One word? When seven would do…

Argh – all that time unblogged!

I’ve been noting stuff as I go along but it’s hit a point now where trying to catch up properly is all but impossible with time, power and internet constraints, not to mention being rather busy generally!
So, my notes read:

Saturday – up early for the boat – the Saturday morning ferry is before 9am! We had a lovely day planned of celebrating Eurovision together on the croft with a camping evening, sausages on the barbecue, toasting marshmallows, listening to Eurovision on the radio and spending our first night on our land. We set the tents up, moved a goose house down onto the croft ready for our arrival of geese sometime in July and had a really nice afternoon with various visitors coming up to the croft including Rachel and Ian who sat and chat and enjoyed the sunshine with us.

We returned to the static, gathered stuff for the evening and headed up to the croft at about 7pm only to be foiled by midges. It was horrendously midgey and after half an hour or so of sitting in our midge nets feeling really miserable we admitted defeat and retreated back to the static. We still had our sausages and our beer and listened to music instead.

Sunday – A very frustrating day. The sun was shining but I had offered to bake for the teashop so spent the morning getting really stressed with the internet as I couldn’t get online on my blog or emails and then the afternoon roasting in the kitchen baking various things while Ady was on the croft and the kids were swimming in the river with Vikki and Claire. It felt really wrong that we were working while other people were having fun with our kids and I was particularly grumpy when they all came back to ours for teas and coffees! I recovered and we had a nice evening at Vikki’s as we went there for dinner.

Monday – Further internet woe as far too many hours of my life were sucked into trying to sort it out. I delivered the cakes to the tea shop which went down well and we got our veg box on Monday evening. We generally only go to the shop on Monday and Friday evenings now, otherwise too many evenings get sucked into drinking and sitting around with the islanders, which is lovely and sociable but expensive!

Tuesday – I spent some time at Vikki’s and at the Trust office trying to sort out the internet and finally decided not to bother and set up a googlemail account to bypass any more issues. My cakes had all sold so I did some more teashop baking. It was another midgetastic evening but I did call down to Vikki’s for a glass of wine in the evening as she had got one of the builders round for a drink and was wobbly about what his intentions were so wanted me to pop in and check on her.

Wednesday – we did our photoblog day so that is sort of recorded on WW blog. We met the ferry, had a quick glimpse at the new kittens and then Fliss and Sandy popped up for the afternoon. We took them up to the croft for a look round and had a really good chat with them. Scarlett and I went down to meet the kittens – we’d been given the little tom but Lesley was keeping them all til the following day so they could settle down. Vikki came round in the evening and it was another late night drinking too much wine!

Thursday – We went on the Shearwater and saw a pod of dolphins. It turned out later they were part of a superpod that was in the area so where we thought we kept seeing the same ones it was likely we were seeing different ones each time. We collected the kitten and tried to settle him in.

Friday – A very busy day 🙂 It was a year to the day that Vikki arrived so we were celebrating Rum’s Vikkiversary 🙂 Thalassa who had been staying on Rum for a month studying the newts gave a talk in the evening about her studies and findings and then we had some official people over for the small isles consultation which several of us came along to attend. We then drank fizz with Vikki and it turned into quite a session at the shop and about half the island ended up coming up to our static for dinner. It was a very late night 🙂

Saturday – Ady and I met the ferry first thing, lots of walking wounded from the night before! I had a really bad day on Saturday – in the morning there was a really nasty dog fight at the teashop between Zappa and Zara, two bitches who have always not got on and been tussling over Top Dog position. They locked jaws and had to be strangled to be parted despite trying with hoses, shouting and pulling. One of the owners, Norman ended up bitten (and is now in hospital with septacemia!). It really, really shook me up and disturbed me a lot. I’ve worked so hard to get over my dog fear and now actually love a dog of my own so to see all my worst fears and phobias summed up in one big event like that had me physically shaking for about an hour. Horrid 🙁 Still no internet.

Finally after lots of talking and consideration I decided the kitten was a mistake too. Ady had never wanted him, the kids were not as attached as I expected, he was very hissy and unfriendly and I was really worried about him and Bonnie. The lack of space in the static and my general feeling of being unsettled meant I made a rather shotgun decision to rehome him. I went to Ross and Jinty who had loved him when he arrived and they took him, but he is now back with his sister at Neil & Lesley’s as Neil had always liked that cat the most anyway. Right decision, lots of ribbing!

Sunday – We’d arranged with Vikki to walk up Hallival. It was quite epic, we had to carry Bonnie some of the way back down again as it was way too much for her really. I had one moment of wobbliness when I felt a bit dizzy and wondered just what I was doing but soon got past it and was glad to have done it. We look out on Hallival from the croft, it’s a very dominating peak of Rum so to know we’ve stood atop it and added a stone to the stack is a good feeling :). We’d never have done it without Vikki and to be honest I’d probably not bother scaling any of the other peaks any time soon but I’m glad to have done it. The views were stunning, you could see the sea all around with the whole island spread below us – it made it look quite small really. Skye, Eigg, Muck and Canna were all around with panoramic views of the mainland and the outer Hebrides in the background and it was all very perspective giving and gorgeous. I really liked being able to see down to the static and across to the croft too.

We came down and Vikki offered me a bath at her house 🙂 I went round and enjoyed a lovely soak with a glass of wine brought in to me aswell. Love Vikki :).

Back at home Ady had cooked a lovely roast dinner too. It was a good day and the perfect recovery from a bad day the day before.

I’m leaving it here as I’ve left my list behind on which I’d noted the various days but will try and come back to it later.

A day on the croft 🙂 Ady tried to do a photoblog and has very comprehensively taken photos of his every move but I failed to explain that actually it’s supposed to demonstrate how Home Ed looks for us, rather than a pictoral monologue of his day ;). Will try again!

The kids and I got up and breakfasted and then we headed to the croft. We’ve been meaning to completely empty the horse box and restack it properly and also move it so that was on the agenda today. The sun was really hot again so everyone was suncreamed and sunhatted up. We got the whole horse box emptied out and found evidence of mouse having got into Bonnie’s dog food and then found the actual mouse. We were all very rubbish with it though, hoping Bonnie might have some instinct kick in and expecting her to get it while we all shouted at her to do so. I got the closest to it and should have stamped on it as it was totally bewildered at all the people and animals but I was bare footed so didn’t. Eventually it did a runner!

By then it was lunchtime so we headed back to the static. The group of students that we talked to had brought up all their leftover food from their self catering and donated it to us so we had a real feast of chocolate biscuits, crisps and fruit AND Ady has topped up his pot noodle stash :). The guy who brought it up gave Ady a lovely little speech about how they’d found us really inspirational and interesting :).

We needed to go and meet the ferry – semi-expecting a food shop but the kids chose to go back to the croft. There was nothing for us on the boat but we helped get stuff off for the shop and gave Vikki a lift home and arranged to meet her for a beer at the shop later. Then we drove to the croft as we wanted to move the horse box. We’ve not driven there since our first day here as the rains have washed away part of the road and a culvert crossing the river but we decided to just go for it. It was fine and we managed to get the horse box all the way to the top of the croft where it looks so much better than just dumped inside the gate and will not be in the way now. It also gives us a bit of a shelter for higher up the croft where we’re planning on camping.

As we pulled past the river we saw not only Davies and Scarlett but also Tom and Barbara the pigs! They had followed the kids down to the river and were loving a refreshing wallow in the water 😆

The kids (and dog) enjoyed paddling (and in Scarlett’s case full body slams) in the river while Ady and I went through the boxes, sorted out stuff to bring to the static and stuff to repack in the horse box and then Ady drove it back up in car-loads to the horse box. It is now only about a third full and is all organised with walkways through it and no food left inside. A job well done :). The kids grabbed the geomags and went back to the static before us.

Finally by about 6pm we had everything back where it needed to be, fed the pigs and dropped the car off at the static, gathered the kids and were drinking a well deserved beer in the sunshine. A chance and rather silly conversation with Fliss on Monday night seems to have resulted in a proper event being planned for August 4th – Midge Fest! More on that to follow but I think it could be lots of fun :).

We chatted a bit about stuff to celebrate the Queen’s jubilee and have some ideas for that. Then back to the static for dinner – Ady made burgers and chips, I made coleslaw while we listened to music.

Today I was up early with Ady to feed animals, meet the ferry and grab some online time as we’re planning on camping up at the croft tonight. We have loads of stuff to burn for a campfire, sausages and marshmallows to eat, a fully charged power pack to listen to Eurovision on the radio and for the very first time enough land to camp out on and still be at home :).

Wednesday – PIG DAY!

I was up fairly early and headed down to the hall to try and sort out an email I’d had from Calmac to say my card had been declined for paying for Shiona. It took ages to get through and by the time I did Shiona would have arrived and I was really fretting but I then got an email through to say they’d tried again and it was fine. Phew. The whole ‘getting the pigs here’ thing has been an epic undertaking. I’d said to Ady it would either go really smoothly or really badly…

We all went to meet the ferry and Shiona pulled off with her two dogs on the back seat of her car and the two pigs in the boot! They had been called Bindi (on account of a black dot on his forehead) and Betty but we have renamed them Tom and Barbara :). We all cooed at them through the window and then Shiona followed us to the static and we walked the path to the croft to see if she thought they would follow her. Sure enough they jumped out of the boot and followed her all the way shaking her bucket, across the bridge and into the croft. Over the electric fence and into their new home :).

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They seemed really settled and happy straight away and we’ve done lots of petting them. I heart them lots 🙂 They will be our breeding pair for ever so get to have names and be loved – we’ll just eat their babies 😉

We walked back to the static and Shiona had a cup of tea with us and a bit of a chat before she headed off. We really liked her and will definitely stay in touch, not least because she offered to send us anything we struggle to get and a place to stay on the mainland if needed. In return I really hope she’ll come back and stay with us at some point too. Lovely to meet fellow crofters living the dream 🙂

We had some lunch, checked how Chainsaw Dave was doing (his wife Sylvia was air lifted off island again on Tuesday. She has been given the all clear for cancer but now has a trapped nerve in her back which they were concerned was bowel cancer so whisked her off quick. She is not back now for about 6 weeks as she is having a belt and braces last dose of chemo before being signed off). Chain was off on the ferry to join her yesterday so needed some help looking after the baby and packing up. Others had helped already so he didn’t need us though.

Back to the croft to check on the pigs and Georgie was walking by with Tinker (one of the island dogs) so they came and sat with us in the sunshine and chatted for a while. We walked back with them and were met by Dr Butt and his students, all come to see the croft and talk to us about our story. We took them back to the croft and sat down to talk. We gave an introduction to the four of us and our story, our travels and how we ended up on Rum and then took questions before introducing anyone interested to the birds and pigs. Really interesting questions asked, odd how different people think of different things to be curious about :).

They left and we went back for showers and were planning on settling in for the night when Vikki arrived wanting to meet the pigs too. I got dressed and we walked down together and I showed her around as she’d not been up to the croft since we had animals arriving and strimming done. Then she came back and ended up staying til 130am and helping me drink 2 bottles of wine! A very late night 🙂

Today – To the croft to feed animals and get some stuff from the horsebox before heading to meet the Shearwater. I did spot a dorsal fin twice through binoculars but was unable to spot it without or show anyone where so it could be identified so we’re not counting it as a sighting! It was glorious out there though, sunny and breeze free. We did see various birds and went off course at one point behind Soay where Ronnie (the skipper) had spotted a big bird on the clifftop and suspected a sea eagle. It turned out to be a great skua but was still impressive.

Also on the boat were two tourists who’d been reading our story in the paper and wanted to chat to us so we talked to them for a while when we came off. I headed to the teashop as I’d arranged to take a phonecall from WWOOF – we are now WWOOF hosts 🙂 🙂 and Ady and the kids went to Mike & Georgie’s as Mike was heading off on the Shearwater to go to the mainland for 10 days to see family.

We dropped Mike at the pier and the kids went off with Georgie to dig for razor clams on the beach as it was a really low tide. Ady and I changed the gas bottle on the campsite shower block and dropped a gas bottle off for Vikki, staying for a coffee with her before meeting back up with the kids.

I’m having a quick catch up online before heading off to feed the pigs their dinner and then having mine.

Workie stuff with kids in the morning – I was with Davies doing more of his story, his writing is really coming on 🙂 Ady and Scarlett were writing a letter to Maisie as we’d had a parcel of random stuff from the Other Goddards including some birthday cards for Ady, a T shirt with dogs on, a leather bound notepad, a bar of chocolate and a jar of curry powder. We *think* we distributed them properly between us 😆 Scarlett has been doing lots of bird drawings and colourings and is really very good. She’s done some excellent kingfishers, shearwaters and herons. Must take some photos of them to share. She is also getting her head round looking birds up using the index and thus doing some reading and alphabetical order stuff too.

We finished that, listened to Popmaster and then headed down to the library to put our leisure battery on charge as it was showing as completely empty. We are trickle charging it using a borrowed solar panel (We need to get our own, bigger version) which is more or less coping with it but it had suffered during the few days of continuous rain which had us using the lights and water pump more anyway due to being indoors so needed a decent top up. There is power in the library and on the basis I am planning to do lots of volunteering in there we felt justified in nicking some!

Then to the croft to do some more strimming, some more burning cardboard (looking forward to using the cardboard in a rather more permaculture-y way really, for mulching and stuff or even just compost but for now we have so much we need to just get rid of it) and some more just hanging out on the croft really. Ady is definitely doing the lions share up there at the moment while I am just trying to work out the best way of moving everything forward. More lists I think!

Back to the static for lunch and to stick on one of the very large joints of pork for our dinner (we cooked it long and slow and have plans for a pork lasagne tonight). I put away the veg box order from the night before and did some crochet-ing. I wanted to make a new camera bag to carry it around with me and did that while the kids did drawing stuff. Ady nipped back to the croft and did some more strimming while I was doing that.

We walked down to the teashop to try and do some online stuff but there was a directors meeting at 5pm and Vikki was there chatting to us so we actually failed to get anything done as we felt we should clear out when they started their meeting – I am not sure if we really needed to or not but it would have been strange to sit and be in there while they had their meeting. The IRCT directors stuff definitely contributes to feelings of oddness on the island IMO.

Back to the static for dinner and then down to the village hall again this time to listen to a talk by Dr Butt about earthworms on Rum. Another creature that has been extensively studied here and another Rum fact – the largest earthworm in Britain was found here on Rum! It was an interesting talk, with slideshow and made all the more interesting because the last slide featured Davies and Scarlett at the talk the previous day and they earnt a namecheck too :).

Back to the static for bed for kids and chats for Ady and I. There, I think that is a rather more comprehensive account of the day. Still interupted lots (Eve is playing in the hall and giving me a running commentary on what she is doing which is rather distracting!) but better 🙂

I wasn’t going to blog but I have snuck into the village hall to check online stuff and need to have a reason to stay in the hall because there is *the* most interesting meeting going on with a group of students who I thought were here to do earth worm stuff but it turns out to be far more of a social science field trip which is rather fascinating to be eavesdropping on.

Anyway. Today was an early start – we were down at the croft first thing to do pig stuff. We hooked up the electric fence and tested it. Some of the birds had escaped and Bonnie and Davies rounded them up, amazing to see our crazy puppy who a few weeks ago knew pretty much nothing but has an innate instinct to herd even though she doesn’t know why.

We also did some washing line maintenance, and a clean load is now swinging in the breeze.

That all done Ady and I walked back to the static and collected the landrover roof we’d been given to use for a pig house. It was heavy and we’d anticipated it being an all day job to move it to the croft but we managed to do it in 20 minutes.

Then back for lunch 🙂

After lunch we headed down to the castle grounds where a worm talk was happening. We have a visiting uni group headed up by Dr Kevin Butt (worm man extrodinaire!) who were putting on a talk about worms. It turns out the reason for their visit is not just about worms at all but some sort of issues finding out study, I realise it is not just me that finds the dynamics fascinating here :). The kids enjoyed the worm talk and we’re going to another one tomorrow evening.

We went for a cup of tea at Ali’s house along with Mike, Georgie and Izzy and then when the midges got too out of hand we headed back to the static. We were having a cup of tea when Kevin and Jackie (other uni bod) appeared so they came in for a chat and cup of tea too. They have asked us to talk to the students at some point and were really interested in our story. More to follow on them I suspect.

Battery is dying so I need to heading off – curses, my excuse to be here has gone!

Thursday – I had my interview for the admin job. I knew it would be challenging as there were 2 other people going for it and at least one of them (Fliss) knows how the trust works and has bookkeeping experience, which were a couple of the things that were mentioned as desirable in the advert. It was an odd interview anyway, held in Vikki’s kitchen and conducted by Vikki, Jinty (shopkeeper) and Rachel (works at the castle, has the same shoes as me). I knew I’d not done very well when I failed to be able to answer a couple of the questions – one about OSCAR (which is a Scottish charities regulator) to which I answered that my friend has a little boy called Oscar but other than that I knew nothing about it! I also couldn’t answer a question about what information gets returned to Companies House annually and had no bookkeeping experience. I was good on several other questions including citing examples of being able to be objective, to roll out and facilitate decisions that are not mine or I don’t necessary agree with, admin experience, working with budgets, minuting meetings etc. The questions were scored with points so I knew that the ones I did well on may just scrape me past the others if the other candidates messed them up but really the cold hard factual experience was missing.

I walked back to the static and got changed and we headed off to meet Mike and a group of tourists for the Shearwater. It was raining but not windy and although it was a bit choppy it was probably not as bad as last week. We saw a seal, several great skuas, gannets, kittiwakes and a fair few auks (razorbills, guillemots and a couple of puffins). Davies said he enjoyed it more this week for having taken a travel sickness pill before we left. The kids spent some time up with the skipper too which they enjoyed.

Back to the static for lunch and then we went down to the teashop to do some online stuff. I checked my emails to discover I’d not got the admin job. I was not surprised and am not too disappointed but it has spurred me on to try and chase up some possibility of writing work – I’m reminded that what I really want to do is that and I should pull my finger out and make it happen. My task is to have sent at least 10 emails with that in mind by the end of the week.

Vikki came down and chatted for a while, she obviously felt bad but I assured her I was fine and although it would have been good it was not a problem. She talked about the nursery job again and I explained why I was not interested in that and also gave a few suggestions as to how they might fill that – contacting colleges with trainees to offer a placement for a term or so, looking at getting a childminder in and so on. I can understand the frustration some people here feel with the majority of residents not being very self starting or creative in their solutions to issues. Then again I think that is a general problem everywhere rather than an island issue.

Not sure what else happened on Thursday, it’s such a long time ago now!

Friday – Really need to blog every day, Friday morning is also a blanK! I know we did some stuff with the kids – Davies continuing with his story, Scarlett doing some reading. I think that was the day we did some Dr Seuss stuff. Davies stayed at home while we met the ferry but Tarly came with us and it was a good ferry day 🙂 The brushcutter came, as did the battery (for the pig fence), chicken and duck feed AND a CoOp shop. Sadly the CoOp shop was high on comedy value and lower on delivering what I’d actually ordered 😆

They have a new online order form which seems to have done some random comma insertion so where I’d asked for 2 packs of poddadum, a jar of pitted green olives and two packs of pork sausages what I actually got was one pack of poppadums, two olives, a jar of hotdog sausages and two massive joints of pork! 😆 Someone is giving us space in their freezer so it’s fine but has taught me to be more careful about descriptions. Was a great example to the kids about the importance of punctuation though 😆

I sat in the sunshine putting the brushcutter together, the kids headed down to the croft and Ady was helping move a fridge and cooker in to Neil & Lesley’s that had come in on the ferry. Ady wanted to show me a spot on the croft that he reckons is perfect for building on so we went to look at that and took some of the stuff down to the croft too. The spot is perfect indeed, it has a view of the sea, the cullins, the river and the waterfall. Still much debate about various challenges here including how to get stuff to the croft, whether we should look at improving the track or not, the best option for putting a track on our actual land and what sort of build to do. We need to get croft paperwork sorted (other priority on my list this coming week) so we can look at applying for grants for polytunnel and outbuildings and possibly a track.

We’d said we’d meet Vikki at the shop for a beer so we headed down there and had a very nice couple of hours in the sunshine with most of the community who had turned out for an after work on Friday beverage :). I’d made pizza dough earlier so we watched a film while I cooked and made some coleslaw. We’re doing really well with healthier eating, far less chance to decide on processed food after all and lots more cooking from scratch and using decent ingredients :). I’ve been baking bread every other day and while we’re still having meat pretty much every day it’s no longer the biggest part of our diet. Loads of fresh fruit is being eaten and there are no cakes or biscuits in the house :). Davies and Scarlett are probably eating more sweets than they used to but we’ve talked about that and they have slowed down on that too. The trouble is they get given them in the shop and it feels mean not to get them something in there when we head down for a beer.

My eyes are suffering with something, I suspect it may be a reaction to my contact lenses but it is horrid and sore 🙁 Also Scarlett has worms (I know, ewww) so the first hurdle of not having easy access to a GP and chemist has struck. I’ve ordered various stuff online to combat it all but there is the inevitable delay and expense in dealing with stuff that way.

Saturday – We went down to the teashop with a list of stuff to try and plough through online – I struggle with the limited internet access really, all the little things I’d sort on my phone or laptop in a few minutes if I had all the time access seem to get missed and then I don’t blog or flickr as much because I’m dealing with them. I now have a list which I’m ticking off but a bit of idle googling is somehow different to a time limited job list. Bit whingey on this blog post aren’t I? I’m not meaning to be!
The other downside of teashop internet is there is always someone around who wants to chat and distract you so you don’t get the head down, whizzing through things focus either.

Anyway, I did a few bits and Mike came over to offer to take Davies and Scarlett out with him on his canoe for the afternoon. This was quite a big deal for all of us really but they went. Odd to wave off both my babies in life jackets to go off canoeing with someone I’d not even met a month ago! They had a really good time though, came back enthused and excited and having seen seals and an otter and explored a bit of beach with caves. Davies had rowed there and back with Mike and was really happy about that too. They are desperate to go again and Mike said he’ll take them whenever he goes :). These sorts of opportunities are so valuable and precious 🙂

It also freed up Ady and I do get loads done up at the croft. Ady did a load of strimming, marking out the perimeter for the pig area and a track to lead them up to it and strimming the path both sides and clearing an area around a drainage ditch we need to dig back out. I burnt all our rubbish that has been building up and then we put up the electric fence. It needs the battery and power pack installing which we’ll do tomorrow along with taking the pig house along there ready for them.

We came back to the static and had showers and cleared up a bit and I made some bread dough, coleslaw and the start of a lasagne for dinner as we’d invited Mike & Georgie up to eat with us. We whizzed down to empty the loo and fill up water and buy some stuff in the shop, meeting the kids as we went and then a very riotous evening ensued with far too much alcohol consumed but lots of laughs, swapping life stories and catching up on the gossip on the island before we arrived.

Today – a very late start all round thanks to the excesses of last night but when we finally got going we packed some food and headed to Harris for a few hours. We wanted to collect some beach finds, mostly wood as there have been a couple of big storms this last week or so so we hoped plenty would have washed up. There was not loads but we did come back with a car full of wood which I am sure we will find many uses for :).

Hmm, don’t feel I’ve satisfied my need to blog very well but I need to head home for dinner. More time management required I feel. Back tomorrow with some more planned stuff…

Yesterday continued to go well – Vikki came up for dinner which was really nice. She is a funny girl, very quiet and I think pretty shy but every so often she comes out with statements like ‘I’ve been so excited about you coming’ which makes me think she is keen to be friends but just doesn’t quite know how to make the right moves. It’s getting easier though and with Ady there too it always feels like it flows a bit better.

I cooked – I was baking bread anyway so make some garlic, rosemary and mozarella flatbread to go with the pesto pasta that Vikki had suggested was a good dinner for her (being a veggie and all) and Vikki brought up ice cream for pudding. It was a really nice evening in the end with plenty of chatting and finding out more about the island and how Vikki finds being here.

She left and we packed the kids off to bed and were not long behind them – it had been a very early start after all!

Today we met the ferry and got our food shopping and our first couple of Lovefilm dvds, along with a letter from TV licencing 🙂 Still no brushcutter from amazon, that is now being chased up as they are trying to say it was delivered on 10th May and I should check with my neighbours incase they took it in! 😆

Stuart Poole the headmaster I went to see last week had requested another meeting with us so I took Ady along too, all part of my Grand Plan to reassure 🙂 The reply back regarding flexischooling had been met with a no – ‘full time or nothing’ which is the best possible outcome from our perspective. I get to say I tried to keep the school open without compromising our educational philosophies, the school closes which is probably best for us as Home Educators, Morag the unpopular school teacher leaves so when the little ones reach school age in 2 years we’ll get a new and better teacher for them (my kids will both by secondary age by then anyway) and we’ve started to build a relationship with someone nice and decent with contacts. He said he will probably have a caretaker role in the school while it’s closed and visit once or twice a term and if we wanted to borrow any resources from the building and use it like a library then we are very welcome. So hurrah for that 🙂

Tonight I’m doing Come Dine With Me and the castle washing machine is now fixed so I’m off to run a couple of loads through there. The chickens and ducks are doing fine with being left to their own decices and I think we have sorted out the pig delivery dilemma 🙂

Sunday – Ady’s birthday 🙂 We’d made cards and he had a variety of gifts mostly bought from Jinty’s shop and labelled rather than wrapped. Including a box of biscuits ‘for snaffling’, several chocolate bars ‘for further snaffling’, a four pack of lager ‘for beer o’clock’, a sherbert fountain ‘for remembering your childhood’ and a pack of chocolate muffins ‘for breakfast’.

The weather was horrid, howling a gale all night and buffeting the static about but it stood up to it okay and it was a good test really as winds reached about 50mph gusts and some branches came down off trees so it should be the worst it will have to cope with. Note I said ‘should’ 😉

We drove down to the pier to have a look at the loch, it was fairly calm in terms of crashing waves but the wind was lashing spray across it rather impressively. We dropped off some rubbish, collected some water and then popped to the village hall to catch up online. It was very cold in there with various camping tourists taking refuge from the storms. A window which had been loose in it’s fitting opened and closed too hard taken by the wind and the glass smashed so we cleared that up and managed to wedge it shut.

We went home for lunch and I helped Davies bake a cake for pudding (it was his turn for Come Dine With Me) and prep his veg for later which I made some bread dough to bake when the oven was on later. The weather was still fairly exciting so we togged up and went to see how the croft was looking and check on the birds. They were all soggy and fairly miserable looking so we decided to put them into their shelters early. The river was running amazingly high with all the water washing down from the mountains and was a good 3 foot higher and way wider than usual. Quite shocking to see the difference really, places we’d been standing just 24 hours before were now well under water and the bridge was totally submerged with the road flooded. A first taste of the extremes of living here I think.

Back home again to dry clothes and the fires on (we ordered a portable gas fire too so have a heater at each end of the static now, it does a fine job of warming the whole place through so we’re confident we’ll be fine for at least one winter in there) and I helped Davies get his dinner sorted. He’d been as ambitious as Tarly cooked roast chicken, roast potatoes, mash, roasted carrots and parsnips, suet pudding, stuffing and gravy. He did a fab job and I was really impressed with him – clean plates all round :).

We were all stuffed after that and the sun had come out again so we took Bonnie and walked down to the village to wear off some of our dinner and give her some fresh air – we’d not taken her to the croft as she often swims in the river and we were scared she’d not be cautious enough to avoid it and get washed away! No one was about so after a wander round we headed back for coffee and cake and an early night snuggled up with blankets and dvds.

Monday – Weather back to normal 🙂 The washing machine at the castle was playing up so Ady strung up several large posts and washing line and we did some hand washing and pegged it out. I dangled a string bag of washing in the river to rinse it out – love this life 🙂 🙂 We met the ferry but aside from our midge jackets there was nothing for us on it. We called into see Vikki in the office as I needed to print off some paperwork, get some DG notes and also check on some Odd Job stuff so picked up the keys and met a couple of residents at the gas cage to give them gas bottles too.

Back home for lunch and then I headed down to the teashop to do some online stuff and get a food shop ordered while Ady stayed at home to meet Dave as our static is remaining static for a few weeks yet in it’s current location so we’ve steadied it a bit while it’s there and removed the landrover that was infront of it for now. Ranger Mike had his birthday so there was a bit of a gathering at the shop involving much alcohol so I went and fetched the others back down for drinks too. We collected our fruit and veg box from Jinty (she does it at wholesale plus 20% which is less than you’d pay in supermarkets and I’m pretty impressed with the quality. We’ll get all our fruit and veg that way in future).

I walked along to put the birds to bed and got the ducks in and the chickens eating out of my hand but not in bed. Eventually I decided we are babying them too much and left them to it – all fine this morning so we’ll wander up at least once a day to feed them and check on them but won’t put them to bed and let them out anymore now they all know where to go. They are big enough to see off a rat which is the only real threat to them here.

Ady cooked – chicken curry with leftovers from the roast the night before.

Tuesday – an early start as we were due to meet Ranger Mike at 7am for a Rocky Shores Biodiversity event. We were the only attendees and it was fab 🙂 We took hot water, stove, bacon and home made bread and started with coffee / tea / hot chocolate before looking at the layers of habitat around the shore, starting with the end of the grass / moss / trees and the start of the rocks with lichen, sea pink (or thrift) and the odd ferns, moving down to seaweeds and lichens and then further seaweeds. We identified bladder wrack, sprial rack, channel wrack and serated wrack aswell as sea lettuce and various lichens before moving onto creatures – we found dog whelks, sea anenomes, shorecrabs, limpets, barnacles, sea snails. We put them into a tray and looked at them with a scope which was really cool – you could see all the little tentacles on the barnacles and everything :). It was beautiful down there, sun shining, sea glimmering 🙂 We saw a seal. We looked and learnt for about 2.5 hours before deciding it was bacon o’clock and cooking some breakfast to share. We ate sitting near the otter hide and chatting more about wildlife and swapping life stories, talking about WWOOFing. Mike is really nice, quite aside from being so lucky to have access to such a knowledgable ranger he is a top bloke who we have really clicked with :).

We called it a morning at about 11am and then went off to the croft. We took everything out of the horse box again for another reorganisation and got some more clothes out for the kids, got in our washing and also gathered things like my knitting stuff and some books. Three barrow-loads later we were back at the static for lunch. Davies and Scarlett have their lego and playmobile so are very happy 🙂 And we’ve signed up for Lovefilm so have dvds on their way to us too 🙂

We’ve got Vikki coming for dinner so I need to go and sort food out and I’ve just had an email to say I have an interview for the admin job on Thursday which could well be the key to all our cash flow in one go – 12 hours a week at £10 an hour would pay for our food, diesel and water rates so other than crofting spends which should hopefully be met by the crofting profits we’ll be well on the way to making it work here. The tenants are in and paying rent which is covering our mortgage and paying my Dad back what we’ve borrowed (that will be repaid in 2 years if the tenants pay on time and stay 🙂 ). I have a mountain of paperwork for the croft which I need to start ploughing through and we have our pigs hopefully arriving next week :).

Ady and I called down to the village hall first thing to make a couple of phonecalls which meant by the time we got back to the static we barely had time to start on one:one stuff before our first visitors arrived. Scarlett did a bit of reading to me, she is so quick at stuff once she puts her mind to it. Davies and Ady were working on the writing for a book Davies is making and has done all the illustrations for but wants to fill in the words now.

First visitors were Paul & Miriam, a (rather mismatched!) couple camping here and interested in Croft 2. They came up for a cup of tea after we bumped into Miriam the night before in the village and she’d been asking all sorts of questions about Rum, crofting and living in a static. They stayed for a couple of hours chatting and although I didn’t particularly take to her I think he would fit in well on Rum. She is in her first year at uni so would not actually be able to take up a croft tenancy any time soon anyway and I suspect they would not be successful at putting together a business plan and application but it was interesting to chat to them and they went off to have a look at the crofts and came back to say they were inspired and interested so maybe I’ll be wrong and they’ll be our neighbours one day!

They left and Rachel and Marcel arrived, having cycled past half an hour earlier and said they’d call in on the way back, so more tea / coffee and chatting and we finally got to meet Marcel who was the last person on the island we’d not met yet due to him being off-island for a while and then in the house laid up recovering from a vein operation on his leg. He’s really nice and we had some interesting chats about venison processing, hide tanning and other stuff. Him and Rachel love the kids and are really up for taking them fishing and teaching them stuff. I do think that village raising a child thing might actually happen here!

They left and we just had time to make a sandwich to take with us to meet the 2pm boat – the kids and Bonnie stayed behind to eat lunch more leisurely. Lots on the boat for us – our new gas heater (which works beautifully, the static will be snug and cosy now even on the coldest, windiest days 🙂 ), our Co Op food shop, electric fencing kit ready to be put up for our pigs and lots of post. We’re just waiting now for our bushcutter so we can get strimming and marking out the land. We have a plan for the layout of the croft we want to work on further and I’m waiting for some more paperwork to come back before we can apply for grants so stuff like buying a polytunnel will need to wait awhile but things are all moving in the right direction.

We brought the shopping home and put it all away then went down to the croft. I fed the birds some leftovers, the ducks have grown loads in a week, Ady and I walked the land a bit more planning and plotting and then we dug some stuff out of the horse box we wanted before heading back to the static to have showers and get changed.

Then down to the village hall for the Ceilidh. It was to celebrate 3 years since the handover of Kinloch village from SNH to IRCT. It was a good night, lovely to already feel so much a part of the community after just 3 weeks – we had loads of declarations, drunken and sober, from people about how well we’ve fitted in and how pleased they are we’re here :). I danced a bit but Ady was outside chatting round the bonfire so only managed to join in with the bigger group dances. The kids had a great time, ending up joining in a huge water pistol fight. We left just before 1am although could have stayed longer because I worry people may feel inhibited by the kids. It carried on until past daylight this morning though apparently!

The ceilidh was in many ways a real reflection of the current state of the community though – a few people doing most of everything, several little pockets of people in different places, lots of politics but an overall feeling of working together to create something good. We definitely need more people to make it work here – 40 is just not a big enough number with a wide enough skill set for the sort of dreams that people have. It is tremendously exciting to be part of it though, we’ve definitely found where we are meant to be :). The best way to describe it is a little like Christmas Camp I guess – the sum total is way more than it’s parts, there is a certain magic in bringing such a mix of people together and there are snapshot moments and times of utter perfection and a feeling that something amazing has happened.

We walked back up the hill and had hot chocolate and watched a bit of a dvd as the kids were way too wired to go to bed despite it being past 1am, I think we all went to bed together around 2am.

This morning was a slightly later start for the kids – I was up by about 830am and sat in the doorway of the static in the sunshine with a cup of tea, Bonnie and a book looking up every few pages to admire the view. Ady went to let the birds out and I finally lured the kids out of bed with rice pudding for breakfast! It’s definitely lunch time now and I have made loads of random purchases in Jinty’s shop to wrap up in newspaper for Ady’s birthday gifts tomorrow so I need to go back up the hill with my purchases and eat 🙂

Wednesday – I worked 🙂 For money 🙂

Clare who runs the teashop had a lunch party of 60 people to cater for. Fort William Historical Society coming to have a tour of the castle and eat lunch between boats. She was planning soup, sandwiches and tea / coffee and needed help. So I was down at the teashop for 9am ready to make sandwiches. 8 loaves of bread, many times of tuna, lots of eggs, much grated cheese, lashings of mayo and packets of ham later we had eight platters of sandwiches ready to be consumed. Never underestimate how long such things can take!

The first party came in at 1pm and I served soup from the big soup kettle and then teas and coffees and we just about turned it around again to be ready for the second sitting at 145pm.

Ady and the kids had spent the morning at the static learning about Scottish history and entertaining the couple of visitors that had arrived – Vikki bearing flapjack and Georgie with her camera wanting photos of us and the static for the Rum website. They had met the ferry which had contained our diesel 🙂 but not our food shopping 🙁 Argh! Hurrah for Jinty’s shop feeding us again.

They then all came down to the teashop and the kids spent some time with Mike looking at his laptop at wildlife photos while Ady took over from me serving soup so I could dash along to the school to meet Stuart Poole, the cluster headmaster for Rum, Canna and Knoydart primary schools. It had been an incidental meeting last week at the pier which had led to him offering a chat and me thinking it mightn’t be a bad idea to make contact with ‘the enemy’ if for no other reason than to reassure them about us.

I went armed with notepad and pen and he met me armed with the Highland council leaflet on Home Education. Which I have to say is one of the better informed leaflets on the subject I have seen! He said he had been informed that children were moving to the island and he had passed back the information that they had arrived but that is as far as any contact is likely to go unless we ask for support or someone expresses concern as the kids have never been to school anywhere, let alone Scotland or specifically this area we are not leaving a trail behind to be followed up on so won’t arouse any interest really.

The school here is about to close for a year – the nursery has a vacancy that has not been filled and there is no obligation to do so but once that child (Eve, Sean & Ali’s daughter) reaches school age they will have to reopen the school again. From our point of view we require no support, are not really desperate for resources and I don’t want the scrutiny anyway but I did talk to Stuart about the possibility of flexischooling with very minimal attendance in order to keep the school open, get funding and have access to stuff for us if we needed it. He is going to speak to his superiors and see if there is any mileage in such ideas. More on that if anything comes of it. If nothing else what I achieved with that visit was reassuring the only real likely person to voice a concern about our kids and their education that we’re doing just fine and there is no need for alarm!

Back to the teashop to help clear up and then we sat in the sunshine enjoying a post-catering day beer or two. I shot off inbetween to visit Vikki as I’d missed her twice this week and was not sure if she actually wanted to talk to me about something specific or just a hello so I went and had a cup of tea with her.

It was lovely sitting in the sun with a cup of tea and then again back at the shop with a beer. I spent an hour in the teashop catching up online briefly before heading home for dinner. Ady put the birds away while I washed up and then we actually all managed a fairly early night. When Ady took Bonnie out for her last walk it started to rain really heavily and didn’t really stop til morning but in the same way as a tent is really cosy on a wet and windy night so is the static so once I was snuggled down with my hot water bottle it was lovely to drift off to sleep with the sound of the rain.

Today was Shearwater day again. We half debated not doing it as the weather was not great but we need to be tough and hardy 🙂 We did some one to one stuff – Davies and I wrote some more of his story and talked about different words to use instead of ‘said’ when writing dialogue (joked, argued, suggested, ranted, replied etc.) while Ady and Scarlett did some uppercase / lowercase stuff. We then walked down to the library to pick up some books – some early readers for Scarlett, some more Scottish history, some cookery books for the Come Dine With Me evenings and a bit of fiction for me that looked interesting.

I’ve been in touch with the library service on the mainland and am hoping to take on the little library here which is in dire need of some love and attention but has great promise and could be amazing as we have access to all the stock we want. It’s being raised at the next RCA meeting so I’ll wait til then to officially offer and ensure it doesn’t offend anyone but I’m very excited about a library! 🙂

Sandy was in his workshop (which was built as a swimming pool in the 60s and is amazing) and called us over for a chat. He said he’s really excited about us being here and has heard great things about us already and thinks we’ll be really good for the island and community 🙂 Always nice to hear. He offered some more scrap wood and metal too so we’re going to be doing just fine for building materials for all the shelters and stuff we want to get built.

Back home to drop off Bonnie and collect more clothes before heading to the pier via the Teashop to collect some leftover sandwiches from yesterday for our lunch and then we met Mike, Georgie and Ian (new resident) and boarded the Shearwater for a rather colder, wetter, windier trip than last week with far less to see but plenty of promise of more stuff in the coming weeks and months. 2 minke whales were spotted just off Rum on Tuesday this week and Ronnie the skipper was showing us all his pictures of sunfish, basking sharks, minke whales, dolphins etc from the last couple of years. It’s our plan to do the boat trip pretty much every week I think 🙂

After that we were mostly in need of hot drinks so came home to warm up. We did have plans to tackle the compost bin making today but it’s too wet to choose to be out if we don’t need to so we’ve come to the village hall to do online stuff, place our veg box order and make a couple of phonecalls instead.

Tomorrow morning we have a couple of campers interested in crofting coming up for a cup of tea to chat to us about crofting, living in a static and more. Should be interesting :).

Tuesday – we took the day off. A bit part of our new life is the ability to take time off whenever and wherever we feel like it, for whatever reason. Tuesday the reason was the sun shining and part of the island we’d not explored yet calling to us. We had diesel in the Pajero so off we went! First thing we let the chickens and ducks out and spent some time doing the one parent: one child thing. I was with Scarlett and we wrote some more in her river diary and brought that up to date then did some upper case, lower case writing stuff. Ady and Davies are reading a book from the library about Scottish History and reasons why people have left so they were learning together on that one.

We packed up lunch, did a quick run down to the village to collect water and pick up some DG notes for our diesel cans going off on Calmac and also got the keys for Harris Lodge which is open to residents then we were away.

Harris is the western tip of Rum and while the beach does not have the sandy beauty of Kilmory it certainly has drama and majesty in the landscape and views. We saw the highland cattle, feral goats, rum ponies and several deer, along with various seabirds (still not the elusive eagles!) and did some fine beachcombing. There is plenty of litter ripe for collecting but we didn’t really find anything worth bringing home. It was a lovely few hours though in the sunshine and we returned with knackered dog and children.

It was the first of our Come Dine With Me evenings and Scarlett had asked to go first. She wanted to make pizza for main course and after looking through a cookbook decided to make profiteroles for dessert. She then chose a starter too and went for potatoe wedges with dips. All from scratch! 🙂 I helped and guided but she did an amazing job of the whole thing, particularly the choux pastry. She had to substitute condensed milk for cream as the shop didn’t have any cream (end of the week dairy produce delivery wise!) but it was all delicious :).

Ady and Davies put the birds to bed while Tarly and I cleared up and I wandered down to the village with the intention of catching up online but failed as there was an educational group using the hall for a slideshow so I sat outside and quickly downloaded emails before heading back home.

I’ve now run out of time to catch up today so the title is a lie and this is just Tuesday!

Yesterday we all went up to let the chickens and ducks out together. The ducks were braver and ventured out fairly quickly, lured by a big tray of water. The chickens took some persuading and we grabbed them in the end. They decided they actually prefer the duck hut to the chicken coop but they don’t get to make decisions like that so we soon put them straight!. We tied Bonnie up as we want to introduce her to the birds slowly and let her know they are not for her to play with! Ady and I then installed a fence around the birds, about 10m square. For our first proper fencing task we were pretty pleased with the results 🙂

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The birds all seem pretty happy and although they are still pretty people-shy now I am sure the kids will soon remedy that!

We went home for lunch and then did some errands in the car – we had to drop off some washing to the castle and get that started, fill up water containers, check a pile of stuff we’d been told was up for grabs in the castle walled garden (more fence posts, some fencing wire and a couple of corrugated sheets, perfect for us) and collect a landrover roof we’ve been given as a pig arc. We also arranged to collect another chicken house soon that is in someone’s garden as a goose house ready for when our goose and gander arrive in July. So pleased to have housed all our livestock for nothing :).

We borrowed some stuff from the library – need to find out more about that, it’s an outreach branch of the highlands library service and we get fairly regular deliveries of stuff – books, dvds etc but it is in dire need of organising and sorting, something I’d be only too happy to do.

We did some online stuff – ordered a brush cutter, gas heater, fencing tool and various other bits before wandering back up to get dinner going (Ady) and put the birds to bed (me). I sent the kids home before me and rang my parents for a proper catch up chat. I am missing my Dad lots, especially when doing stuff like building the fence and bird houses. Not that he’d be particularly helpful infact probably more critical but I am used to doing stuff like that alongside him or at least with his input.

I talked until it was nearly dark and I was getting really cold and then walked back home. Ady had fed the kids and they were all watching Kung Fu panda. We ate and it was another late night.

Inevitably followed by another late morning – today’s pledge is to be setting the alarm for early and getting our arses in gear as our plan of spending 90 minutes each with a child (swapping over each day) has not got off the ground really. This morning we were even more taken by surprise by Ali appearing with Eve while we were still not dressed or breakfasted :oops:. They stayed for a couple of hours and had a couple of coffees and chats, Eve got to meet Humph and all of Scarlett’s soft toys and I got some tips for food shopping. They left and we had lunch.

Davies and I did some more of his story book, with lots of talking about spelling, punctuation and writing generally. Scarlett and Ady read a chapter of a book together. We left the kids and dog at home while Ady and I did the taking the rubbish and recycling to the pier, collecting water and emptying the loo run. We also collected some of the stuff from the walled garden and brought it up to the static ready to take to the croft. I think that’s why I’m not calling it ‘home’ yet actually – we still have a dual location for home!

We collected the kids and have come back down to the village to exchange library stuff for more, order some more online stuff, pay for a gas bottle (for our hopefully arriving soon gas heater), email calmac to book on empty jerry cans one way and full ones the other, check what time I am working on Wednesday (I’m helping Claire in the tea shop as she has a big lunch to cater for 60 people and needs a hand, at £7 an hour and as much food as I can eat that works for me :)) and try and so some photo uploading and blogging.

The day started well with Bonnie not pooing in her crate overnight 🙂

After breakfast and several cups of tea Ady and I headed down to the croft to continue with chicken and duck house making. We finished the roof of the chicken house and managed to improve the design a bit too. I still don’t like the way the black sheeting looks and have plans to cover it with some sort of wattled panels at some point but at least it is watertight and should keep them safe, warm and dry.

The duck house was another matter. We went on another scouting mission and discovered a big orange feeder on our own croft but found nothing suitable for a duck house floor. So we resorted to our original plan for using a wheelie bin on it’s side. Several ways of securing it and disguising it were tried and tested, to rather hilarious results. At one point I was rendered totally helpless with laughter. I love working with Ady and our Chuckle Brothers style efforts in all things never fail to make us laugh :). I was heard to declare I’ve changed my mind and would rather be Margo than Barbara but Ady came up trumps with a plan to bed the wheelie bin in, Teletubbies stylee by covering it with clumps of earth with reeds and grass. Fingers crossed it will take and continue to grow thus being a sort of underground, of the field type dwelling. Or something! It looks good though 🙂 I tried to disguise the door by tying some twine to it and weaving twigs onto it, still a work in progress but it looks better than a blue wheelie bin lid!

We broke for lunch inbetween and caught up with the kids. Scarlett is creating a cafe from a shoebox (her walking boots arrived yesterday) complete with little tables and chairs made from sticks, pictures on the walls and plates of food made from cardboard. It’s fab to see her being so creative, just the sort of thing I used to love doing at her age. She was telling us her plans for it all and using phrases like ‘long term I want to…’ and even ‘long, long term my plan is….’ which she has obviously heard me using when talking about our croft and house build. Love that 🙂 Along with her fishing, learning from Mike and Bonnie training she is having a ball here. Davies has been plotting his story and got his new story writing book yesterday. Next week I want to spend some more time with them on various stuff to consolidate a little, but for now they are being fabulously self sufficient, exploring, making friends, playing with the dog and getting used to their new lives.

At 5pm ish we headed down into the village – Clare had had some of her stuff delivered today and we’d offered to give her a hand moving it down to her yurt. Davies and I did some online stuff in the tearoom while Ady took Clare and her stuff down to the yurt. She was so grateful and bought us a beer and then put a tenner behind the counter in the shop for us to buy more drink. I gave her a kiss and told her it really wasn’t necessary and next time we do her a favour, it is just that – a favour, but we accepted this time and topped up our beer and wine reserves at home :).

We caught up with Rachel and Georgie at the shop – Rachel had been on Richard (SNH Reserve Manager)’s case about some rubbish he was burning which was actually perfectly decent fence posts and other stuff we could use. He’d rebuffed her and then Ady and I went to speak to him about some old landrover roofs that are kicking about and would be perfect pig arks. He turned us down but we stayed for a little chat. A while later he called Ady back over and said actually we could have one and that he’d put aside some fence posts for us too. The politics with SNH are huge here, because they used to do everything but have given over control to the IRCT and no longer want to be doing it all Richard seems to turn every request down by default. I totally understand that stance but I think being obviously helpful to others, respectfully asking for things rather than taking them plus ensuring we introduced ourselves to Richard, his wife and daughter and chatting in a friendly manner whenever we see them has hopefully marked us out as happy to help rather than just take.

We then bumped into Fliss & Sandy who said they have some stuff for us too – not sure what yet but we’ll go and pick it up tomorrow and they offered use of any tools we might need to borrow too. Again, helping Sandy move loads of stuff on our second day here seems to be paying off. Give and take…

Then to the ferry! Not only were our ducks (five white girls), hens (ten rhode island reds) and a cockerel (speckeldy, not sure what he is) there but our fencing supplies were too – 20 posts, a reel of stock fencing wire and a tub of staples. Hurrah! We loaded everything on to our trailer and went back to the shop via filling up water containers to finish our beers. We bought the kids a coke each and met the latest people to arrive on the ferry – two builders over to renovate the old farmhouse and staying with Georgie and Mike on a B&B basis as the castle is full, and Ian and Kate, the islands newest residents. They have spent lots of time here before but have moved over properly full time from today. They have bought the Tattie House and are renovating it as a B&B. Ian is the internet whizz so we’re hoping to chat to him about getting broadband sorted to the croft.

We collected the posts from Richard and learnt we can also take an old chicken house that is no longer needed by anyone. It will either do as the goose house or if the wheelie bin proves too small for the ducks then they can have that and the geese can have the wheelie bin. Hurrah for cast off rubbish 🙂

We took the birds up to the croft and clipped the chickens wings (the ducks had already been done) – we’ll sort out fencing around them in the next few days but to begin with they can totally free range, we just don’t want the ducks flying off to the river! The kids were delighted to be having birds again, they have so missed their chooks this last year or so. They all went in to their respective new homes with food and water and we’ll see how they are doing in the morning. Aside from being a bit people-shy they all seem nice and healthy so hopefully this is the start of our beginner livestock :).

We rang my parents and the kids had a quick chat each with Granny and Grandad – we lost signal before I managed to talk to them so I’ll ring back again tomorrow but it was nice for the kids to talk to them. They said they both sounded like they were crying 🙁 It must be hard for them having us so far away and pretty much uncontact-able aside for in an emergency. I suspect all their friends are asking how we’re doing and they are having to say they don’t actually know.

Back home 😉 for dinner, another Goddard o’clock eating unfortunately, we will get better at that – probably! We’re loving the genny for the ability to watch a dvd and charge stuff up while eating dinner AND we discovered today that the sockets all round the static work on 12v stuff which means our tablelamps will work with a 12v bulb in them. Now need to research what other 12v stuff we can buy! It will all drain the battery (which is currently being trickle charged with a solar panel but can be topped up with the genny if required) but means stuff can work without having to fire everything up.

Today was about being crofters 🙂 Now we are official it felt even more right to be spending the day on our land. We listened to Popmaster and then headed to the croft to start making a chicken coop. We didn’t have much of a plan really although we’d been inspired by our John Seymour book to try something with branches and feed bags (or in our case black plastic sheeting which we happened to have with us) so went on a bit of a forage to see what we could find. We uncovered various bits of old fence posts, gates and other scrap wood from around our own croft and the neighbouring field and paths, all abandoned, no use to anyone stuff. After some debate and head scratching we came up with a design plan, much changed as we went along but ending up with two ends made of two posts attached together with a rock tent peg, we braced that with a long stick across the top and then two side braces lower down. We dug some holes to sink the posts into and have knocked some pegs in around each leg to steady it further. We then formed a base about half way up so the chickens can go up into it to roost (no issue with foxes here and although techinically birds of prey or even otters could predate chickens it is more the rats that will pose a problem so having them off the ground should help with that.

We broke for lunch and to meet the 2pm ferry which we were hoping would be laden with stuff for us – and it was! In the post came our 3in1oil for the static door, a stapler (no staples though – d’oh!), as parcels came walking boots for Ady, Scarlett and I, a whiteboard / noticeboard for me, trugs for the croft (animal feed, water, general carting about of stuff including compostable waste), a book for Davies and a funnel for Ady. Most importantly though our food shopping came from the CoOp! 🙂 So roast chicken tonight, lasagne tomorrow and toad in the hole on Sunday along with chocolate supplies and pizza toppings – hurrah! Our diesel didn’t arrive though so our planned trip to Harris on Sunday to beach comb and see more of the island won’t be happening as we’re down to a quarter of a tank. We rang the petrol station back on the mainland to chase it and learnt they are short staffed so there is a hold up. Argh! Another learning curve, don’t wait until you’re almost out to reorder. We helped load the shop delivery on to a different van and then came back via filling our water containers to the croft.

This afternoon was less productive in terms of out put but still very busy with the chicken coop. I am still cherishing an idea of looking more rustic and organic but realistically we need to just get it waterproof. We’ve had some more ideas this evening though and it will definitely be finished tomorrow before the chickens arrive. Hopefully we’ll make a duck one on a smaller basis too. Fencing arrives sometime next week but until then they will totally freerange with fingers crossed we don’t lose any.

We called time at 630pm and came back to put the roast chicken in the oven and head down to the shop to see if anyone was out. Nobody was so we did a bit of shopping and came back home. After I got the comment on here about calling the static ‘home’ I was also picked up on it by Norman here so from now on I’ll be calling it home 🙂

Wednesday -boat day. We called into the IRCT office to collect some DG (dangerous goods) notes to send our empty diesel jerry can off on the ferry with and have it sent back full. Our first red diesel order, we are islanders now :). We then went along to the campsite shower block to learn how to change over the gas bottles for the showers as that is to be one of our Odd Jobs. That done we took the empty bottle along to the pier, did an inventory on the bottles in the cage and took a full one along to the campsite. More showers from campers mean more work (and therefore money) for us :).

We waited for the ferry to come in as we were hoping for food shopping and maybe some other parcels on it (small stuff like a whiteboard for the static, blue tack, a stapler, walking boots, socks for Ady). None of it came but we did get more dog food and the blue tack along with a parcel from Sally containing more trousers for Scarlett. She is now properly clothed for the time being :).

We helped unload the truck for others and helped load some stuff for the castle into the castle van – no idea whether it goes down well or not that we are helping lots but its sort of what we do anyway.

There was a meeting in the Village Hall to show architects plans for a bunkhouse and conversions for the Byre – hoping to encorporate a shop, tearoom, teaching space, office, showers and toilets and four self contained flats. All a long way off in the future although the bunkhouse is hoped to happen next year.

We had some lunch and spent some time in the teashop online before going to the croft. We have an emergency plan for the chickens and ducks housing of the front of the horse box for the chickens and a wheelie bin for the ducks (that sounds awful we found it online and it is a really good idea!) so we took everything out of the horse box and reloaded it again to keep the front clear to section off. That meant more stuff ended up coming back to the static (it’s getting heavier daily!) and I went back to start cooking dinner while Ady finished putting stuff in.

We had a film on while we ate and then a fairly early night all round.

Thursday Today started with showers all round – the shower in the static is pretty good, we’ve yet to calculate how much gas we’re using but water is no problem. We’re paying water rates of £6.25 a month – we offered as we are taking water from the village currently in big containers each day. Long term we’ll use water from the river so won’t have to pay but we wanted to be seen to be contributing. It gets nice and hot and is fairly powerful, the shower tray is pretty deep and has a plug so the kids are able to sit in it and almost bathe really which is good.

We walked down to the village to catch up with Mike and check times for the Shearwater cruise today and then took some lunch down to eat at the pier. The Shearwater is the boat that runs alongside the Calmac ferries and comes from Skye for tourist stops several times a week but also does stuff like take the post once a week to Soay (little island with three residents just off Skye). Mike has an arrangement to take people on the Thursday ferry across to Soay and do a wildlife tour. Free to residents 🙂 So a 3 hour trip from Rum to Soay with the Soay people rowing out to collect the mailsack and then back again. They have sighted all sorts of seabirds and marine life including minke and humpback whales, basking sharks, killer whales and various dolphins. We only saw birds today but had great views of gannets, Great skua, shearwaters, guillemots, gulls and kittiwakes, razorbills and shags. It was just beautiful out there, sun shining, water lapping at the boat and our own personal ranger giving us a commentary, showing us his books and lending us binoculars :). We’re planning to do it pretty much every week 🙂

Back at the shore we checked on Bonnie who we’d left in her crate for the first time during the day – she was fine 🙂 Then back down to the village hall again for the Residents Association Meeting where we were officially welcommed and signed our tenancy agreement – we are offical 🙂

Today was the May Day Flower Ramble with Ranger Mike. After breakfast we headed down to the village hall to meet Mike and the other attendee (just one person today).

It was billed as a 3 hour gentle ramble around the village and coast to explore the early flowers but as there was only a small group we ended up looking at other stuff too. We saw various plants and flowers, heathers and grasses and tried a few wild herbs. Mike showed us a greylag goose nest and we looked at the eggs (four) the goose is sitting on. We saw oystercatchers, red throated divers, eider ducks and various gulls, looked at some insectivorous plants, learnt about gorse and various other stuff.

The weather here (continues to be) has be wonderful – we have all caught the sun today.

We introduced ourselves to Morag (the schoolteacher) who seems quite nice if a bit teacher-ish ;). She is on her third border collie so was more effusive about Bonnie than anything else :).

The walk finished over by the otter hide on the beach so we all sat and chatted awhile. Bonnie was exhausted – 3 hour rambles are too much for wee puppies ;). We pottered back in our own time and went up to the static for lunch. Then we left the kids and Bonnie there with walkie talkies (which cover certainly the whole of the village and pier up to our croft) so they could do some drawing, reading, writing and stuff. Ady and I first filled up our water containers, took our rubbish to the pier and then went to introduce ourselves to Ronnie who runs the Shearwater boat trips and will take islanders out on a wildlife tour on a Thursday with Mike giving commentary and providing spotter books, binoculars etc. We’re planning to do that on Thursday this week and potentially most weeks as the boat drops tourists on Rum and then goes across to deliver the post to Soay (small island off Skye) which is when Mike does his wildlife tour, a three hour-ish round trip depending on what wildlife is out there. Previous spots include whales (minke and humpback), sharks (basking), dolphins (bottlenose, risso, short beak) poipoise, sunfish and a wide variety of sea virds including shearwaters and eagles. Can’t wait 🙂

We also met Carl from Eigg who was over here doing a bit of work but we’d heard of when we were on Eigg as he is a bit of an eco warrior and self builder. He was away on the Shearwater but offered help with static siting in the future.

Next we had a foiled attempt at starting our Odd Job role by replacing a broken kerosene tank lid but the new one doesn’t fit. We walked back to the castle to speak to Vikki about it but she was working from home as the castle workmen were too noisy. I thought we could take a short cut through the woods to her house but it turned out we couldn’t so that was a rather hilarious walk 😆

We checked in with her and then returned to the kerosene tank to jot down some more information about the make and model and then Mike appeared declaring it beer o’clock and offering liquid refreshment. That seemed like the very best plan at 530 on a sunny afternoon so we joined him and got the kids to come down with Bonnie too.

A couple of drinks and chats with the locals later Ady and the kids have returned to the static and I’m having a quick catch up online.

I did blog a post last night and intended to upload it today but it appears to be lost somewhere on my laptop (I’ve checked it’s pockets and down the side of the sofa but it is still unfound). So that can’t be told.

It blathered on about river dipping, book binding and stuff anyway. All good 🙂

The kids and I made two books each under Claire’s splendid tutiledge – one small square book with pages that unfold when you open them and one more traditionally bound using sewing. Davies was amazing, worked til 11pm to finish both, taking great pride in creating the entire book all by himself 🙂 Scarlett made the first one and most of the second one but got fed up of the sewing bit so went off with Ady to walk Bonnie instead.

Claire is lovely, lives in a yurt and runs the teashop on island. It was fab to have our first visitor and she stayed for dinner.

Today has been a mish mash of a day. We spent some time this morning with the kids – I worked with Scarlett to start a River Diary documenting what she sees and catches in the river, while Ady and Davies made a calendar to count down to a DS game coming out. That involved lots of writing, talking about days and weeks and months and why we have 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc (the st,nd,rd,th bits). Davies then asked about why the days of the week are called what they are called so later we looked that up and learnt about various stuff to do with that. I talked to Ranger Mike about spotter sheets and ID books for the river life and he’s looking something out to lend us and suggested we talk to the uni lecturer currently over here with a student group as they are studing freshwater ecology and would probably be up for letting Tarly tag along on one of their sessions. I’ll sort that tomorrow 🙂

We came down to the teashop to order a few bits – blue tack, a noticeboard for the static, some socks for Ady, some oil for the static door, some food shopping. And to work out the best option for track for the croft and chicken and duck housing. We didn’t get very far but did fire off some emails to suitable companies and sent an email out to the community thanking everyone for their welcome and kindness to us so far and asking for any surplus material anyone may have suitable for chicken or duck or pig housing for sale or barter.

I spent some time chatting to Ali who was looking after her daughter Eve and Fliss’ daughter Joss and struggling with the twosome. She was telling me the woes of the nursery closing and looking like she was having a really bad day. I felt for her and have half a plan to offer some childcare swaps at some point (she’d be great for my two to spend time with, particularly Tarly as she does deer post mortems etc) but I’ll wait awhile before offering.

We realised we’d missed the ferry coming in which we felt bad about as we were expecting a fair bit to be on it but after chasing around we realised nothing had come in on it for us anyway. We went back to the static for lunch and then left the kids there doing some drawing and playing with Bonnie. They later went off to do some river dipping as we bought Scarlett a new net from the shop so she is loving catching tiny fish, observing them and recording them in her diary before letting them go again 🙂 Was so lovely to drive up to the static later on and see the kids and dog standing by the river looking so happy and free 🙂

Ady and I popped in to see Vikki and collected some paperwork – we offered to make a contribution towards water and road so that had been put in writing and to collect stuff for our first Odd Job which is to replace the lid of a kerosene tank that got damaged in the storms in December. We’ll do that tomorrow.

We stopped to chat to Mike (ranger) and Georgie for a while too. Really like them 🙂

Then we went to check the ferry as it came back in and wave off Dave and Sylvia who are off island til Friday for her cancer treatment. We also bumped into Sue from Eigg who was over for a training session at the school and got introduced to Stuart who is the cluster headmaster for the small isles. We’ve arranged to meet him sometime next week for a chat as I intend being very out and proud about our Home Ed status to alleviate any concerns the islanders may have.

We called in back at the teashop again but the internet was down anyway. We chatted to Claire and Steve for a while and then went back to the static. I had a go with the wonderwasher but was unsuccessful and had a fair bit of washing to get through so decided to nip down to the castle to do a load instead (further honing of technique required). I shoved it all in and bumped into Georgie and Rachel working out how to get Rachel and her cat back home again (the other end of the village) so offered them a lift. That meant getting shown round Rachel’s house and sitting in her sunny garden with a white wine spritzer, joined by Georgie and Mike 🙂 all very lovely.

I left there (rather reluctantly) and popped to Jinty’s shop for food supplies and change for the drier, swapped the washing over and went back to the static. I cooked dinner while the others enjoyed a film (generator on!) and we chatted. I then left them to it and came back down to collect the washing (now all clean, dry and folded, hurrah!) and am having a quick catch up online in the village hall otherwise I get too behind on blogging.

I need to update my CV to apply for the admin job but am having a real mental block about how to do it. Tomorrow we’re attending a May Day Flower Ramble with Mike seeing the flowers on the island and Ady and I are doing our Odd Job stuff. Wednesday Ady is helping someone who is moving off the island in the hopes of gathering some offcast stuff for chicken housing while the kids and I attend a meeting about an architect feasibility study on uses for the old byre into a community trust revenue producing enterprise, plus we’re hopefully gathering lots of stuff from the ferry. Thursday is RCA meeting in the evening (Rum Community Association, basically residents meeting), Friday is cobble together anything and everything possible to make chicken housing with. We’er waiting on some money to clear and then buying a strimmer / brush cutter to start clearing the croft land a little.

At least three times a day I stop what I am doing, look around me, take a deep breath and am overwhelmed by how happy I am to be here. The kids feel the same. Ady is still rather overwhelmed by everything but I am very hopeful he’s getting to the same place as the rest of us.

Friday – always a good day I find 🙂 We’re getting our heads around the rhythm of the days and weeks here, it all seems to revolve around the ferry coming. In the summer that is Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday – twice each day. From next week we’ll also have the Shearwater coming across from Skye, I think daily which will bring people rather than stuff.

The post gets collected in a mail sack and delivered to you, usually left on your drivers seat of your car rather than through a letterbox as most of us don’t have letter boxes anyway! Anything else that comes in on the ferry arrives on the back of the Calmac pickup which gets driven onto the island while the islanders flock around it grabbing their stuff and then drives back on to the ferry and goes away again. Unless it’s a huge load in which case it stays between ferries.

In the morning we went to the tearoom but got distracted by helping Mike (the ranger) out with some strimmer maintenance. Vikki appeared and we had a chat and she invited us for coffee on Saturday. Davies and Scarlett went back off up to the static and Bonnie and I went with Ali (the deer project worker, wife of Sean) and Eve (their daughter, aged 3) up to see where their house was. I checked emails and did a bit of online stuff and then we headed down to the 2pm ferry. We had some post – registration forms to join the doctors surgery, the dog food delivery from RP and the wonderwasher (with edible contents) from Bob & Katy 🙂 🙂 Post makes us feel special 🙂

It was sleeting down at the ferry and bloody freezing so no one was hanging about. There are three people on the island we’ve not met yet – Caroline (wife of Richard, Reserve Manager for SNH), Morag (the school teacher) and Marcel (deer stalker, partner of Rachel). We’ve passed Caroline and Morag but they have not made the effort to say hello and I was not totally sure who they were. I intend making a point of introducing myself next time we pass them. Marcel is currently recovering from an op on his leg so is not about much but is rather antisocial apparently anyway.

Ady got helping Dave who is the harbourmaster unloading deliveries for the shop and then offered to help unload back at the village so I went back into the teashop to do some more online stuff and wait for him. When he finally got to me there was a power cut so no internet which meant we didn’t manage to do the couple of online things we had to do together. We did have a chat with Fliss about settling in, life in general and Home Ed though which was nice and she extended an invite to the kids to go down and watch TV etc at her house whenever they like. We then chatted to Rachel (Catering Manager at the castle, one of the IRCT directors currently).

Davies and Scarlett appeared back and having intended not to go to the shop we ended up going for a beer. Which became several ;). It was a nice couple of hours though with many of the islanders turning out for an early afternoon Friday beer. We chatted lots to Mike (the ranger) who has offered to do loads of stuff with the kids education wise. He is really passionate about passing on his knowledge anyway, loves the idea of outdoors based education and is thrilled to find interested kids in nature, wildlife and the environment and also gets to justify his ranger post the more take up of his services there are. We also talked about wider community stuff and threw about some ideas for things like film nights and other events. All exciting stuff 🙂

Scarlett spent most of the time helping Jinty restock the shop from the shed outside and earned herself a pin badge for doing so. Jinty is quite a hard nut to crack but Scarlett has utterly won her over :). Davies chatted to Mike about an idea for a Viking story based on Rum he has and picked Mike’s brains for some history. He then told Claire (runs the tea shop, lives in a yurt) about his plans and she offered to come up and teach him book binding so he can make his own books to write his story in. Davies has a plan to sell his stories to the tourists in books he makes himself 🙂 I am utterly LOVING the effect Rum is having on the kids, everything I hoped for and more :).

We went back to the static having realised we’d left it far too late for our planned dinner and bought some bacon and pesto instead to have pasta. We put the genny on for a bit to help with lighting and watch a film while we ate and then all had an earlyish night together.

Saturday – we started the day with a bit of a roundup of the highs and lows of our first week on the island, it feels like much longer already! It’s been a rollercoaster but it already feels more like home that Sussex did for the last few months. We’ve met most people and feel that we’ve made friends and are already a part of the community. We have definitely spent more time (and cash!) at the shop than we planned (it becomes the island pub of an evening with people gathering to drink and chat from about 6pm onwards) but it has been really valuable to get to know people, Bonnie has done all her socialising with the other island dogs and it’s allowed us to do lots of networking.

First ferry on Saturday is at 9am and we were expecting a wheelbarrow from the hardware store in Mallaig but Dave had already said he’d grab it for us if it arrived. It did, and he delivered that along with our second gas bottle to the static for us. Dave has been an utter hero, giving us stuff (including a little trailer) and managing our whole static move. We’ve been buying him beers and coffees and from talking to others know better than to offer him cash but will find a way of rewarding him for all he’s done for us. Dave is going to train Ady to do the harbourmaster job as relief when he is not around which will be some extra cash and comes with free wellies 😉

We had a fairly lazy start to the morning and then headed down to Vikki’s via filling up the water containers. We’ve offered to pay water rates while we’re using the village supply so that will be £6 a month 🙂 I had my first shower in the static which was lovely, once we get the toilets sorted properly it will be such a cosy home. Currently we have our two camping loos, one marked for pee and one for poo which is working well but we still have the porcelein loo in the bathroom which would work if plumbed in so it’s rather cramped in there.

Vikki’s house is lovely, a three bedroom cottage with sea views. It was a social visit and she confessed she has been really looking forward to us arriving. I think it is partly that she has a professional interest in us both being here and in succceeding but I also think she has earmarked us, particularly me, as likeminded potential friends. Which is something she feels a real lack of living here. After a bit of general chit chat we got down to the nitty gritty of listing all the islanders by name and sharing our thoughts on them. Vikki started it, which was good as I think if we’d done I’d have worried about it going further than her garden. Her take on people is surprisingly close to my initial impressions although as she is a rather different personality to me I can see how some people she’s clashed with I’ll be fine with and vice versa. She was really pleased about me intending to apply for the admin role although she thinks Fliss is also applying (and will therefore probably get it, she is more qualified with experience in bookkeeping and knows how the trust works) but said she would far rather work with me!

Davies and Scarlett went off with Bonnie exploring. They have found an old camp that previous island kids have created and added to and is now claimed as theirs. They are having a ball here, so much freedom, so many interesting people and places to explore and a puppy to tag along with them. 🙂

We sat in the sun in Vikki’s garden for a couple of hours and arranged to go in to the office on Monday as we have an odd job person task to do, various paperwork to complete, need to start paying road fund and water etc.

Our chickens and ducks arrive next Saturday on the ferry so we need to have a home sorted ready to put them in. Having trapped our horse box on the croft land the other side of the road blocked by the static even if we did get a shed sent across in time (highly unlikely, a week is not nearly long enough to arrange such things here, plus it’s more money than we have, plus the hardware store in Mallaig and the Travis Perkins in Fort William close on Saturday afternoons so we couldn’t get hold of them anyway to place an order) we couldn’t actually get it down to the croft other than by hand. Vikki offered use of her chicken coop as a short term plan for the chooks (we have feed and bedding so can clean it out and re stock it) and we’ll donate eggs in payment :). The ducks can come on to the croft land straight away as we have a wheelie bin which can serve as a perfect temporary duck house laid on it’s side with the lid propped open and then closed up at night :). We just need to dig one of the drainage ditches out a little to create a pond for them. Sorted!

We then went to the teashop, the kids had cake and we had tea / coffee (free to residents if you buy food :)), we spent some time online ordering walking boots for Ady, Scarlett and I (something we’d failed to realise we’d need but have quickly cottoned on to so ordered nice and cheap from Sports Direct so we can take Mike up on his offer to take us walking around Rum wildlife spotting). We placed a CoOp food order too and I got some unperfumed shampoo and conditioner ordered for me as stocks are running low and I’d failed to find that anywhere before we came over. Still need to get our car tax sent back (have now missed the end of this month, poo!). We plotted alternative options for the chicken, duck and pigs housing and looked at corrugated sheeting online which we think will be the best plan.

Dave, (Static hero, harbourmaster, chainsaw sculpturor) Sylvia (his wife) and Andrew (their baby) arrived so we joined them in the sunshine for a cup of tea and chat, learnt the very romantic story of how they met and the kids went off to play in the park. We keep getting distracted by tea shop, shop and chatting but I guess we need to adjust to island time anyway and this is all very valuable networking and friendship forming stuff that is always going to be more worthwhile than anything else we can do. Dave had delivered our second gas bottle and our newly arrived wheelbarrow to the croft for us.

Back to the static and we headed down to the horsebox to gather some more stuff. We’ve all been wearing a small selection of clothes so were able to dig out more along with our duvets and the hot water bottles, an electric camping heater and various other ‘essentials’. We trekked back up again and deduced that the smell coming from the fridge was indeed, as feared, coming from the chicken. Turns out time on the ferry, then sitting around in the car while we sorted the static on Wednesday , then going in a fridge which kept getting turned on and off will make a chicken go off – who’d have thought? 😉 We debated taking a risk but decided chucking away a £6 chicken now and finding a different dinner option is way preferable to D&V disposal of said chicken in 48 hours time in a static with no plumbing. So I made pizza dough and we left it to prove while popping down to the shop. We needed to dump some rubbish (including chicken) at the skip on the pier – our long term plan is to burn any rubbish we can, reuse anything we can and excepting plastic packaging or recyclable stuff not need to use the rubbish skips at the pier but all in good time. We also filled up our water and then called in the shop for a drink.

Back at the static we put the genny on and the kids watched a film while they ate and we used the camping heater at the other end of the static to warm up the bedrooms. It worked quite well but drank fuel and we’re planning getting a portable gas heater instead – something like this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PORTABLE-GARAGE-WORKSHOP-SHED-GREENHOUSE-GAS-HEATER-4-2KW-/380396297368#vi-content to have down in the bedroom area of the static for the colder times. Warmth, food and the ability to get clean are going to be basic requirements we’ve decided and that is where we’ll spend our limited resources above anything else.

The drive along the village road from the pier to the shop was just stunning, Loch Scresort was calm and mirror-like, a couple of small yachts were docked in and the sun was going down. We watched some campers sitting outside their tents admiring the view and decided that while they must be feeling so very lucky to be on holiday here we actually live here :). There have been more than enough moments like that this first week to balance out the frequent ‘WTF have we done?!’ moments, thankfully 🙂

Sunday – I’ll blog a little of our morning although we are not very far into the day yet. Ady headed off to take some stuff down to the horse box and bring some more back up. Bonnie is very attached to him, probably because he is the one getting up with her first each morning. I’ve ordered a couple of kindle books to help me get to grips with her as I have spent the least time with her and want to ensure she is bonded with me too. I suspect in terms of all the advice on training we have already made loads of mistakes with our rather crazy first week with her but she is loving running with the other dogs on the island, adores the kids and has made what could have been a really hard first week for them an exciting adventure so everything else can fall into place later.

I spent an hour chatting to the kids about Home Education. I believe so strongly in the approach we have followed so far but our lives are changing and I want to be realistic about how that impacts on Home Ed. We have had various offers of help from people to spend time with the kids and teach them things and I am very aware we will be under scrutiny living in such a small community in a highly visual way. Tourists are aware of us and ask questions and there is the school teacher on the island who will no doubt have an opinion of what we are doing. I want to be able to confidently appease any challengers along with of course continuing to meet my first priority which is delivering an appropriate education to my kids. With that in mind, we talked about how best to move forward from here. I explained that in school the end result is qualifications to prove your level of education but that has never been my intention, I think that deciding what you want to learn and then learning it is the right path, getting qualifications if required for a specific purpose. I think it is still far too early to be fretting about what they want to do / be when they grow up but I also don’t want them to have missed chances to learn things when they have cropped up. I am aware that our previous method of spending all our time together and finding interesting / educational opportunities wherever we can is not as easy to pull off now we live on an island with no access to museums, galleries, cities etc but we do live on a national nature reserve, rich in wildlife, geological interest, full of interesting and talented people with many skills and with a constant stream of other people all of whom may be able to teach us things. It is ensuring we tap into all of those opportunities which may take a little more input from me and a little more forward planning than we have previously had to employ.

We talked about ways to cover the next step – both the children want to improve their reading and writing along with generally following their interests so we have decided to spend an hour or so every morning after breakfast together on something, as decided by them. I have offered workbooks or similar as online stuff is not going to be as easy to access at the moment or that they find something that interests them and we work on that instead. I know my preferance is for a project of their choosing that encorporates literacy but it needs to be their decision. Thankfully they both want the same. Claire is coming up today to teach us how to make books by bookbinding which is something I did years ago in college but have long since forgotten so will be great for all of us and then the kids plan to make a series of books they created themselves containing all the things they want to learn about.

The current list is as follows: Davies – wants to write a story about vikings on Rum, he has a plan for the plot and some characters and would like to also make an animation of the story. He wants to sell the books to tourists and maybe show his film in the village hall. He’s found a book people book about story writing and was inspired by a book I made when I was about his age. This will need further researching and we found a Horrible Histories Vikings book in the horse box which he is going to read aloud to me as a starting point, along with collecting drawings and character ideas in one of his books and spending time talking to Mike about the vikings here on Rum and looking at locations for his story as we explore the island. He’ll keep an account of all of this process as he goes so it will end up as a massive project with various bits of evidence of what he’s learnt and different skills involved.

Davies would also like to do a proper survival sleepout with me. He’s going to research and plan the whole expidition including plotting a route on a map, working out what we need to take with us and packing it, planning the best time to do it with regard to weather conditions etc and he wants to head to one of the bothies with an overnight outside in a shelter we’ve built too, maybe some foraging. We probably have all the necessary resources for this already except a map so we’ll pick one of those up from the shop. Everything he does towards it will be documented in one of his made books too.

Scarlett wants to do a river life project on Rum. She wants to do river dipping and identify, measure and photograph / draw / record her findings. She wants to do it over different weather and seasonal conditions to compare results. She wants to learn more about the different life cycles and behaviour patterns of what she finds and also look at different stretches of river. She would also like to do similar in the islands lochs.

Scarlett wants to do the marine trips with Mike and learn about the sealife around Rum. She has realised how unique where we live is and wants to become an expert on all things water related in the area :). All of this will be recorded in her books she’ll make.

Scarlett would also like to learn various things from various islanders. She wants to learn about soap making from Fliss. She would also like to learn more sewing, crochet and knitting from me having seen the stuff Fliss sells in her shop.

Ali and Martyn who manage the deer research project are people Scarlett wants to spend time with. She’d love to be at a postmortem and learn more about all the work they do here with the deer. She’ll record all of this in her books.

Both the children would love to do a Come Dine With Me style activity now we have our own kitchen again. This will involve them planning and cooking a meal for the whole family each and getting rated on it. Julie & Chris do it with Jack, Maisie and Lorna and we’ve been really keen to do it ourselves. We’ll get our recipe books up from the horse box and do that too.

They are both keen to start learning more about wildlife photography and there is no lack of subject matter or people who know about it here so that is on their lists. They would also like to learn more about astronomy now we have all the starts displaying for us with no light pollution, actually so would I so that is something else to add to our list.

This is an amazing place full of amazing possibilities and I want to make sure we grab everything we can. A breakfast meeting for the four of us every day will be a great way of managing all our time and making sure we get our time together as a family and all get to go off and do our own thing too.

On which note although I have so much more to say I need to go and have lunch and see if Claire has arrived to teach bookbinding yet. More soon!

A way better day today 🙂

After a first night sleeping in the static everyone was feeling a lot better. To wake in our own home, sort out breakfast without the small talk with other residents and just start the day at our own pace was fab. Even if Davies ate his cereal dry off a dinner plate and Scarlett wanted milk on hers so ate from a saucepan as we’d not unpacked bowls yet!

Ady, Scarlett and Bonnie waited at the static for Dave who was coming to give a hand moving us further along the track. Davies and I walked down to the teashop for internet access and electricity. Davies sat with his DS and bought himself a new game online while I caught up on emails, blogs, picture uploading and various other online stuff. I made a couple of phonecalls (there is phone signal there too :)) and generally got stuff straight.

I chatted with Claire who runs the teashop, Steve who is the resident expert on all things eco and is the one who gave us the Earthship dvds and a couple of tourists, one girl who missed the ferry yesterday so is stuck here til tomorrow and another guy who wanted to come and shake my hand having heard about us and tell me he admired me and my family greatly and thought we had ‘great spirit’ :). Earlier we’d been chatting to a guy walking past the static who knew who we were and wanted to give us his address in Mallaig incase we wanted him to take delivery of anything on the mainland and stick it on the ferry for us. He does bird watching stuff over on Canna too and invited us along for free to any of his events.

Scarlett appeared a couple of times having walked down with Bonnie. She went off for a dog walk with Georgie and Tinker (Fliss’ dog who Georgie borrows to walk) and they had a great time. She then went along to Fliss’ craft shop where she was unpacking the un sold stuff from yesterdays craft fair and offered to help. She was there a while and came back with a bag of fudge she’d been given for helping and wanted to share with Davies. Davies and I had bought a couple of muffins (one each for the kids) which got me a free cup of tea and then later we were also given a toastie, another cup of tea and a hot chocolate with marshmallows and flake which Claire had made to take photos of and so donated to us 🙂 Scarlett got back in time to share the hot chocolate.

Davies wrote out some postcards to family and friends and we popped them in the postbox before walking back to the static. It’s moved about 50 foot today which doesn’t sound a lot but it has been round a very sharp bend and almost all by hand using a slow process with rollers and chocks and things. I felt a bit bad for leaving Ady and Dave to us but I was assured there was little I could have done to help anyway and it was good for Ady and Dave to bond.

We did a trip to the horsebox for various bits and pieces, including bowls! Then came back for dinner. We bought the genny along and spent some time hooked up and charging stuff up. Am very pleased with our set up, will be even more pleased once we have it all set up where it’ll be staying,

After dinner we went down to the shop, mostly to buy Dave a beer as we knew he’d be there. I chatted with Claire and Sylvia (Dave’s wife) and a good time was had by all. It’s late again and the most important thing we got from the horse box was my hot water bottle so I’m away to bed to make the most of the snuggliness

So, so many challenges.

The tough bits:

We bought some dog food that appeared not to agree with Bonnie. Lots of poo to clear up 🙁 Then realised that getting more was going to be very non straightforward. We will get the idea of ordering stuff across and ensuring we have enough time but dog food for a new puppy was not a great way to learn! She is now okay on that food though and we have two more sacks on the way so dog food won’t be an issue for a while…

When we were here last time we had fast internet access in the castle so I’d stupidly assumed the same would happen again. Wrong! There is a monthly limit which had already been used up so no access. Phone signal is patchy (ironically the best place so far has been up on our croft land, so good for us long term, not straightforward while we’re staying down in the village). That meant all the tidying up loose ends stuff like cancelling car insurance, sorting out SORN for the Pajero, ordering groceries etc has been really challenging. My phone battery does not last when it is constantly searching for signal so we’ll have to get used to switching it on for a bit each day when we know exactly where signal is and not having it the rest of the time. We have 2 sets of walkie talkies which I think will work fine almost all over the island so the four of will carry those instead and can at least stay in touch with each other.

The fucking politics! I know we were warned, I knew it would be the case but it is probably still worse than I’d expected. There are so many divides and issues. Between SNH and IRCT, between islanders, between directors and non directors. There are people here who used to be couples and are not any more. It’s just such a small amount of people, with so many different priorities and loyalities and history and nothing is straightforward. This has been really hard for Ady and I to get to grips with – everyone has been friendly but some are slightly distant and we are not used to be taken as anything other than ourselves. If someone hates me because of me then I can cope just fine with that (Ady not so much but at least he can understand it and frankly I don’t think anyone has ever hated him anyway!) but to come up against people not wanting to even try and get to know you is really tough. I understand their reticience and the fragility of this place but it’s still not a great atmosphere to arrive to. Vikki, the development officer has been off island (she came back yesterday on the ferry with our static) so I suppose she would have been the one to show us round, introduce us to everyone, give us the lowdown on who everyone is and what they do and just help us find our feet. As it is no one picked up on that job so we have done a fair bit of aimless wandering, unsure where to go or what to do.

On Monday we were told that everyone on the island thought we’d never get the static on to the croft but no one had thought to share that knowledge with us. We also learnt that even bringing a static at all is a bit politically sensitive as others have had permission turned down and that if the driver could not get it to the croft then we’d need to seek formal permission for it to be anywhere else and no one seemed to have any idea where that might be. I started off fairly upset and then just got really hacked off. On Tuesday we went off searching for Sean, the director who interviewed us and wrote the letter giving permission for us to site the static beside the river and got some monosyllabic answers and stuff like ‘well we knew you wouldn’t get it on to the croft, we’ve been waiting for you to realise and come and see us’. Well thanks a lot!!!

On Tuesday evening we went to the shop, where certain people hang out of an evening with a beer and chat stuff over and it all suddenly clicked into place. Norman (older guy, delivers the post, been here years) took us under his wing and talked to Chainsaw Dave for us who has the other static on the island. Dave is now our new best friend and hero and champion and is basically getting us down the hill.

I’m really cross that the scale of the challenges was not made clearer to us in advance. We knew there would be tricky times ahead with developing the croft, building a house, keeping livestock, just living on an island but these are skills we have enough of to make it work and logistics we are able to overcome. The not being made fully aware of how fragile the place is people-wise or quite how much work there is to do in forming a cohesive commmunity has made what would have always been a tough first week a *really* tough first week.

All that aside we did indeed spend our first night in the static. The 12v lighting works well, the pump works, the heater works, the fridge and oven work. The beds are comfortable and we’ll move it one step at a time until it is where it is supposed to be. The fact it is now somewhere we don’t have permission for it to be will have to be dealt with by someone else if it is an issue as I have already run out of patience for nonsense!

Good stuff – there has been loads 🙂

It has not really rained at all yet, it’s been blue skies, sunshine and gorgeousness. This remains the most beautiful place and that is enough to keep us calm, positive and retain belief in our adventure.

We managed to get a food shop sent over from Co-Op, same price as usual, done by email with more or less everything we wanted on it. That was beautifully straightforward and we’ve decided to ensure we place an order in time for the Friday ferry each week with supplies of nice stuff arriving for the weekend. The shop here stocks almost everything food and drink wise we could need and we do intend to use it but I think one bigger food delivery each week (ferry permitting) from the mainland will keep our budget in check with top ups from Jinty (along with stuff like milk, we won’t have space in our little fridge for a whole week’s worth at a time).

Davies and Scarlett are having a ball. They are spending hours outside playing in the river, walking Bonnie and spotting wildlife. The people here are lovely to them and I came into the tearoom on Tuesday night to find Scarlett sitting on Claire’s knee drawing wildlife pictures with her and talking about the time Claire swam with a basking shark in the harbour. We went to a talk by the ranger on Tuesday night about the wildlife on Rum where the kids sat for the whole 90 minutes rapt with attention. Davies told me afterwards he started to drift off in the middle but then realised he lives here and the wildlife being talked about is outside his window every day so he started listening with excitement again. The stars are amazing, the moon is a tiny sliver this week with Venus shining brightly. With no light pollution and clear skies.

When people are lovely, they are so, so, so, so lovely. We got our castle stay half price (that’s £160 off!!), we’ve had hugs and reassurances, offers of hospitality and meals and stuff and I feel we will make some real friends here given time. I remain, as ever hopeful, optimistic and positive. I don’t really know how to be any other way. I just hope it is not a folly that I’ve dragged others into along with me!