One word? When seven would do…

I had one of those ‘oh shit’ last waking thoughts last night as I snuggled down in my sleeping bag that the faulty kindle was being collected today and I hadn’t sellotaped the return label to the box. So I set a reminder on my phone which was what woke me this morning.

Ady was being very efficient and had already done stuff outside before I got up but once I was awake I helped sow some new grass seed on the lawn that had been lawn BC (Before Chickens) and we listened to Popmaster on the radio outside.

Today the sun has shone, we’ve been outside in t shirts, getting stuff done and feeling so positive. This time last year we were at Steward Wood (our first WWOOF host) and loving it. We all commented today that it feels like that again, exciting times ahead and the best of the year all opening infront of us with the lovely weather and longer days. Isn’t spring brilliant? 🙂

We started sorting the garage, Scarlett was indoors painting her dolphin, Davies was in the garden – I cut his hair this morning and it’s so lovely to actually see his face again rather than the Dougal style son I have been looking at. Davies spent some time emptying an old fire extinguisher which Ady had, I think he’s planning to get it refilled but it had been set off a little so was no good to just keep.

The garage is now fully sectioned and swept out. We have a heap of stuff for Caz and Bid, a few things to sell, a couple of smaller things that will stay here in the garage and a large pile of things to come with us. It’s hard to picture just what can fit in the horse box really but we have a sort of reserve list of stuff that can come if we have space and be left behind if we don’t. Renting the house out again means we have a bit of grace on making final arrangements for absolutely everything. While we were doing that I knocked Ady’s radio off a table and it broke 🙁 He’s had it for years and it came all around WWOOFing with us so he was quite upset.

We came in for lunch, I had a bit of a tantrum about the volume of stuff everyone seems to have acquired in just a week here and gathered everyone’s things up into one big pile each, put an empty box beside each pile and said they all had to get their stuff into just that one box and keep it in there too. It seems to have happened …

We had planned to walk into Lancing to pay the carpet fitter but we had a car full of stuff for the tip and realised we needed a few bits of food shopping so decided to go in the car instead. First to the tip to drop off yet more stuff. The tip has been turned into a Super Recycling Place and they really are very good there, it’s clean, the staff are friendly and helpful (and there are loads of them) and everything is very clearly marked and easy to work out where to put stuff. Almost everything does get recycled and they sell compost from green waste there. The landfill heap is tiny now, whereas it used to be the big stinking mass in the middle. I know reduce and reuse are better but at least we are contributing as little as possible to the problem these days.

Then to Lancing to pay the carpet guy and then having come up with a list of things we needed we decided supermarkets were probably the best solution so we did Tescos (and walked out with nothing), Sainsburys (and walked out with nothing on todays list but did get half price cordless drill and cordless screwdriver which is now crossed off our list at considerably less than we’d been anticipating) and finally Asda where we got everything else – two pairs of trousers for Scarlett. She must have tried on 10 pairs in the last few weeks, in charity shops everywhere. These are boys, roll up cropped leg if wanted (she doesn’t), neutral shades (not pink), cut to fit rather than be low rise or fitted around a shape she doesn’t have and are not tight or loose in places she gets cross about trousers being. So eek to nearly £20 on trousers that she’ll likely go through the knee of in the second or third wearing but hurrah for more than two pairs of trousers for her. Davies got some more socks (where do they go?), they both got new swimwear (again not straightforward, turns out that while supermarkets think most 9 year old girls want two piece or pink or flowery or with attitudey slogans or fancy backs my 9yo actually wants not pink, not frilly and not proclaiming she’s a princess or mermaid! You know, something to actually swim in, not pose in! We found mostly black with one small heart motif that was deemed acceptable if not desirable), we got flour, eggs, syrup and chocolate chips so we can do some baking for snacks for lunches, particularly to take with us to London on Wednesday, Ady got a replacement radio (after much debate I persuaded him a DAB was the best bet, he can’t take his large DAB as it is mains powered which isn’t workable for Rum and given how many hours a day he listens to it I think he justifies a nice one, it was still under £20 and he is really pleased with it) and Ady got some more jeans having also failed to find any in charity shops and being only in possession of two pairs of very tatty ‘work’ jeans.

Far too much money (and no crocs – Scarlett really needs cooler shoes now the weather is heating up, her feet stink in her winter boots) later we came home. The kids went off to play with their scooters in the street (oh the excitement of playing ‘out’) while we did some more garage rearranging. After getting really wound up by the disappearance of Scarlett’s wellies I nipped over to my parents to see if they were there and they were :). I had a chat with Dad and then Mum who arrived home just after I got there and it was a nice talk where they appeared to actually believe some of what I was saying about future plans and stuff. 🙂

Back at home the others had come inside as it was getting dark. Baths, dinner and bed all round. I ordered some crocs for the kids online and the cable for the horsebox completed what has been a very expensive day but has ticked off lots of our list of purchases required.

Yesterday we had planned to clear out the garage but it was grey and drizzly and just didn’t feel like the sort of day to be out of the house really. The kids worked through the piles of stuff up in the loft space in Davies’ old room while Ady and I ticked another thing off our ever shortening job lists and went through our list of tools we think we’ll need to get started on Rum and put them into an amazon wishlist. It helped to jog our memories of other stuff we hadn’t thought of but will need and gives us an initial list to work from to check prices elsewhere.

After much tea drinking we went upstairs to do an hours sorting with the kids. First on the agenda was seeing how many cuddly toys we could fit into one of the massive-est vacuum bags The Range sell. £6 for one big enough to fit at least two of us in (depending which two, probably not Ady and I!). We fitted a huge pile in and sucked it down to almost flat, very impressed with that even though the effort overheated our cheap and very substandard basics Argos hoover that we bought for about £20 when we got the house back. It did recover once it cooled down 🙂 We’ll get another couple for the soft toys which can then go back in the loft here while the house is rented, and several more to take to Rum for clothes, bedding etc. as they will keep stuff sealed from damp and squish it up small to save space.

We had lunch, tidied up in the bedroom and loaded some stuff into the car ready for the tip /charity shop on Monday. The kids went round the shop together to buy milk – they’ve been desperate to do that ever since we got back here, definitely wanting to explore independance.

Ady and I both had baths, the kids packed up overnight stuff and then Bruce arrived with the horse box. He’d been cleaning it up, testing lights and brakes and wheels and took it for a run so thought he’d bring it over here. Fab to see it and actually get inside. It’s huge and will be perfect for the moving and storage afterwards – really pleased 🙂 🙂 We told Bruce we want to give him the Sharan to say thank you and he was really pleased with that so another unwanted thing of ours passed on to someone who will use it. Hurrah 🙂

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We chatted to Bruce and then he left and we headed over to Mum & Dad’s, via Sainsburys for wine and Guinness supplies for the evening, Baileys for my Mum’s mothers day gift and for Ady and the kids to veer off and select a couple of top secret purchases for me :). Only Dad was home so we waved the kids off for their first ever sleepover at Granny & Grandad’s and left. Scarlett has only ever been away from us for one night before, several years ago at Ali’s. Davies did Badger camp of course but sleepovers are really not a big feature of their lives without us although they are of course very used to sleeping in all sorts of places with us. They rang me at 11pm to say goodnight and had a really nice evening with my parents :).

We had a great evening too. The food was Irish themed – leek and potato soup, steak and kidney pie and colcannon mash, chocolate and Irish whiskey mousse with Irish coffees and Baileys afterwards, Guinness and white wine with the meal. Mike and Rose had invited another couple as they often do and when the first half an hour was a conversation about their daughter not getting into their first choice secondary school and their appeal process and general middle class educational angst I thought we were in for a rather tedious evening but it all livened up when they learnt more about us and our adventures and Home Ed. They were lovely actually – he was a film editor back in pre computer days and left when it all got more IT and less creativity to work in homeless shelters and similar places with socially disadvantaged people. He currently works with learning difficulty young adults in residential care on life skills and a level of independant living. Really interesting bloke. She was also lovely, child of very bohemian and hippy parents who loves the idea of our lives but couldn’t live without her hair straighteners! We had a fab evening with them, they left around 1130pm, Rose got broken and had to go to bed and we stayed chatting to Mike until around 2am as he has just been accepted on a teacher training course starting in September so is very excited about that.

We walked home and I remember looking at the clock at about 430am so when I woke again and it was 830am I didn’t feel fantastic!

Today we had a slowish start, taking advantage of a child free house to drink lots of tea and not get up. We finally headed over to Mum & Dad;s about 1030am and Scarlett was still not awake! The kids had both made me cards for Mothers Day which were fab.

Mum & I went to collect some more plastic boxes from her shop and pick up Granny who was coming up for the day, then we all had lunch. Ady cooked dinner, pheasant casserole which was delicious and after a restorative and medicinal slug of brandy in my tea at about 1pm I started to feel more like myself again!

Caz, Bid and the boys popped over to collect a van full of stuff – they took the kids old beds, the sofas, the table and chairs, boxes of kitchen stuff, our breadmaker and toaster and loads of unwanted crockery and cutlery. So good to give it to someone who needs it, wants it and will actually use it 🙂 I had a lovely text from Caz to say it all makes their new house feel like a home 🙂 🙂 There is a little bit more (TV, TV unit, freezers and chiller) which they will take next weekend.

We had dinner and left, dropping Granny home again to get home here for about 10pm. I had a bath while the others watched Robin Hood (animated Disney version). Our rythyms of our days are all messed up and I’m looking forward to getting into a home with bedrooms and some semblance of order.

It’s been a good weekend – friends, good deeds, nice food and interesting company, family and now, blissfully I’m intending to sleeeeeeeep!

Can’t believe we’ve only been back a week. At times, walking around this house again I can’t believe we ever went away really. Then I notice the lack of sofa, bed etc and it all comes back to me!

This is a far better place to be than the month or so we spent at Mum & Dad’s but sleeping on camping mats on the floor is no sustainable life. I have to keep reminding myself it’s only a month ago we had the interview and got offered the croft, a month from now we’ll be almost there and two months from now we’ll definitely be there. A year from now it will really be our home. I don’t want to wish time away so I’m trying to find the positives in the delay and having already sorted out all our stuff, arranged the car and trailer, planned the carpet fitting and house being rented again I guess we can focus on spending time with family and friends before we go and learning lots about crops and livestock from our library of books on the subjects. It is frustrating to have missed out on things such as the Big Bang and Albert Hall where friends have been the last couple of days as when they were first mooted I had to assume we’d not be around whereas infact we could have gone…

This morning we all went through our clothes – everything is over here now so we all had big trying on sessions. Davies has enough of everything other than socks. Scarlett is fine for tops but could do with more pants and definitely needs more trousers. She is not so bothered about socks ;). Ady also needs jeans. I have plenty of everything but have been very ruthless with getting rid of more stuff and now have just three bags of clothes and shoes. It still feels excessive compared to what everyone else has but unlike the kids I won’t be growing out of my clothes so what I have kept will fit me forever. It was quite gratifying to be trying on so many things and find them massively too big though.

A couple of washes went on and were hung outside to dry – towels and jumpers that had been in storage and smelt a bit musty.

Scarlett and I did some more of the craft kit she started last night – it’s really good actually Dazzling Dolphin – last night she put together the 3d wooden puzzle bit of it, this morning was sculpting it with plaster gauze stuff you dipped in water and then wrapped over the wood. She really enjoyed doing it and has a very cool looking dolphin to paint tomorrow when it’s dry using the acrylic paint and glitter than came with the kit. I picked it up cheap in TKMaxx before Christmas as my brother’s Christmas pressie for her but I’d really recommend it. Would get more of the plaster gauze stuff too, I think we could do some excellent stuff with it.

We had lunch and then headed out – first to the library where I tried to sneak in to use the computer but got spotted. A quick catch up with the four colleagues in today and £5 later I’d sorted out the croft application forms and printed off the kindle return label too with internet access and printing charges (sadly the colleagues in were not ones who would do it for free!). We picked up a mothers day card for my Mum & Granny and posted the forms off.

Over to Dad’s via the charity shop to drop off the last couple of boxes of stuff. We checked what was in the garage – mostly camping stuff which is coming with us, chairs which Caz and Bid are having and the dalek. Davies has asked Dad if that can stay there a bit longer and Dad said yes. I do like the idea of restoring it and bringing it to Rum at some point really 🙂 I see it becomming some sort of family heirloom that my descendants are one day terrified with the story of Mad Old Granny Nic and her curious antics using the dalek as evidence 😆

Back over to Lancing to arrange the carpet fitter for next week. He needs it paid for upfront as we don’t have an official address so we’ll do that on Monday but it’s booked in for next Friday which means we’ll be spending next Thursday evening taking up old carpet and much of next Friday taking it to the tip.

I had a phonecall from Vikki on Rum to say she thinks moving the static delivery back a couple of weeks would be a good idea and that if we want to stay with her in the period between us arriving and the static arriving she’d be happy to have us 🙂 It was great to talk to her actually, it made it all feel nice and real again :). We’ve got permission (backed up by a nice email from Sean with an official permission letter) to put the static on the path next to the croft land if the lorry can’t get it onto our actual land, which takes the pressure off on delivery day. I’ve since emailed to ask whether the new date (25th April) is realistic as I doubt the croft paperwork will be finalised even by then. From our point of view we are happy to move and get started on things prior to actual official tenancy paperwork but I need to check that IRCT is happy for that too.

Baths, roast dinner and Lassie as tonight’s film. Now Ady is asleep infront of Open All Hours while both children are still awake and watching!

Stuff today that has been grrr-y:

Insurance for the Pajero, not as cheap as I’d hoped. In the scheme of things this doesn’t matter at all as once we’re on Rum we don’t need insurance anyway, but I was hoping to just swap over to a different vehicle on my Sharan insurance and then have it roadworthy for six months incase we do need to pop back over to the mainland in the first few months. Ah well.

Ady walked in on Scarlett sitting in the bedroom at my parents going through her toys deciding what to keep and what to get rid of. She was talking to each one, kissing it goodbye, telling it she loved it and would miss it. Broke my heart when he told me and means we’ll find room for them all somehow. I hate that the kids have to go through tough stuff like that, even when I know it is all worth it long term. I don’t want them to have sad memories like that 🙁

I got a couple of emails this evening from Rum to say that the application form we completed was one of the old ones that was updated on 1st March and as such the Crofting Commission won’t accept it and it needs resubmitting on the form. Which means a trip to the library to print them all out all, complete them again and this will cause some delay as it needs advertising once the application form has been put in. Argh! Not sure how much delay there will actually be for us. We’d booked the static delivery for 12th April and we definitely won’t have the tenancy for the croft officially by then so it depends whether that is an issue and prevents us moving onto the land or if the IRCT can overlook it and we’ll just quietly start living there with the tenancy happening a few weeks later.

On the plus side we had a good morning; I sorted out the insurance for the house, found out about car insurance, dealt with various other paperwork stuff, processed some laundry, took delivery of the new kindle. Ady helped David the neighbour carry something heavy from his back garden to his car for which he has already been rewarded with two easter eggs and we anticipate many more tokens of his gratitude 😉

We had lunch and then went over to Mum & Dad’s where we went through all the boxes deemed stuff to be stored there. We managed to reduce that amount further and it is all now in situ in the area Mum had allocated us. I have no idea if it’s condensed enough for her, I guess we’ll find out at the weekend but it is really just photos and a few sentimental bits and pieces. We went through all the stuff coming with us and reboxed stuff in more logical fashion so it is easy to place once we arrive. Four large bags of clothing have come back over here with us to go through and decide which clothes are coming to Rum and which we don’t need. I am down to three pairs of DMs, three pairs of Oxygen shoes and my rigger boots. Not sure I can go lower than that 😉

The kids played with the lego and were building campervans with it – the character lego with instruction booklets to follow is all very well but I still think Lego is at it’s best when simply used to create something from imagination. I used to spend hours with the tiny doors and windows trying to build houses and create bricktastic versions of all sorts of things.

Back at home I dealt with the emails from Rum and the carpet fitter arrived. He measured up and quoted us for the various possibilities of flooring we wanted. We’ll probably get another quote just to be sure he is reasonable but then go with him I think. He reckons he can fit either end of next week or the beginning of the week after – if a competitor can do it sooner than may swing it for them though as the agent won’t start advertising the house until that’s been done.

Dinner tonight was steak – very nice 🙂 Davies has discovered the internet through his 3DS having previously not been remotely interested in such things. He and Scarlett decided to club together to pay for a download game for the 3DS so brought me the cash so I could pay for it on my card. Another parenting milestone there 🙂

Ady and I tried to watch iplayer but the mifi isn’t getting reliable enough signal to stream it so that was irritating and we listened to the radio instead. For every thing we seem to cross off our list of stuff to do another comes along to replace it. I’ll be soooo pleased to actually arrive on Rum, sit on the sofa in that static and raise my first glass of wine to toast our new home.

Starting to feel a bit like a generator today…

Scarlett woke me at 4am by shaking me as she’d had a bad dream. Something to do with monsters in a forest chasing her and when she’d woken the shadows in the hall had looked like the monsters so she’d panicked and needed me to wake up quicker than I did. She insisted on getting into my sleeping bag which was not comfortable for either of us and then she needed a wee but didn’t want to go alone. Eventually she was persuaded to move her sleeping bag next to me and then as Ady’s phone was ringing with text messages from people he has been talking to in America about generators I made him go and share the mat with Davies. So we did all get back to sleep in the end.

This morning Ady and Davies did some hedge trimming and Davies had a foiled attempt at riding a bike. He really needs a proper sized one so his little one has gone in the free ads paper / website today. Scarlett and I made some bread – two loaves and pizza bases for dinner tonight. I made a couple of phonecalls – one to sort out a carpet fitter to come round and quote tomorrow evening for the carpet that needs replacing. Another to Amazon to arrange for (another) replacement kindle as the screen has a smudge on it and I can see shadows of the previous page text when I turn a page. Last time I waited ages before replacing it but it was so straightforward this time I have sorted it as soon as I noticed it this time. I’ve read on forums lots of people having screen issues with kindles so Amazon obviously know it is a problem and don’t mess about. Ady made a couple of phonecalls – one to the static place to confirm they have received the cheque and to ask them to supply a few things such as water containers which they sell and can deliver with the static to save us getting them. He also rang his friend Bruce (the farmer) who has been looking out for 4x4s for us and had found one at £1400 that was over our price range so he thought it wasn’t worth telling us about. We arranged to meet him and look at it this afternoon though as it was being sold by Bruce’s BIL so comes with a really good idea of it’s history.

We had lunch – fresh bread, mmmm. Then went off to the charity shop to drop some more boxes off. The bloke parked next to us in the carpark was most fascinated by us and overheard Ady talking to the woman in the shop who commented we must have nothing left in our house anymore. He followed Ady out and got chatting to us both about what we were doing. He was really enthusiastic about the whole adventure and told us how he’d lived in a caravan for a few years, took our photographs and asked for our email address so he could stay in touch with us and find out what happens next. He was a very sweet, if rather eccentric old man (his email address is ‘lord’ someone but I’ve googled him and can’t find him anywhere) and a year ago we’d have written him off as a nutter and escaped talking to him as quickly as possible. We’ve learnt though, that people prepared to stand and chat and make friends are almost always worth knowing and left with his ‘I wish you every success and happiness’ ringing in our ears and a warm fuzzy feeling :).

The last few bits dropped off at the tip and then on to Bruce’s. We spent several hours with him including looking at the Pajero ” alt=”” /> having a sit in it, driving it forwards and backwards and agreeing to buy it. It has an MOT next week so will come with a years ticket on it, has four new tyres, new cambelt, two brand new batteries (they have two, not sure why) and is really clean and tidy. Diesel, automatic. Kids love it and although it is more than we anticipated paying I think it will be worth it.

Back at the farm we talked more about trailers and I shared that I had been wondering about horse boxes so we looked inside Bruce’s and decided that yes, a horse box would be perfect for what we want – easy to pull, carries loads of weight, full height so we can stand up in it when using it as storage, sound in terms of waterproof / rodent proof (as far as anything can be) and of course suitable for moving livestock and anything else farm related once we’re on the croft. We were about to leave when Bruce remembered one of the boxes stored behind his stables might be for sale so he went to ask the owner. It’s tatty but sound and Bruce is going to get it emptied, cleaned up and checked over for us to make sure the bearings / wheels etc are all okay. He knocked the woman down to £500 and gave her £100 deposit there and then for us. Hurrah for our wonderful friends 🙂 So that’s vehicle and trailer, under budget at £2000 and with a better car than we’d anticipated getting 🙂 Very pleased indeed.

Back home via Sainsburys where we picked up reduced to clear steak to have for dinner tomorrow (hurrah, Davies has been wanting steak for ages, his favourite food after pizza) and then pizzas for dinner while watching Mrs Doubtfire which is an excellent film that has totally stood the test of time and the kids loved :).

My fuel supplies are running low now though…

This morning we went to the local car auction – after Popmaster of course 🙂

Dad came along with us and it was very interesting, in a new experience with added people watching point of view. Nothing in our price bracket or right for us – all the vans had only 3 seats and the vehicles which would have been okay for us were going for thousands. Some real bargains there if you were looking for transit vans though. Watching the people was most interesting for me – a real mix of dodgy used car sellers, dealers and people looking for a bargain. I was particularly taken with the forced casualness of some of the bidding, people (almost all blokes) chatting to each other, barely seeming to pay attention to the auction but nodding to raise their bids. Fascinating 🙂

I dropped Ady and Dad back at our house and Dad went off home, Ady spent a couple of hours in the garden tidying it up and the kids and I went to Tasha’s for lunch. She’d been preparing for 2 days baking up a feast – proper gorgeous sandwiches, scones with jam and cream, cookies, pastries and other delights. And tea from a teapot and fancy teacup 🙂 I do love Tasha 🙂

The kids played, although Scarlett spent some time chatting to Tasha about cats and then more time adoring some of Tasha’s 7 cats, while Tasha and I caught up.

Just before 3pm we came home as the letting agent was round at 3pm and I wanted to at least meet her. We got here as Ady was making drinks for her and her trainee who were looking round. Rather oddly the estate agent who came round yesterday said to me ‘I know you’ when I opened the door to him despite me not recognising him at all and this woman said the same. She looked maybe vaguely familiar but I don’t think I know her either. Most strange.

She was very businesslike and insists that the hall, stairs and landing carpet is renewed along with the kitchen floor before it goes on the rental market but reckons she can easily get £975 a month and will rent it easily. They offer rental insurance for non payment and seem generally a lot more professional than Mike -all over it like a rash. Fingers crossed eh?! So tomorrow’s task among others is to get some quotes for that.

We then dropped a carfull of stuff off at a charity shop (the first one we tried refused, they said they were unable to take any donations at all!) before going and sorting out yet more at Mum & Dad’s. I helped the kids who were struggling with getting rid of stuff and we managed to fill 2 more boxes for charity shop, a bag of rubbish and several boxes of things like DVDs and X box games to leave at Mum & Dad’s for some other time. Really hard to know what to do with things like psp / ds game boxes when the actual games are all kept in wallets with the console but in the future they may use the box if they sell the game. So much plastic! Another car full loaded up ready for a charity shop tomorrow which means everything at Mum & Dad’s has now been gone through once and seperated into piles. One to keep there which needs reducing further and one to bring with us which needs packing better. Renting the house rather than selling means soft toys can go back in the loft here again, negating the need for hard emotional decisions but putting them out of sight and mind. Curse Toy Story for giving toys emotions and feelings in kids’ eyes! 😉

Tomorrow we were hoping to see Julie but Maisie is poorly and as we caught both the last two germs we had from them (one in November, one in February) we are not at all up for catching any more so we’ve put that off til next week. So I’ll be baking bread and making pizza dough for dinner and then we’ll be making phonecalls, arranging carpet and doing more box juggling at Mum & Dad’s.

I have been heard to state that there is not much that can’t be improved by bacon. So today we had Bacon & Co estate agents round to see if finding someone to live in our house could be improved by Bacon 🙂

It looks like it might actually. They do sales and lettings and as we don’t need the equity out of the house for the first year we have been debating renting it out again and living off the monthly rent for the year, thus protecting the equity and giving us a year to decide that it is definitely the right move for us before investing financially. There are pros and cons but given the house has not sold in the first month I think renting it again may well be the best option.

This morning I sorted through the clothes at this house and put them all into various bags. I still have more clothes than anyone else despite having gotten rid of *loads* but at least all the remaining clothes fit me. Some are older than both children (tops, not bottoms) and it means I won’t have to buy any more clothes for years :). I hung some washing out and drank lots of tea.

Ady did some more research into generators and between us we worked on a list of things still to do which was heartening as we realised we do have everything in hand. We rang Lance to ask him to look out for a 4×4 for us and made a failed bid on a trailer on ebay (that ended up selling an hour later for just £20 more. Grr).

Davies and Scarlett played outside in the garden, they wanted to go further afield but fear of someone spotting them and being nosey made us refuse. I hate that but am so very aware that unaccompanied children on a school day would draw attention. Attention that should it be followed up would result in all sorts of concerns for children who are currently living ‘rough’ in a house that is officially empty. We consoled them with the fact that a month today is provisional static delivery day so we should be sleeping in our new home on our new land for the first time a month today, with a whole island to explore and no prying eyes. We experimented with the four walkie talkies we have which are supposed to have a radius coverage of several miles. Very funny having four way conversations 🙂

The agent came and quoted his terms for both rental and sales, advised us on expected prices for both and gave us the benefit of his estate agenty wisdom. I rang him back later and the letting division are coming round tomorrow to start marketing it. So landlordiness may yet continue…

In other news we went to the tip again, went to my parents again and sorted out yet more stuff to be gotten rid of. Another six boxes to be dropped off at a charity shop tomorrow. We are now down to about 2 boxes to be sold (which we’ll give one punt on ebay / local free ad paper and then take to charity shop), a bed full of boxes that need condensing down more to store at mum & dad’s (mostly photo albums and home videos), about 10 boxes of stuff to come with us to Rum and a huge heap of stuff destined for Caz and Bid. The other three are not finding this process quite as liberating as me but I seem to recall that being the case last time.

I spent some time catching up with Julie on the phone tonight. Maisie isn’t well so we may not catch up with them in person this week but we have at least had a filling in session with each other on all our news.

Tonight we got my very first laptop (the one that got knocked off the arm of the sofa and nearly died) working and watched a Hugh Denis thing about the Highlands which was very good with Loch Ness, Chanonry Point, Skye and Applecross all featured. Nice visual reminder of why we’re doing all this 🙂

Tomorrow we’re going to a car auction. Exciting times 🙂

In all those miles we’ve done lately we only had about 10 cds, at least four of which were Horrible Histories ones from cereal packets. One was disc two of War of the Worlds, which Scarlett used to listen to but now says is too scary. That leaves us with Deacon Blue, Alanis Morrisette (scratched, but not on the most sweary tracks), Michael Buble (tracks 1-6 all scratched) and about 5 home burned discs of music. These include Mika (both albums), Little Shop of Horrors soundtrack and a rowdy shouty women one with Pink, Lady Gaga, Ting Tings etc on it. We listen to Chris Evans and Ken Bruce but Ady doesn’t like the Jeremy Vine show and I want to kill Steve Wright, we’re too old to listen to Radio One and local commercial radio stations are a) too full of cheesey adverts and b) go out of range too quickly when you are doing hundreds of miles at a time. Which means we have resorted to listening to those 10 discs (well not the HH ones, I can’t cope with Bring Me Back my Legions and Henry the VIII was a big fat man as earworms) LOTS. This had made for over analysing songs in far more detail than I imagine was intended when ‘that’s not my name’ was penned.

So now we can listen to Yesterday Once More, Top of the World and the much mis-sung ‘calling octopus of interplanetary crabs’. Hurrah and huzzah.

This morning Davies and Scarlett were playing the new 3DS game – I have long since been left behind with such technology now. When I was a kid it was a mark of feeling old to have your kids eclipse you in their geekiness, personally it is with relief that I can not even have to pretend to know such stuff any more!

Ady and I worked our way through untangling a HUGE sack of cables, chargers, leads. There’s a Michael McIntyre stand up routine about men and their ‘man drawer’ – this was Ady’s equivalent. It probably has archaeological value as the deeper entangled the leads the larger the ports to go into mobile phones, the chunkier the leads and the costlier they would have been when new. He tells me he is happy to sell them / give them away. I suspect he intends smuggling leads in his socks, pockets, under his hat, in cavities of whatever vehicle we end up with. He may try, drug dealer stylee, to persuade the children to eat one each too to get them past me…

Just as we finished that there was a knock at the door and our friend Bruce was there having been out on his motorbike and decided to come and visit. Really good to see him 🙂 He is our farmer friend who is van sitting Willow, took our chickens in and is a great source of advice and help. Ady’s known him for over 30 years and lived with him for a while a long time ago. We are godparents to one of his grandchildren (stop laughing at the back there!).

Bruce stayed for a couple of cups of tea and catching up chats before heading off on his bike. We headed over to my parents via the tip to drop off the load from yesterdays sorting out.

Mum was there and greeted us with great enthusiasm. She was about to head over to my Granny’s so took Davies and Scarlett with her. The first time she has ever taken them out on her own I think. It meant Ady and I could get on with sorting and we have almost got to the point of sorting everything out into heaps, although all three heaps will now need going through again and possibly reducing further.

Mum and the kids came home, as did Dad so we stopped and all had (very late) lunch together. We declared ourselves done for the day at that point and had very long chats about money and what happens next. Much frank debate later we have the first cheque to send to Macleods for static deposit and Dad is coming with us to the car auction on Tuesday with hopes of finding a 4WD.

It meant we were stupidly late home but having promised pasta bake for dinner to the kids we swung past the little CoOp for bacon and did get some bargains of cooked whole chickens for 29p each (reduced from £6 each!) and some pastries for breakfast tomorrow along with some reduced to clear fruit. Stocked up for next couple of days food then 🙂 I won’t miss the convenience of supermarkets, I might miss the buzz of such bargain food!

I cooked while the others tried, and eventually managed, to tune in the video on the TV. A blank video they were testing had some children talking on it who sounded familiar but it was hard to tell through the fuzziness on the screen. It cleared to a decent picture just as the little girl was telling the camera about how her Dad’s used car business works. Oh the cuteness! She finished by saying she probably will go to school when she is older and would like to be a dancer when she grows up. Very much enjoyed watching that.

We’re keeping crazy hours these last few days, hoping to return to something a bit more conventional from tomorrow…

Everyone else was awake and noisy long before I was in the mood for such behaviour this morning. I was particularly irked to realise that having put a Shrek dvd on (do you have any idea how much Gingie’s voice grates when it invades post waking slumber? It’s like fingernails down a sodding blackboard!) everyone else had buggered off out of the room anyway!!!

Good humour restored with a full pot of tea (Ady is LOVING having full on access to a kitchen ;)) we gathered ourselves together, Ady rang to book the static – we need to get a deposit cheque in the post and the balance following before too long. It’s provisionally booked for delivery on 12th April, but they’ll ring and confirm that next week. I made a phonecall to arrange a different estate agent visiting on Monday to look at the house and we headed off over to Mum & Dad’s.

Only Frazer was home so we got stuck in to sorting stuff out. The kids are sorting their stuff into ‘coming to Rum’, ‘begging Granny and Grandad to store for us for a bit longer’ and ‘can finally bear to part with’ piles. I imagine everything will start off in the coming with us pile and gradually move through the ranks… we are sorting out stuff into ‘coming with us to Rum’, ‘ask Mum & Dad to store a bit longer’, ‘ebay or charity shop (it has to be worth over a fiver on ebay we’ve decided to justify all the photographing, listing and faffing, we may amend this and do a car boot sale if we can fit a Sunday morning into our schedule)’, ‘tip’ and ‘for Caz and Bid’ who are moving into a house next week and are very grateful for anything we can donate to furnish it with.

So far the biggest pile by far is ebay / charity shop. The tip pile (which is currently residing in the back of the car ready to drop off in the morning) was pretty big – how? How did we end up with stuff that is going to the tip? The pile to come with us is fairly sensible and the pile to ask Mum & Dad to store is fairly small consisting of stuff like photo albums, pictures in frames, precious baby clothes, wedding dress, funeral suit each for Ady and I and a couple of size 10 cocktail dresses that I think maybe just maybe Scarlett might one day consider wearing. Oh and a pair of thigh high black suede boots with 6inch heels that I suspect I won’t get a lot of wear out of as a crofter but can’t quite part with either….

Dad came home and gave us some money to go and get some food for lunch so Ady and I nipped up to Sainsburys for the sort of food we only buy when someone else is paying ;). It was a productive day with a good third of the boxes gone through. Once we’ve gone through everything we’ll need to repack the stuff to take and stuff to store and make some decisions on the stuff to sell too but it felt like we made some real headway today.

Davies has been after a 3DS game and didn’t think he had enough money for it but we found a piggy bank of his in the boxes which was full of coppers and silver and he totted it up to discover he had over £10 in there which meant he did have enough. I also told Scarlett that if she wanted to get Humphrey a bigger cage (which has always been her plan) she needed to do it while we’re down here on the mainland really. So at 530 the kids and I went across to Argos to collect the reserved DS game and Pets at Home to look at hamster cages. We’d cut it fine really and looked at cages first where I got spotted by a friend – Matt who was keen to catch up on all our news (facebook had given him most of it but he was full of further questions). His wife is very jealous of our adventures and would love to do something similar but Matt tells me she can’t even consider camping as it means she has to be without her hair straightners so I’m guessing our lifestyle is not quite suitable for her 😉 Lovely to see him but it meant we dashed across to Argos just as they were closing to get the game and took ages counting out all the coppers and silvers. Then back to the pet shop which I’d not realised also closed at 6pm and the doors were already locked. Scarlett looked so sad and miserable that the manager opened back up again so we could go in and grab the cage! Bless him, and of course he got £40 in his till at the last minute too!

Back to my parents for a last cup of tea with Dad and the hope that Mum would get home (she’d been out with a friend for the day) but she didn’t so as we’re back there tomorrow anyway and the kids were desperate to get back to our house to show Humph his new palace and play on the new game we loaded the car up for the tip in the morning and came home.

Humph is most happy in his new abode, lots more room, two extra floors, play tunnel, ladders, cage to climb up etc. D loves the game. Ady cooked, we all had baths (Scarlett got in with me and we had interesting chats about bodies and puberty) and after an ill fated attempt to watch Mrs Doubtfire we ended up putting on a version of Oliver Twist that was rather dark (I know the story is not cheery anyway but this is really grim) which Scarlett declared a bit rubbish without all the songs! 😆 I’ve been looking at my John Seymour book and researching midge repellent. Our big priority now is finding a vehicle and trailer so we can book a passage on the ferry before the static and know just how much space we have for bringing stuff with us.

A quick blog. Much of the day spent in the car really anyway.

We left Lynda and Stuart in time for Popmaster in the car – what a great motivator that was to get out in time. Lynda left us with yet more positive words ringing in our ears 🙂

The drive back to Sussex was straightforward, particularly after the lengthy journeys we’ve gotten used to lately. We arrived at our house at 3pm, came in, put the heating on, checked the pile of post (the redirection to Dad’s has finished now so post is coming here again) and then headed over to Dad’s to check the pile of post there. Frazer was home so we had a cup of tea and catch up chat with him, then Dad arrived home.

We spent about an hour chatting to Dad and then realised Humphrey was still in the car and likely getting cold – he is so well travelled and mellow that hamster 🙂 so headed back via Sainsburys. Ady and I had curry cravings so picked up stuff for that.

Back at the house I put a wash on, unloaded all the food and took a bit of an inventory of the kitchen and put away the stuff Ady was unloading from the car. We’ve had less stuff for this month away than we used to take on a week away 🙂

The kids did some drawings with some pens that arrived for us to review and watched a film, Ady and I had baths and then had dinner. I have a feeling life will be rather a blur for the next couple of weeks.

She is so good for me 🙂

This morning Lynda and Stuart went off out for a walk leaving us to our own devices. The kids played for a while and then put a film on – Toy Story 2, while Ady and I did some work on our cash flow stuff to present to my parents.

L&S were back for lunch before heading off again to collect their granddaughter, Hannah from school. She is six and we’ve never actually met her although having seen so many photos and video clips of her it feels as though we have always known her. She is very curious about Davies and Scarlett, these intruder children who have known her Nanny and Grandad since before she was even born, come to stay and play with her toys and live a very different life to her. She has equally seen many photos of them and has been particularly entranced by Scarlett with her long hair and all her pet birds, Lynda said she talked about Scarlett and her ducks for months after she showed her those pictures.

So this visit we arranged that we’d be here to meet Hannah for the first time. L&S went off to fetch her from school while the kids watched two more films – Nanny McPhee and Jungle Book 2. I watched Nanny McPhee with them because I like that 🙂 then I went and got dinner sorted, lasagne. Ady theoretically watched the second film with them too but actually he snoozed on the sofa 😉

They arrived home and after a very brief period of sizing each other up Hannah, Davies and Scarlett got on really well and played together. They spent some time outside, Davies showed Hannah how to make animations on the 3DS and they sat and chattered together over their dinner and pudding. She’s a very sweet little girl and they found plenty to talk about. Most amusing was when she asked ‘why don’t you have to go to school?’ to which Scarlett airily replied ‘oh, it’s our choice’ and moved on to the next topic.

Apparently when she got in the car to go home at the end of the evening she said to Lynda ‘I wish I could be Scarlett’. Not sure quite what it is about being Scarlett that she is so keen to emulate although Lynda did say she suspected it might be having a Davies 🙂 Always nice to see other kids look at mine and think they have a good life though 🙂

We watched a wildlife programme while L&S ran Hannah home and I spent some time trying to find cats that need rehoming although I need to work out the details of that a little better so that we don’t end up with cats kept in cages for four days while we work our way up the country at the end of the month….hmmmm.

The kids went to bed when L&S got back and we shared a glass of wine and some further chatting. Lynda is always so very lovely to me, telling me how proud my parents should be of me and how wonderful she thinks our choices are. She knows my parents fairly well and doesn’t have much time for them really. I’m torn between feeling disloyal for listening to someone saying she thinks they are unsupportive and obstructive and feeling touched that someone who could quite feasibly be my mother is so very lovely to me.

I’ve got a cold 🙁 I pretty much avoided the lurgy that struck the rest of the family down but I have succumbed to it this time round and am snotty, coughitty and generally glum with it.

This morning after breakfast we headed off for a walk into Altrincham. I needed various cosmetic bits (it’s a challenge finding fragrance free stuff but I struck lucky between Superdrug and Poundland and now have a load of Simple stuff including some for bargain prices :)) and things like vicksticks for my poor blocked up nose. We’re cooking dinner tomorrow night so we also picked up ingredients for that from Tescos on the way back and stopped for a brief time in the park.

We got back for a late lunch and the afternoon passed with chatting and playing. Oh and Ady helped Stuart prune a tree in the garden too.

Dinner, more chatting, the kids and I had baths and then bedtime.

I forgot to blog yesterday some interesting conversations in the car regarding memory and how we pin memories to common places / themes / music / photo prompts / anecdotes. We are all at the very excited stage of looking forward to live changing stuff. Ady is more nervous and a bit snappy with the kids but they are being very tolerant ;).

We’re back to Sussex on Friday and hoping to talk to my parents over the weekend and get a deposit put on the static and the delivery booked so we have a firm date around which to start getting everything else sorted.

I’ve started a page with some info about Rum – the stuff I’ve been sent about how everything works and a brief intro to the people we’ve met so far. I’ll keep adding to it so I don;t need to reintroduce everyone when I mention them onblog 🙂

http://goddardstuff.co.uk//?page_id=5486

It’s in the side bar under ‘pages’

I can’t decide whether it is one of those quirks of memory that means I have several people’s postcodes stored in my brain now or whether it really is an indication that we have spent too much time enjoying their hospitality of late 😉

This morning was spent researching various things online and sitting very companionably with Ady and Babs on laptops and smartphones engaging with the world wide web 🙂

Then we had lunch and we left to head over to Lynda and Stuart’s. We were later leaving than we meant to be but what should be an hours journey (about 40 miles) took closer to two hours thanks to horrible traffic 🙁 Won’t miss that aspect of life here at all.

The kids spent the afternoon / evening playing with lego while we chatted and caught up with L&S. They are very pleased to hear we have plans not to actually build for the first year and may well end up renting our house out for longer rather than selling but I fear my Alfie Kohn ideas about reward and punishment may have been a step too far when sympathising about Lynda’s daughter in law pushing their granddaughter (aged 6) too hard with maths to the point where she’s now decided she hates school…

A nice dinner and a lovely soft bed (I think the spare bed at L&S’s is Ady and my favourite bed other than our own in all the world actually, we always sleep really well here. It’s all crisp white cotton, soft feather pillows and a sunshiney, airy room with nothing other than the bed and cream walls. Feels like a posh hotel room or a cloud or something! Also Ady’s being nice to me so had laid out the kindle and laptop on my pillow along with putting my pjs on the radiator 🙂 Coincidentally while we were driving through the night on Saturday from Scotland to Babs Lynda was up babysitting til about the same time in the morning so she is still recovering from such a late night meaning everyone has retired to bed at 10pm. I was given a tot of rum for my cough which I have to admit to developing quite a taste for (maybe I could join the navy if this whole crofting thing doesn’t pan out).

Yesterday I didn’t get up until midday. I felt much the better for it although I was back in bed again not long after midnight so still some catching up to do.

It was a perfect low key day, chatting and communal cooking for adults, playing and chilling for children. The kids watched a film before bed and then once we’d packed them off we followed suit with a film – the Thomas Crowne Affair, before bed.

Today was more chilling, chatting and playing this morning, and then after lunch we headed over to Kirsty’s. Babs and Kirsty had to pop out at various points to drop off and collect various people which meant Ady and I had a fair chunk of time sitting in Kirsty’s kitchen with Kirsty’s laptop, a notepad and a phone to start working out what is next on our lists of things we need to do. We now have the static more or less in hand, know what generator we want and have decided to try and swap my car in for a diesel four wheel drive while we’re in Sussex to take back to Rum with us as our island vehicle. Next was some form of storage for the land – we know the static won’t hold *everything* and we’ll have stuff like tools, extra food (we’ll need to do food shopping in bulk as much as possible), things like loo rolls, tools, camping stuff that would usually go in a loft or garage and we will want up there with us but won’t necessarily have room for in the static. Our original plan was a container but some ringing round demonstrated that this could cost more than the static once we’d got it delivered! Some debate about a second static ensued before James came up with the suggestion of a trailer.

Perfect 🙂 We can tow it up there with all the extra stuff when we move and it can remain stored in it until we have the right space for it, then we have a trailer which will prove useful on and possibly also off the island for the future. 🙂 Hurrah for friends and ideas 🙂

Kirsty made pizza and garlic bread for everyone, Babs and co headed off to chess and we stayed another couple of hours looking at toilet options and talking about Rum because Kirsty says she’ll never get bored of that 😉 😉 😉 We left having booked them in for their first visit later in the year 🙂

Back at Babs’ we’ve stayed up far too late chatting and emptying the free bottle of wine from Ocado. My back is aching from too long on James’ special massager but I’ve got a runny nose and I know it will get worse once I go to bed and lie down.

There’s a word / thing I didn’t know before yesterday 🙂

I called out ‘meadow’ when we were shown a picture and everyone else in their Scottish accents called out ‘machair’, I got drowned out so it was okay 😆

The second day of the course was equally full on in terms of information tsunami, only this time I found myself holding forth with a barrage of questions from fellow course attendees in the tea breaks and lunch so I had to wolf down my tea or soup too.

First session was from a guy who looked like a greying Robbie Coltrane (and I’d have said that even if he didn’t have the Scottish accent to go with his looks!) from Highlands and Islands Enterprise who exist to ‘generate sustainable economic growth in every part of the Highlands and Islands’. His talk was on Community – what is community, how do individuals fit into it, what HIE does to support it financially and otherwise.

Next was a guy from Business Gateway, also a part time crofter, who came in to talk to us about Finance, Marketing and Business Management. He covered business plans, finance, marketing and promotion, cash flow and how the BG exists to offer support, advice, training etc.

The final talk of the morning was about wildlife habitats, the benefits and downsides of being in areas protected for wildlife, how you can manage your land for wildlife and the positives and constraints of doing so.

Then lunch 🙂 I got talking to a few people interested in Home Ed having met Davies and Scarlett the night before. One of them who has no children at the moment was particularly interested and loved the idea of how we do it, going so far as to say she would definitely feel inspired to have the confidence to Home Ed herself if she ever has kids 🙂 🙂

After lunch was the course leader talking about horticulture, crop rotation and growing on small and large scales. It was interesting but not particularly essential as it covered the sorts of things I am fairly clued up about already. Always good to be made to feel knowledgable though 🙂

Then came a talk on renewables from a guy who makes his living from consultancy work on different energy but has also renovated a very old, very run down old farmhouse to make it more efficient and installed various solar systems (solar panels for energy and thermal solar for hot water) and a wind turbine. He is feeding in to the grid rather than self sufficient (oh the debates I have listened to on those options this last year!) so there is a high element of financial rather than ecological motivation too but he was interesting and able to answer lots of questions. A bit anal with his graphs and spreadsheets though and very honest about his own rather OCD levels of measuring every little thing – he had daily, weekly, monthly, annual breakdowns of everything including how much he spent on lighting, entertainment and so on. Reminded me of someone else I know… 😉

Finally we were presented with our certificates and there was a round up about Scottish Crofting Federation with some last question and answers.

The course was excellent all round really, it was real bargain at £60 and covered LOADS – it was more an introductory route to all the various aspects but I have a whole list of places to contact for help, advice, training, possible grants and funding and a far clearer idea of what to do next, first and ongoing with regard to the admin side of crofting and running the business. Plenty of ideas for diversifying into different things in the future and most importantly far more contacts of people who can help and a load more potential friends who are up for coming and being part of our build at some point 🙂 And some more blog readers 🙂

The course leader who happens to be friends with Vikki on Rum is visiting in April so I’ll catch up with her again then, a couple on the course are coming to Rum in May for a geology course so I’ll see them then. Five of the attendees (two couples and a bloke who is off WWOOFing with his wife) have said they are up for coming and WWOOFing for us once we’re in that position and at least two more were interested in that idea too. We all agreed to swap contact details so an email is going round next week with everyone’s details on it so I can folllow that up 🙂

Finally it was so very reassuring to realise that going into Crofting is joining yet another community, one specific to the highlands and islands filled with people who are all living a similar style of life, driven by loving where they live and having a simpler existance. Community, working with others, living a lower impact lifestyle and being more self sufficient is simply a way of life there and the support network is huge. Mixed ages, backgrounds, even mixed nationalities with loads of crofters going back generations as crofters but loads more incommers like us, different ages, interests, methods and ways of doing things but so much in common with a real backbone behind it of support available officially in terms of funding and grants and training and unofficially in terms of always having someone with the answer to your question because they have done it themselves already.

It was great to be in a room of 20 other course attendees, the various speakers and course leaders all of whom didn’t think we were mad or stupid or crazy or taking on something beyond us because for them we are just doing something completely normal and usual. In the same way as it is good to feel cradled in the Home Ed community sometimes when the rest of the world all sends their kids to school and wants to demand how your kids will get GCSEs, live in the real world and make friends it was nice to feel at home and like everyone else for a few days with fellow crofters and prospective wannabe crofters :). I was being congratulated, told our story was exciting and meeting people who want to join in with our dreams, that means a lot 🙂

Then it was the nine hour drive south 🙁 I can’t summon much in the way of enthusiasm about that really. It was tedious, tiring, cold and felt like it went on forever. The kids did fall asleep about 1130pm, they are such good travelers 🙂 We got to Babs just before 2am which isn’t super late by my standards but having been in a classroom for 9 hours previously and the wrong end of a very full on week with early starts every day and hundreds of miles in the car it felt very late indeed. We got in, got pj’d and were all asleep within minutes. Never has a triple sleeper bunkbed looked so appealing 🙂

Really should be in bed, it’s late and tomorrow will be a *very* long day indeed.

Course was fab – I walked in and the woman running it said to the only other person already there ‘ooh, this is Nic’ to which he rather gushingly told me about how he’s been reading all about me on the internet. Having clarified just where he’d been reading about me (WW blog) I sat next to him and asked why he was stalking me 😆 Turns out he knows Wilf from Durham (my fave hosts) and he and his wife are setting off in August for a year long WWOOFing adventure, inspired in no small way by us 🙂 He even said to me ‘I think lots of people have been inspired by you’ See, I told you I was inspirational. One day there will be a film about me, you see if there isn’t 😉 😆 😆

The course started with a brief intro from the woman running it from Scottish Crofting Federation then an introduction to what a croft is, what it used to be and what it is now from a very old crofter who has lived through 80 years of crofting and told his very interesting life story all interwoven with crofting history and changes to legislation. Then we all had to do the little introduction about ourselves and my story was met with the usual mix of ‘how exciting’ and ‘are you mad?!’ 🙂

Next was tea break where I chatted to several people which prevented me from enjoying the very delicious millionaries shortbread to the full extent I would have liked 🙂 Next talk was from the government branch of agriculture and was all about grants and funding for farming, animal movement and tagging and cross compliance. Stuff I had learnt a fair bit about last year from various farmers but good to get the Scottish specifics and meet the friendly face of the contact for Rum which is actually the Inverness office who were there today. The women were lovely and I went and had a quick chat with them and got the definitive list of ‘I’ve just taken on a brand new croft, what do I do first?’ answers. I know the names of the forms I need now and everything 🙂

Then lunch 🙂 I got nabbed by a couple first who were really keen to find out more about Rum and asked me to keep their details and get in touch when we are ready for help building as they’d love to get involved 🙂 Hurrah for building up my volunteers list already.

Over lunch I chatted to another couple who are in the process of moving up to Barra to take over a family croft and have installed a static and a power supply using a yachting wind turbine, solar panel and couple of leisure batteries. The guy, Joe was really enthusiastic and full of tips so I asked him to come and talk to Ady later this evening which he did, bringing his phone to show a little slideshow and promising to write down various stuff for me tomorrow :).

After lunch we had a talk from a consultant on soil and drainage – all about how to find out what sort of soil you have and how to treat it to improve it, stuff about drainage and a little practical test on checking soil using a flow chart. Interesting stuff with some good links for further reading and research.

After him was more on funding – this time crofting specific, so about housing, infrastructure improvements (polytunnels, fencing, sheds, drainage etc.), land management and more. There are various grants and funding available, some with more hoops to jump through than others. All is only 50% of the cost of various things so you will be paying at least half of anything you do but it means things are more accessible more quickly. Very heartening, if it does mean lots and lots of paperwork ahead. I joked that I wasn’t likely to get my hands near the actual soil for the first year as I’d be sitting at a desk with a pen and paper instead, I actually think I wasn’t joking!

Last tea break and then the final talk of the day who was a vet dealing with highlands and islands and farming / crofting specifically. He talked about livestock – buying, breeding, rearing, medical issues, bio security and more. Interesting stuff although again I have covered a fair bit of it over this last year. Today has been a great mix of learning stuff, reminding me of how much I have already learnt, and putting us in touch with some great new contacts (and maybe friends).

Ady and the kids picked me up and we just had time to dash back to the Travelodge for a cup of tea before heading back out again. Part of the course was dinner at a local pub – we had to pay for our own but it was fairly cheap and after 2 nights of reduced to clear picnic food we felt choosing the cheapest meals on the menu just justifiable for the further contact with fellow crofters it gave us, particularly Ady and the kids who hadn’t come to the course.

It was a good evening although the food was fairly ropey. Ady and I both talked to loads of people, the kids were commended for being well behaved and we collected a few more promises of people up for coming and helping 🙂

Ady and the kids have had a very productive day – after ringing Calmac, Spanish John the freight landing craft and a third independant boat with all the measurements we’ve decided to go for the 10ft static – the 12ft might be possible but it’s only a might and the 10ft is definitely fine so we’ll go for that. Calmac is by far the cheapest (so they are subsidised on some things ;)) at £300. They then went back to McLeods and looked round the £6k 10ft again and decided which bedrooms they’d have etc. There is currently no fridge so they will put in a gas one for us (hurrah!), replace the double mattress which is a bit grim and have quoted about £500 to switch the lighting circuit to run on 12v so we can use leisure batteries for lighting and then genny (short term, wind turbine / hydro long term) for powering plug sockets as and when needed. All required now is a phonecall to pay the deposit and book the dates for delivery. All to be talked to my parents about next weekend.

So a good day all round really – and I’ve had an email from Vikki with a link to an environmental health grant of £800 for getting private water supplies sorted so I’ve emailed to find out more about that. It all feels like it’s coming together 🙂

I hate getting up with the alarm. I do wonder if all of our choices to this point are infact a really elaborate way of me avoiding getting up for work in the morning… home ed, traveling, moving to a remote island and getting a croft… 😉 mostly it works! 😆

We were on our way by 7am again this morning, breakfasting in the car and listening to Chris Evans on our way to Mallaig. Our rather old and tired with no updates for about 7 years satnav thinks the road to Mallaig takes about an hour longer from Fort William than it actually does, which gave us a heart attack last time we went but we were ready for it this time and when it suddenly lost a whole hour of it’s estimated arrival time we were expecting it. I’d allowed a buffer of an hour though and we did use half of that extra hour.

Once on the ferry the chef bustled over to say ‘have I remembered you right – the family moving to Rum?’ to which we replied she had and she produced today’s newspaper with a little article on page 3 about us 🙂

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Greatly amusing 🙂 To be recognised, to have the article shown to us and the wildly inaccurate reporting on our past lives 🙂

Lots of the village were there to greet the ferry, a van had arrived on it with various parcels. We said some hellos but left everyone to it and headed off for the croft. Vikki caught us up on her bike and we had a quick chat before Fliss pulled up alongside us and offered a lift in her car which we accepted given our tight schedule so she dropped us off close to the edge of the croft and offered a lift back to the ferry later too.

We walked up along the very top of the crofts then down, wanting to work out various things including precise location of waterfall – it’s not on our land, just off to the side, visible and audible from the croft but not technically on it. We’ll need to check with SNH about usage for water and power but are hopeful (and Vikki is too) that they will be receptive to us making use of the water. There is a rather clogged up stream on the croft which once cleared will probably run quite freely which will also provide water and possibly power too.

The land is looking good, not too boggy given it’s the wettest it will probably be after such a wet winter and rainy February. It is not as reedy as we’d feared and even has some bits that are grassy :). The crofts have a perimeter fence but no divide between 2 and 3 but it’s fairly easy to work out where one ends and the other starts. The views towards the sea are fairly restricted but as we got closer to the bottom we decided the river view is the better one to plan to build near – it runs very fast just below the croft land, twisting and turning and has a rich wildlife including otters, so that’s the place to be looking out over we reckon 🙂

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We had a fairly rubbish attempt at skypeing with Babs and Kirsty, the signal wasn’t great so they were getting a series of stills rather than video clips but we could see all their faces grouped together on Ady’s phone so they have the honour of being our first friends on the croft 🙂

We then walked the access track back to the village with Ady getting lots of photos. Currently where the track crosses the ford it is flooded with the depth of the river. It’s over welly level but no more than a foot deep, it would be fine for a vehicle and will subside over the coming weeks anyway. Vikki joined us at that point. She is very positive about the help we should get from the rest of the community and made us feel the same. It all feels achieveable – challenging, but achieveable (unlike spelling achieveable! Do other people have one set of words they happily use in speech because they can pronounce them but are never sure of the spelling and another set they are confident of writing down and getting correct but would wobble over the right way to say them out loud?)

We had a brief chat with Sean who also interviewed us, caught up with Steve who gave us the earthship dvds and promises a load more stuff like books :), met Clare the other yurt dweller, Reece (not sure what he does but we’d heard nice things about him), waved at Norman, had a quick hello with Neil the other crofter and then Fliss gave us another lift back to the pier. Definitely felt at home and part of the community 🙂 🙂 🙂

That about took us to time to be getting back so we returned to the ferry and came back to the mainland again. Another 100 miles drive back to Inverness, via two Coops and Tescos for various cheap food – this time a fiver for breakfast tomorrow, dinner tonight and enough top up food to last til we leave 🙂 I get lunch at the course and we’re all going for dinner tomorrow night with the rest of the course attendees – Ady and kids inlcuded to try and make some contacts. Financial crisis thanks to additional unforeseen petrol, ferry and food purchasings (we should have been WWOOFing on Eigg spending nothing!) has meant an emergency phonecall to Dad who is topping up our funds from afar tomorrow so we can get petrol to drive south again on Saturday night. Sigh.

Finally back at the Travelodge we ate, were slightly surprised to realise tea, coffee, clean towels and loo roll supplies had been topped up in the room. Thankfully Humphrey is secreted over by the kids beds with bags infront of him.

A hot chocolate laced with brandy (emergency rations brought from home, needed this evening for positively medicinal purposes) brings me more than ready for bed. Course tomorrow 🙂

Because I know at least one person will be waiting 😉

Yesterday was a leisurely morning with much tea and chatting. I commented to Jan that I love how our different friends all help us meet different needs and provide help and assistance and resources in their own unique ways. Within minutes of arriving at J&J’s we were furnished with a heap of books – Katie Morag (we knew we were remiss in not having read them, now having read a couple we need to get our own copies :)), a book written by a man who grew up on Rum which Ady was devouring (and it takes a lot for him to read a book!) and various others about island life, crofting and other relevant subject matter. Also a list of suggested authors and the promise of the Monty Halls Applecross burnt to something by the weekend 🙂 🙂

So while the kids did various playing in various combinations – Scarlett and Megan formed a fairly new alliance, I’m not at all sure they’d really made it to each other’s radars before now but they totally bonded over guinea pigs, hamsters, cats, dogs and leaping about on hay stacks! It was really nice to witness, as was the Jasper and Davies pairing, I love seeing kids become children from toddlers, like butterflies emerging :).

After lunch (a lunch of many toasties, reminds me of that joke about the rabbit who visited a pub every day for weeks having a different toasted sandwich every time, ever more outlandish fillings until one day he just stopped coming. Weeks later someone asked after him and was told he’d passed away from mixinghistoasties :lol:) we donned coats and wellies and headed off for a walk. It’s lovely landscape, rather similar to Rum except the bit of the view which has the sea in it from the croftland has Holmfirth in it from J&J’s 🙂 Afterwards we all helped move a pile of hay from one place to another and then left the children in charge of flattening it into a smaller pile.

Later the kids watched a film (Parenttrap, the Hayley Mills one, not Lyndsey Lohan) which they all seemed to enjoy. After dinner we listened in to the oem for the day from the book they are reading for Lent. Jan read the poem twice, then the text explaining it and then poem again. Scarlett asked a couple of questions and Davies had a few more today in the car. Lent is something we have talked about before, probably every year when we have pancakes on Shrove Tuesday but it’s been really interesting this year to be around for both Babs and J&J marking it in their own ways and discussions surrounding it. Ady and I were talking about the various customs and rituals we have seen in various homes over the last year – hosts who have said grace before meals, a couple blessed their meals, Julie & Chris have a few minutes after dinner each evening where they go around the table and mention one or two things they have been blessed with today and note them down. I guess our good, bad, learnt today was a similar sort of idea – we really must start that up again :).

Jan and I enjoyed lots of chatting time and stayed up way later than is sensible for people getting up at 6am to drive to Scotland the next morning. And I had a bath 🙂
It was a really lovely interlude with all at J&J’s – the kids found some new connections, I got to cuddle Stripey for ages and I love the landscape, house and mostly the company there 🙂

This morning we did our best to creep out quietly having got up at 6am. I couldn’t find any contact lenses so blundered about in glasses making a flask of tea, we all thought Davies was in the car and then realised he wasn’t, only to find him sitting quietly on the stairs waiting for us when we’d all come down a different staircase, then Ady dropped the bag of rolls he’d just filled all over the driveway so they were inedible 🙁

We got away before 7am though and aside from traffic on the M62 and M60 around Manchester slowing us down a little we had a really good run. We breakfasted and lunched in the car and got all the way to Inverness by 2pm without stopping once. The car was desperate for petrol and Tarly and I were desperate for wees so Tesco was for once a very welcome sight. I don’t think I’ve ever run the car quite that low and I often play petrol chicken. Tarly and I grabbed some fruit from Tescos too which we’d all been craving. Then the last 20 miles past Inverness to Macleods Caravans .

Our plan today was to actually have a look inside a few to compare sizes, widths, ages, prices etc as we did when buying a campervan and to ask a load of questions about delivery, siting etc. Ady and the kids can go back again on Friday or Saturday to follow up while I’m on my course but we thought it was sensible for me to be around to ask some questions too :). We looked at a £3k 10ft static – about 20 years old, tired and a bit tatty, the Willow of statics I guess :). Then a 10ft for £6, only 10 years old and with a far more modern and clean feel, the bedrooms had a better layout and the living space was bigger. Finally a 12ft, the same price at £6k because it was not as nice inside as the narrower one but so much more spacious. I think on the basis it will be our home for a year or more and we will be investing in it really as it will be longer term used for WWOOFers, friends or even holiday letting so it is worth stretching the budget a little for it.

There is some debate as to whether the ferry will allow a 12ft or not so that will be our decider (getting a charter across or using the freight) long with various other factors. Tomorrow we’ll look at all that and start working out the finer details of sewerage, energy and water. What’s great is having lived in Willow for all that time we know we can cope without all those things for a period of time and the static will still feel spacious plus we will have a home again 🙂 🙂 The kids really liked them and are excited to be getting so much closer to it all happening. It’s fab to be able to start imagining ourselves living and cooking and being in a static now we’ve been inside some, tomorrow we’ll get to walk the land and picture one of those statics installed there :).

From there it was back to Inverness to find the Travelodge. It’s set back off the road so shouldn’t be too noisy and our room is nice and cool rather than the oven we had at the PremierInn at Fort William a couple of weeks ago. We had tea / coffee and just got our heads together a bit before heading back out for food. We’ve not been as organised as I would have liked really regarding feeding ourselves on our limited budget – some crockery and cutlery would have been wise, as would some cunning plans for food like slow cookers! We managed though, gathering loads of reduced to clear stuff from Tescos including pastries for breakfast to eat in the car tomorrow, bread rolls to keep us going for the next couple of days, cheese, crackers, rice cakes etc as staples, some cheap scotch eggs and sausage rolls, a jar of olives and two rotisserie chickens reduced right down in price. Ady blagged a couple of plates from the receptionist at the Travelodge and we had carpet picnic dinner with a lot of tomorrow’s feeding sorted too, we used our last Tesco vouchers that have come all around the UK with us and only forked out £4 in cash :). Tomorrow we’d be going past 2 Co-Ops and a Morrisons so hopefully we can pick up more bargains for food then. We got some Tescos own pot noodle / pasta just add boiling water too to try.

Baths all round and the kids are fast asleep and judging by the yawning and early alarm set again for tomorrow I suspect we’ll not be far behind.

All our children are growing up 🙂

Yesterday we had a lovely day at FabBabs with Kirsty, James, Marcus and Alex coming over too. The kids all played, outside for ages and ages, until after it got dark. We kept peeking at them all six younger ones on the trampoline together, mostly sprawled out chatting rather than bouncing. Later after they’d eaten they played on the Wii together, dancing to the point of opening windows and stripping off to thinner layers to cool off and then sitting down to sing along to the words together. So funny listening to seven voices singing Take On Me and Video Killed the Radio star drifting in from the next room.

Our family have spent the last week all sleeping in Ben’s room – Ady and I on the bottom of a triple sleeper, Davies above and Scarlett on a z bed. It suits us to all be in together and I think the seperate rooms from other children has played a part in maintaining the fabulous harmony of all the kids this week. It’s interesting to start making observations about the child based on their space though. Ben’s bookshelf is full of such very ‘Ben’ books – dinosaurs, science, whole series of kids books all arranged in numerical order. There is ‘that’ dinosaur picture from the very first secret santa at Christmas camp (down stairs in the lounge is a thank you picture painted by Davies in response to a birthday present from Ben when Davies was five – small pieces of evidence in a friendship already spanning over half their lives). Chargers for consoles trailing across the desk, DS games cases on another shelf. Science kits and two identical boxes of sea monkeys – I have a feeling one of them may have been a gift from us one birthday. A reminder on the wipeclean board to ‘watch Crocodile Dundee’. There are relics of childhood already passed – the Thomas duvet cover that is now a spare rather than the main choice, cuddly toys gathering dust under the bed a la Jessie from Toy Story 2. There isn’t a pair of dungarees hanging up in one of those box picture frames but I can imagine one in my own head 🙂 😉

After Kirsty & James had gone yesterday Babs and Chris won in the challenges to ‘Actually Find a Film That Nic Likes’ and brought out ‘Catch me if you can‘. I’d never even heard of the film before (looking at the date I guess that’s reasonable, I’d have been in newborn and toddler haze then, I’ve never been a big cinema goer and I suspect the last film with a non U rating I saw at the cinema was probably Saving Private Ryan!) but I do adore Tom Hanks so would have given it a go on his appearance in it alone. It was excellent – if you’ve not seen it, then do 🙂

That took us to well past everyone else in bed o’clock and explains my lack of blogging as I went to bed too.

This morning I was mostly being entertained by the suggestion of applying for a nursery school teachers job on Rum 😆

We had very delicious beetroot soup for lunch and then after a false start forgetting Ady’s phone (probably the only thing we simply could not really have decided to do without until the weekend) and calling Babs back to let us back in to get it we finally arrived at Jan & Jonathan’s.

The usual warm welcome, a very delicious dinner and plenty of playing on the Wii here for the kids and chatting to J&J for us later we are all in Catie’s bedroom. I don’t know Catie as well as I know Ben but I’m loving the peek into her world from being invited to sleep in her bedroom – and there is a ‘guest book’ and ‘tourist attractions’ set up in here to enjoy 🙂 Posters on the walls demonstrate the interest in ocean and marine life as do seashells, dolphin figures and a nautical themed clock. Sketches and artwork show Catie’s creative side and the little notes and captions on things show her sense of humour, as does the list of ‘rules’ pinned to the front of the door.

Giving my children their own bedrooms, their own space to create a little world all of their own, to express themselves and control their surroundings again is one of the things I am most excited about happening in the coming weeks. The saying ‘home is wherever we are’ is very true but it will be lovely for it to be an actual destination to return to aswell as carried around with us at all times. I’ve been proud of our children these few weeks – I don’t expect them to be grateful for the beds they’ve been given, that’s our job, Ady and me but they have said please and thank you and praised meals given to them, not because they have manners or because they know it impresses people but because they are genuinely grateful for the effort that has gone into the meals and the providing of the food. We are carrying our own pillows with us and laying our heads down on the same pillows that we slept on in our house over a year ago resting on our actual beds, that travelled all around the country with us in Willow for the last year and are now touching down on mattresses, camping mats and floors in the homes of family and friends means we rest and sleep well wherever we may be.

Scarlett said to me today that she loves being snuggled up safe and warm somewhere cosy when it’s cold and grey outside. I feel this bodes well for a life on Rum ;). Tonight as we snuggle up in the top room of the house the wind is buffeting the house and raindrops are falling against the windows. I’m looking forward to the walls keeping us warm and dry very soon being our own home.