternative builds again and have a last date for selling Osborne Drive before knowing we’ll not get a proper house built before the winter this year so need to come up with an alternative for the winter. Options discussed so far are: Approach someone in the village about a 4 month house share over winter, get someone to look after our livestock and head back to the mainland for the winter to find work either with tied accommodation or paying enough to rent somewhere short term or WWOOF or house sit or something. Or put up another temporary build which is more weather proof than this. Something like a well insulated log cabin with woodburner could work with partitions for bedrooms. We could still use the shower etc in the static but live, cook and sleep in a cabin. Once we actually build it would them be more holiday home accommodation so would pay for itself in the long term.

I’m really adamant that we don’t just leap into a housebuild that we later look back on and regret elements of or kick ourselves for not following hearts and dreams. We spent so long looking at alternative builds and salivating over glass bottle walls, cord wood features, exposed wooden trusses and so on that I would feel we were cheating ourselves for not encorporating everything possible into our home. We have looked at over 100 kit house layouts and not one of them felt like ‘our house’ even though £100K is a fairly small budget for a housebuild I don’t want to spend that much and not feel like it’s our home. Lots of sitting looking out over the view drinking tea and thrashing stuff like this out brings us back to the same realisations and resolutions to do it the right way even if it is the hard way.

We’ve had some great chats with the children this last few weeks with everyone in reflective, philosophical, new beginning type mindsets. Today Davies was asking me the whole story of how we came to Home Educate which was interesting and some of the story was not one they’d ever listened to in full and asked questions about. We talked about pet ownership, parenting, marriage, friendship and relationships and making choices about which bits of yourself to give. We talked about if we had a cloning machine and could just please ourselves with one version of our self to do whatever we wanted, how that would pan out long term, what my alternative hopes and dreams might have been had I not ended up here in this life with these people and about loving and losing rather than never loving at all. We talked about how they’d remember me, what they’d celebrate about my parenting and what they’d feel I’d fallen short on. We talked a bit about adoption, abortion, fostering and parenting. Last week we talked about family trees and I drew out what little I know of the generations above us which is not a lot. Yesterday we heard an advert on the radio where some aging rock star described himself in ten words (father, lover, grumpy, poet…. etc) so we did the same which was enlightening.

Ah people. Such fascinating creatures.

The weather continues to remind us how lovely it can be here. We’ve had morning coffees, lunch and afternoon teas on the sporran, sat in t shirts and generally enjoyed this lovely reminder that spring is indeed on it’s way and it doesn’t rain *all* the time.

Abby came up for tea and chats on Sunday, we’ve had Vikki and Sean the Rat up for dinner and I had a good evening at the shop yesterday. Osborne Drive has been photographed and measured and sort of valued in a cagey ‘what were you hoping it was worth?’ manner, the upshot of which is it will go on the market for just under £240K with us hoping to get £230K. We’re researching other temporary housing with a view to having a plan for this winter if the house doesn’t sell or we simply run out of time this year. I want to make sure when we do build a house is our dream rather than a quick fix and I’d rather speculate more money on another, more suited to the climate temporary option for this winter which could recoup it’s cost as holiday let accommodation / WWOOFers space / somewhere for family and friends to stay when they visit which will pay for itself long term than rush through our forever home.

The school job saga rumbles on. I’m very bored of the whole business and as I said to someone yesterday if I was not feeling bad that the nursery assistant Coryla, Fliss and Ali as parents of school children here will all be put out if I tell the council to stick their job I’d be saying just that because I don’t actually really want the job anyway. Grr.

Davies and Scarlett have had a really good few days, out with the dog, playing down by the river, wandering down to the village and generally making the most of the weather and where we live. I feel the fog of winter lifting more every day and like so many other times now we are coming out the other side I realise how tough it actually was while we were in the middle of it.

Here comes the sun!

And the village springs back to life like an Attenborough documentary about deserts when it rains with people scuttling about being busy, cleaning, chatting to each other, out on bikes, walking…

Yesterday was the anniversary of our interview for the croft – one year ago. We bought a drink each and went and sat on the bench near Fliss and Sandy’s where we sat and texted people a year ago to say we’d got the croft. What a rollercoaster of a year it has been.

We sat there for about an hour til it got dark talking about how we’d felt then and how we feel now and then we went to Mike’s for dinner. He has Thalassa – a student, staying with him at the moment. She was here in May doing a research paper on the newts on the island and made friends with everyone then so has come back to do some volunteer stuff as she is job searching and needs stuff for her CV. She is two weeks through her three week stay and her and Mike are starting to drive each other mad so we’d partially been invited to dilute things I think :). We had a really nice evening with them and several rowdy games of charades which I don’t think Davies and Scarlett have ever played before and was lots of fun. It brought home how well the four of us (Goddards) know each other at how good we were at guessing things :). We left about 11pm so it was a fairly late night.

This morning we had pancakes for brunch made with goose eggs :). It’s been a gorgeous day all day so once we’d done various indoors things including having all doors and windows open for a good airing and drying through the static Ady and I went to pace out from the burn to the static (again) to finally sort out water. We’re going to plumb the static in to the burn which is where we have been getting drinking water from all along. We currently collect 2 20ltr jerry cans a day for drinking and cooking while all our washing up and shower water comes from the roof. We were drinking rainwater too but when we fitted the log burner it has meant all the water gathered from the roof is tainted by smoke and tastes revolting. Water gathering and toilet emptying are the two most time consuming and tedious tasks here, mostly done by Ady I have to admit, probably if it were me doing them we’d have had alternatives sorted a lot earlier 😉 – he is happier to graft for much longer than I would be.

So, spurred on by my parents next visit at the end of March we have measured out what we will need to get water from the burn and will get that ordered this week. Sandy has a few bits and pieces we can use too which keeps the cost down and is up for coming to help us get it all up and running. We have ordered the cardboard box on a pallet to go to Ed and Carina for them to box up the composting loo for us which should arrive with them tomorrow. I am hoping we will have the water sorted and the loo installed by the end of this month which will feel like massive steps forward. Also on my list to sort by the end of the month is Osborne Drive on the market (it was valued yesterday, not had feedback yet) or the tenants served notice, Gordon the builder talked to about giving us ground works quotes. grant forms filled out for the polytunnel and the pigs sorted out. We’ve decided to stop moving the pigs but to sort out their house better so that it remains dry and clean for them regardless of what the piece of land they are on it like as they have now been moved five times and I could see us moving them pretty much all over the croft but until we start doing stuff in the ground we have moved them on from they are better left where they are.

I’ve still not had paperwork about the school job so probably won’t be starting this week. Fliss and I are planning an overnight trip to the mainland for a big supermarket shop, I might be going off on a 3 day tour checking out visitor centres on Skye and the outer Hebrides (very excited at that idea, would love to see Harris and Lewis) in March and have signed the forms putting me forward as a director of the trust. Gav and Laura will be here soon and we have various contingency plans again now which feels better. I hate not having a plan at all even if I know we won’t necessary stick to a plan.

A Rum week. Not even sure what each day contained really. Closer to Jinty still which has been a hard task but I suspect worth it in the end. Some people are really worth the effort of getting to know. We had pancake races on Tuesday which was lots of fun and very community-ish. I’ve had ongoing welly sagas – I thought I had solved my welly need with a pair of really nice neoprene topped ones that were comfortable, sturdy and I was able to dance all night in on Burns Night but then the soles split and leaked. Wet feet when you step in puddles is Not Good when you live where I do. They are going back, I thought I’d found a replacement pair but they rang me today to say they were out of stock so had to cancel the order and get a refund. I’ve since ordered another pair. Sigh. It did lead to an interesting conversation at the shop this evening about Favourite Shoes Ever though…

We watched The Big Year which we all really enjoyed particularly as we know a couple of fanatical birders now. And we heart Jack Black.

I had a Rum Enterprise meeting, finished editing the Rum Rumble (new newsletter) and distributed it to wide critical acclaim.

We dug some holes for the polytunnel (community polytunnel that will go on our croft), killed the chicken that Bonnie injured, the goose laid her first egg and proved our deduction of which was Margo and which was Jerry wrong. The contractors are over just now (including Alasdair who moved our static) so much taking of drams with them has been happening of an evening down the shop. We have half a plan for foundations for the house. Osborne Drive has the sales team going in to do a valuation on Saturday so it should be on the market by the end of next week…maybe.

I think that brings us about up to date. I am supposed to start my job at the school next Tuesday but so far still have no paperwork. We’ll see what happens with that…

Ah Lost Weekend, a song that always reminds me of a friend who I don’t think even reads this blog any more.

Saturday we met the boat and Paul asked Ady if we were up for an early beer at the shop. We decided we were so at 5pm we fed the animals and all went down to the shop – so lovely for 5pm to still be daylight 🙂 The kids played on the computer in the hall while Ady and I had a beer or three with Paul, Lesley and Thalassa (student type staying here for 3 weeks, she was here shortly after we arrived doing a newt study and is back for some volunteering). It was a good couple of hours with lots of laughs. We’d put jacket potatoes on very low in the oven and I’d batch cooked a load of quiches earlier too which meant we were eating at a very respectable non Goddard o’clock hour too 🙂

On Sunday we had a fairly traumatic day when Bonnie attacked a chicken. She almost killed it, Ady lost his temper with her, the kids were really upset and it was all very fraught. After everything had calmed down the chicken was put in a calm quiet dark place, Bonnie was dealt with and then Thalassa came up for a cup of tea which put things further on hold. Eventually by about 5pm we had eaten dinner, watched some episodes of Robinson Crusoe on dvd, the chicken was in the house making squawking noises with a proper discussed decision made on it’s fate.

Today was another fairly hectic one – I was off out to the trust office to print off the newsletter when Vikki arrived. I left her and Ady drinking tea and went down to do that and have a chat with Fliss. I walked home with her and then back to the croft for lunch. After some inspecting we decided the chicken was going downhill rapidly and highly unlikely to make it and that we were prolonging suffering rather than perserving life so Ady took her outside to deal with her returning half an hour later with an oven ready free range corn fed bird. Davies and Scarlett have decided they don’t want to eat her as she was one of our first birds and they feel odd about it being a forced decision to kill her rather than a considered one which we had long discussed about birds coming to the end of their laying life or cockerels. I understand and respect their take on this and we talked a lot about how we all felt about it. We all cried a little when saying goodbye to her when Ady took her outside and it once more brought into sharp relief the differences between parenting, pet ownership and livestock rearing and the different levels of responsibility and emotional attachment. Ady and I will eat her feeling at least then it was not a waste of a life although we all feel very sad that it was as a result of Bonnie’s attack that she died. We have also talked about dog ownership and the responsibilities that brings and some harsh lessons have been learnt this weekend. The result of which is increased time spent with Bonnie for everyone and a lot more mental stimulation and training. Fortunately at just a year old and with a pretty obedient nature that should be more a case of time and attention than any real tough stuff.

I went down to the shop to put in our veg order and meet Fliss for a beer and ended up staying for a few hours chatting. It was a good evening and it ended with Jinty really upset about various things which Fliss and I have offered to go down and help her with tomorrow morning. Times like that remind me what community is all about.

I got home later than planned so my evening was more about eating dinner at Goddard o’clock of old and then reading for half an hour before the kids went to bed.

Another early start on Wednesday for venison-ing. This hind had several little larvae in it once we’d skinned it which Neil says are pretty common. Ady was quite grossed out by them but I found them pretty fascinating. The kids are really keen to come down and learn more about the whole processing side of stuff when we do the next batch in the summer – the cull is all but over for the season til July. We found the bullet in the carcass this time which was pretty cool so we cleaned it up and brought it home. As a meat eater I thought it was really quite good to be eating a beast for dinner last night that had been born, lived, shot, processed all within a few miles of where I live with the bullet that shot it in my pocket and the animal shot by someone I know, and the beast skinned, chopped, minced and shaped into burgers by me then cooked by my husband. 🙂

We finished processing and came home for lunch. One of the ducks was missing again so we all went out to look for it and Scarlett spotted it down by the river – it is fine and healing well but had been seperated from the others again. We returned it to the flock and then all walked down to the village, calling in to Fliss and Sandy’s for a cup of tea before coming home.

Ady cooked venison burgers, home made chips and I made onion rings with beer batter – home cooked junk food 🙂 I was wiped out after such early starts and lost nights from the windy weather so was in bed long before midnight.

Thursday we Popmastered and then went to meet the boat – we had nothing come off but collected some bits for Fliss. Ady dropped me and that off at the school as I had a meeting with Stuart the headmaster who was over between boats and we set my provisional start date as a week on Monday. We talked about the opportunity for the school to become something experimental and exciting if the parents of the children all buy in which is potentially interesting stuff.

Fliss gave me a lift back to theirs where I expected Ady to be and dropped me off at the back where our car was but Ady was nowhere to be seen so I went to the front and sure enough he was indoors with Sandy and Steve. It was all a bit chaotic in there and poor Joss had a leaky nappy so I took her off to change it – first nappy I think I’ve changed in about 8 years! Then Ady and I came home for lunch. We spent the afternoon mostly indoors with the kids chatting and the kids had showers, hair cut (Davies) and hair brush (Scarlett), then Ady and I put dinner on low in the oven and went down to the village for the RCA meeting. The kids decided to stay home so they watched a film and kept the fire going. The meeting was well attended and we had lots to plough through including stuff about road charges, the teashop provision for the coming year and other contentious stuff. Afterwards Ady went home to finish off dinner and I stayed for a couple of drinks with Fliss before walking home. I left about ten minutes later than I should have and got drenched walking home the last wee bit in the pouring rain – yuck! One day I won’t wander around in the dark with a torch several nights a week…

We watched the second half of Mary Poppins that we’d started the night before, I’d never appreciated before what a long film it is, well over 2 hours. Then I read for about an hour, we’re about halfway through the sequel to My Side of the Mountain.

This morning I went down to the castle to swap the washing over into the tumble drier and then to see Vikki. I had a chat with her and Rachel about woodland crofts which I’d been quite vocal about last night at the RCA and I explained my stance a bit more. Rach went off to make some phonecalls and then Ady arrived having caught up with me. We called in to drop some eggs off for Fliss and Sandy but they were not around and then came home for lunch.

Another afternoon hanging out with the children – some really interesting conversations lately, often inspired by the Jeremy Vine show it has to be said ;), Ady and I walked back down to the village again, calling to Fliss and Sandy’s to collect a drawing Karl has done for us of our planned layout on housebuild. Then home again. We had pizza and watched The Truman Show which I have started watching twice before over the years but both times fallen asleep before the end so finally got to see what happens tonight. We’ve been having a Jim Carey-fest with the kids while studiously avoiding any films with too much gurning so this complete it I think.

I’ve been outting final touches to the Rum newsletter which I’ll get printed off on Monday and distribute.

Up far too early (while it was still properly dark!) for venison processing this morning. We left Davies and Scarlett still in bed having whispered goodbyes in their ears and left their breakfast set out. Even the pigs were still in bed so we didn’t feed the animals on our way down to the village. We collected Neil and various equipment from his house and then to the larder.

After some initial confusion when Ady and Neil misread CIC as UHU (it *could* have said that I suppose written sideways….) we identified the two beasts for us from the 13 hanging in the larder and selected the first to work on. We all worked together to skin it and then Ady and Neil butchered it and I minced it, made up two sets of burger mix, bagged up some mince and then double minced the burger mix before making the burgers. Nearly 100 of them! Neil vacuum packed while Ady cleaned down and we were all done well within four hours. One dead animal into four steaks, 100 burgers and 7 bags of mince all packed up and into the freezer. We all took a sample of each burger home to try as we are still not in a position to be paid for the work (another sigh-worthy story for another time) so all feel there must be some perks to getting up in the dark!

Neil went off home, we went along to the pier to put the meat in our new venison processing company freezer before coming home for lunch. The kids had watched a film, played some minecraft and DS. We had lunch, Ady did some outside stuff, I made some cookies and bread dough for garlic bread to go with dinner then caught up on emails. I’d had a reply from the letting agents to say they have made contact with our tenants and will get in touch with the sales team to get the house valued and let us know their terms for selling, one from Gav and Laura looking forward to getting here in 5 weeks time and various emails from various people on Rum about the newsletter – I am now editing and creating a monthly Rum newsletter which I am looking forward to and think will be good fun. I’m planning on getting the kids to help me too. Also about the Visitor Management Group and the Bunkhouse Steering Group – meetings a-go-go again soon. One from Fliss about the school job saying they are waiting for a reference and can I send it – I replied to say that usually the employer takes up references and erm, where is the paperwork even offering me the job actually! I feel sorry for Fliss on this one really, she is still there despite having officially left in December while the council faff about not sorting out my starting.

The kids did some room tidying, some playmobil and geomag playing and more minecraft. I made dinner and we started watching Mary Poppins which I had not realised was quite such a long film. Ferry was cancelled again today and the next available date to get diesel cans sent off and back is over a week and petrol a fortnight so we will need to conserve petrol and diesel which means sensible car and generator use

Tomorrow is another venison morning so another early start but that is the deer cull done til July so all our attention then can go to marketing, planning and stuff which does not involve blood under your fingernails!

Oh my blogging is woefully boring at the moment. It feels bleak when I moan about the weather or tell tales about crazy Rum folk and that is not a true reflection of life or how we are feeling. It feels smug when I post pretty pictures or gloat about lack of traffic as it is far from all idyllic either. It is, as everywhere is, a balance, a life with some level of compromise, some tough bits and some amazing bits. I find it hard just now as everything has to be slowed down. I am far better at deciding what needs doing, getting on and doing it, then sitting down for a cup of tea (or glass of wine) and feeling great about having done it. Not so good at considering, researching, waiting patiently and frankly dreadful at waiting for other people or outside of my hands stuff to happen which is where we are at just now. We need to sell our house – it should be either on the market, assuming tenants are happy to have it marketed while they are still in it, or the tenants should have their 2 months notice by the end of this week. That becomes a waiting game them to see what happens. I need to give the CCCS our annual update but have no idea of finances to quote at them – how can I explain our lack of electric and gas bills, running costs for a car yet explain jerry cans of fuel coming across with freight charges. Until I start at the school job – waiting for CRB check paperwork – I have no idea of the full implcations of that on our finances either. Oh to have the house sold, debts all cleared and be starting afresh at last.

We’re in limbo as a family too – Ady is struggling lots with life in the static, I guess we all are but he is most vocal. It’s hard to visualise an actual house after such a long time and we still have so many unknowns about how a house will work anyway. The kids love it here, really love it, but are getting kabin fever from too much time indoors and no family or friends visiting since October. In a house this trade off would be fine as they;d have space to spread out and play, create and find alternative winter activities indoors, here they have such limited space and belongings and just can’t go outside and get wet regardless as we have no space to strip off wet clothes and get warm and dry. It’s all short term – we know we won’t be still in these conditions by next winter, we’re just not sure yet how we’ll be managing to do anything else.

I’m not going to pretend it wouldn’t be hard in some way even if we did have a house but I reckon the tough bits would be a hell of a lot less tough. Hard decisions will have to be made if our house doesn’t sell fairly quickly or if in starting to work our proper costs we realise we won’t have enough to build here because Davies and Scarlett’s childhoods are too brief and too precious to have spent more than one year in a campervan and one year in a caravan regardless of how amazing the views outside the windows might be. I never intended raising my children in a serious of temporary accommodation and I’m determined that a proper home that doesn’t not flex in the wind and let the rain in, has a bath and a washing machine will be a certainty by the end of 2013. I hope with all my heart that it is on Rum and all four of us really want it to be but Rum is not quite enough to keep us here if it isn’t. I have a lot of fight, energy and passion to expend on the right cause but until the kids are older they will always be my chief focus and I don’t want to turn around in five years having achieved all sorts of other things but having realised that my children quietly grew up in a caravan on top of a windy hill while I was busy concentrating on something else.