One word? When seven would do…

Babs came up with the idea of A Walk today which was an excellent one. Far too much time spent infront of wii, DS, PC and TV this week for all children has made for a lack of colour in cheeks and fresh air in lungs. Babs consulted maps and came up with a route which we could drive to and walk home from, sending blokes out to collect the one car with the other one afterwards.

Chris dropped most of us off and then went back for the remainder while us first outers hung around watching children play. It was just starting to get uncomfortably cold and windy when they arrived to join us and we headed off on the walk proper. A few false starts of children getting left behind too far and deciding this was a good place to build a boat, or too far infront and deciding to diverge from the path meant the grown ups had two periods of hanging around, at which point we declared it a ‘walk, not a wait’ after which everyone more of less stayed together and we walked at a perfect pace for chatting, admiring the surroundings, playing with sticks etc.

We reckoned it was between 3 and 4 miles, easy walking but enough to feel we’d earned our dinner 🙂

Back at home ( 😉 ) we had refuelling snacks and drinks and then blokes settled down to watch rugby while Babs and I headed off to look at the local farm shop. Babs is experimenting with different, non supermarket food shopping and has had organic fruit and veg boxes delivered this week which we’ve been impressed with the price and quality of. The farm shop had one free range chicken left so we got that along with some free range eggs. The woman there was very friendly, full of passion and enthusiasm for the products on sale and the farm itself, talking about cooking methods, the farmer, the cafe and so on, again I was impressed 🙂

We then did go to Tescos too for various bits before coming home and cooking a communal meal of roast chicken, roast and mashed potatoes, stuffing, suet pudding, roast carrots and parsnips, yorkshire puddings and gravy, with all adults playing a part. Over dinner we had some fascinating conversations about free range, animal welfare, vegetarianism and veganism, what price you’d pay for happy animals and so on. It was great, I love listening to childrens’ takes on these things. Davies and Scarlett are very clued up on such things having been involved in chicken rearing for years, seen first hand slaughter and prep and been to various places where welfare standards are different so they have plenty of knowledge to draw on. We talked about taste in relation to cost and what is the most important factor for us. We discussed how tonights chicken was about 50p per person more expensive which is about the difference between having pudding or not afterwards and whether that was a choice they’d all make. Interesting stuff.

This evening we watched some of a dvd the guy on Rum burnt for us about Earthships. It is not terribly well presented but fascinating nonetheless and something I imagine Ady and I will be watching over again. I’m feeling very inspired and excited, I suspect Ady is more daunted! 😉 He did fall in love with the earthship all over again though and we love the idea mooted in one of the films of building what they call the ‘hut’ which is a simple 6ft diameter room as a practise run – they reckoned doable by four people in a week for about $2500. The people on the film were living in it – it has a mezzanine for the bed and it could make visitor accomodation, kids bedroom, storage or get encorporated into a wider design in a modular fashion. Definitely something to have a go at I reckon.

This morning Ady and I spent some time coordinating ‘to do’ lists and drawing up more questions and answers for researching. We stopped for Popmaster obviously ;).

I had a whole host of questions pertaining to just living on Rum as a resident – how does shopping work? Vehicles? What will our postcode be? That sort of thing. I emailed Vikki a whole list and she responded with a document entitled ‘new residents guide to Rum’ and a lengthy email too. That was cause for great excitement 🙂 There are many moments of complete ‘wtf are we doing?’ about this whole thing coupled with overwhelming panic and middle of the nights fretting (mostly Ady, but I am having the odd wobble myself) but it is all overshadowed by a huge sense of excitement. I keep reminding myself how I would be feeling if it was anyone else but us about to head off on this next amazing adventure – everything we’ve been hankering after, all ours 🙂

This week has gone really fast, it’s been lovely to have this time with FabBabs and co and has all felt really natural and cooperative with food happening, such interesting chats and all sorts of just getting on with stuff. It reminds me once again that in the right circumstances communal living just works so very well 🙂

Scarlett has had lengthy chats with both Ady and I with regard to reading and writing and our current stance is she is doing a little writing and at least not being so completely obstructive towards reading – I am not getting involved at all (in a totally amicable way, she is bringing me what she has learnt to show me but I am doing none of the actual ‘teaching’) but she is getting lots of support and input from Ady and Davies which all seems to be working. I confess to having to sit on my hands and bite my tongue for fear of screaming ‘that’s not how you do it!!!’ but am very aware that is my issue and no one elses 😉 I often ponder on inherantly incompatible my educational philosophies are with my personality type ;). Despite the ‘strangeness’ of living with another family for a week – and we have been ‘living’ here not just staying – I can feel the subtle shift of things getting back to ‘normal’ for our family dynamic. The stress has ebbed away, we know where we’re going and what is happening next. Throwing ourselves full pelt into the unknown with a bit of a plan is something we have a fair bit of experience in these days – Home Ed, WWOOFing… once we know we are back in control again it all becomes far more reassuring. We are having conversations with some known quantities once more and can talk with a certain confidence about where we’ll be, what we’ll do and so on. We can make proper plans and actually start to think about some constants.

Ady cooked dinner tonight and then I cooked something else for Chris and I as we were not struck on the idea of the fish pie – it went down very well with everyone else though (except Rachael and she ate it all!).

Babs and I spent some time googling ourselves as a spin off of another of our ‘where will the topic go next’ conversations which was interesting.

everywhere I look around…

Today we’ve all been in and out lots, but not together. Babs & Co did tennis and some of them did choir. We went off to meet Mark from Green Directions who is a friend of Chris he’d arranged a meeting for us with as he thought Mark’s business might be of interest to us. It’s primarily his home, kitted out with green alternative energies like ground source heat pump, two wind turbines, solar panels, septic tank with anaerobic digestion. He keeps pigs, cures meat, makes his own chocolates, brews his own wine and lives in one of the most gorgeous houses I’ve ever been in. He’s also a really nice bloke. Oh and an ex OFSTED inspector! 🙂

In turns of learning from him the circumstances are so very different, he has done a restoration and renovation rather than a self build, and he sells his energy back to the grid which he is fully hooked up to rather than being self sufficient (although he makes more than he actually uses so ends up earning and getting free electric). We talked about marketing and PR, what level of personal detail and ‘celebrity status’ it’s acceptable to give away to get the business (something I am incredibly conscious of with our blog and the choice of starting to promote it further in the hopes of sponsorship or trying to publish a book), vision versus end result and other such stuff. It was a very enjoyable hour or so and very heartening to realise just how much we have learnt about all these things over the last year or so. We are no experts but we do now have a fairly good understanding of these things, it;s always nice to not only understand every bit of a conversation but to also be able to ask relevant and pertinant questions too :). I was even able to make a couple of suggestions to Mark regarding looking at WWOOF hosting, grants and funding for educational purposes and polytunnel growing.

On the way home we called into Tescos for some food supplies. We’ve been hoarding clubcard vouchers for a while and decided that on the basis we are hoping to move to an island over 100 miles away (and a ferry trip!) from the nearest Tescos in the next few weeks the time had probably come to spend them. We’ve clung to them all the way round the UK last year so it felt a bit monumental really, but better vouchers spent than our ever dwindling funds 🙂

Back at Babs’ we made pizza dough and then later pizzas were cooked and topped – all very delicious 🙂

This evening I cleaned out Humphrey’s cage, he’s starting to look too big for it really, he has grown a lot since we got him although I suspect he is close to fully grown now. We will pick up a larger cage for him at some point before we leave, I know Scarlett has been eyeing up multi level extravaganza wonder-cages.

Some funny things the kids have said in the last few days:

Scarlett was asking Ady about lent and why Beth, Ben and Rachael have given up cakes and biscuits. Ady explained it is about giving up something you love and will miss for 40 days. Scarlett thought about this for a while and replied with ‘oh, so like WWOOFing then?!’ 😆

Later she told me that Ben had given up his DS for lent one year but found it really hard so had cheated and played it without Babs knowing. I said that lent wasn’t about giving things up for Babs but doing it for God and He would know because He is omnipotent – very pleased with teaching the new word and giving the definition of seeing all, being everywhere, knowing everything. Scarlett asked ‘like Father Christmas then?’ to which I agreed. She then scrunched her face up and said doubtfully ‘I don’t think he’d bother watching a little boy hiding behind a sofa with his DS though really would he?’ 😆

Another day, another agonising round of decisions and talking stuff over.

Babs, Ben and Rachael headed off to church this morning to get ash put on their foreheads 🙂 It’s very interesting seeing people give things up for lent, hence my friendfeed post earlier.

Kirsty, Marcus and Alex came over for the day so the kids were all off playing in various combinations. It’s been great having so much time with friends for Davies and Scarlett – a nice concentrated chunk of friend-rich time to keep them going until people start visiting us on Rum 🙂

The grown ups mostly chatted about all sorts of things but with a fairly heavy bias towards Goddard related stuff – we are so appreciating the input of friends and the chance to discuss things and toss ideas about, get some different perspectives and just talk things through. Our conclusions led me to ring my parents later in the afternoon and talk some stuff through with them. We are in a corner really with regards to when we can move to Rum as it will require some money to ensure we have somewhere to stay – moving Willow up there would still cost money (she would need tax, insurance, MOT, petrol for the £600 mile trip) and she would not make it onto the croft land anyway. We would then still have costs attached such as bottled gas and would need to find somewhere to have showers etc. I also feel quite strongly that while Ady and I are happy to ‘rough it’ for as long as it takes Davies and Scarlett have spent enough time squashed into the bunk with only a small cupboard of space each. Our current agent (who is on borrowed time already) is pushing us to drop the price of the house but we feel it is realistically priced and don’t want to sell quickly at a knock down price and have considerably less in the fund to make stuff happen.

So I have asked my parents to lend us the money to buy a static and get set up on the croft – a generator, maybe enough for a polytunnel and chicken shed etc. This will mean we can actually move onto the land, get first crops in, start rearing some livestock and then once we are working the land we can start applying for grants and funding to get cracking with the next stages, buy extra stuff as and when we can afford to and start becomming part of the community and be around for the first tourist season. If the house sells they get their money back, if it doesn’t sell within the next couple of months we’d decide the market is not right and rent it out again instead in which case Mum & Dad can collect the rent and in less than a year they will have had all the money they loaned us back anyway. In an ideal world it would sell quickly or we wouldn’t need to ask but I can see no other logical way of getting things together. We can’t live in Sussex, we can’t live in Rum without a house and really we just want to get on with living our new lives.

Two hours later (it was like another interview!) they agreed and we have emailed Rum to say ‘yes’ to a start date for the croft tenancy of April 1st (no jokes about fools please ;)), found a static supplier with experience of delivering to the islands (thanks to Kirsty and her Proper Googling skills xxx) which Ady and the kids can visit while I’m at my crofting course next weekend as it is not far from Inverness, emailed Rum and the local planning office to check what permission, if any, is required to put a static on the land, emailed a couple of WWOOF hosts with permaculture and self build knowledge and experience to give them our news and ask for some help / advice / input about things as we go along.

This new plan will potentially leave us with just a couple of weeks in Sussex to pack everything up, make decisions about what to bring, what to get rid of and what to leave behind for a future move up, say goodbye to family and friends there and then make the long journey north yet again, this time Home.

I feel like we now have a proper starting point to start leaping from and both my parents said some nice things on the phone which is always good to hear. They don’t want us to go, they don’t get our motives and they think it is a mental idea really, but they have said they can see it is what we want and what we think will make us happy and as such they will support us and help us in any way they can. As my parents go that is a pretty big step in the right direction so I’ll happily take that and be thankful.

We’ve been cooking curries 🙂

We’ve decided to nip across to Rum again next Thursday. We need to have another look at the land and get some really accurate photos and measurements of the access track so that we can plan stuff from a distance like getting a static across. Due to not being on Eigg we are in Inverness from Wednesday night with nothing actually happening on Thursday which is one of the days the ferry does the day trip with a 3 hr window, perfect for walking to the croft, around the land, marvelling at the view and getting back to the pier for the ferry again. It feels most extravagant but actually it’s only 100 miles from Inverness so it also feels perfectly logical.

Today a friend of Barbara’s came over with her 3 boys which was really nice. She (and the boys) is lovely and it’s always good to meet fellow HEors and swap stories. I’ve always been envious of the amazing HE provision and resources in Sheffield, there is such a lot of people doing it and so many excellent activities and groups and opportunities specifically for HE kids. All thanks to the hard work of certain families and individuals of course but it really is a great place to Home Educate.

Ady is feeling the need to earn his keep so has been doing loads of washing up, clearing away, hoovering, cleaning down the kitchen and today he washed Babs’ car. It’s keeping him happy and ensuring he feels we are guests worth having. The kids are doing fine work in distracting Beth, Ben and Rachael from the usual work and I am mostly sitting around drinking tea and engaging Babs in deep conversations. I think between us we are covering all bases…

We had a viewing on the house on Saturday but the woman was not interested, another is booked for this Thursday. The agent was trying to persuade us to drop it rather dramatically from £240k to £220k which we didn’t agree to on the basis it has only been on the market for 2 weeks and had 1 viewing. We are thinking if it does not sell within the first couple of months we could put it back on the rental market while keeping it for sale and maybe even seeing if Mike is up for the guaranteed rent scheme on it this time as it is all nicely decorated and ready to go. I’d rather not but some rent is better than nothing at all I guess…. argh it all feels like that puzzle with the chicken and the fox and the grain at the moment…

We are thinking we need to go to Rum sooner rather than later really. We do have WWOOFing lined up in April in Kent which looks interesting and would mean we were not spending any money (food and camping space provided) but I think our hearts are already in Rum and I am very conscious that it is the networking and getting to know people that is our most precious asset there – all the machinery we could possibly need to get the road sorted and a static got on to our land is already on the island belonging to SNH and while the official line is they will not let people borrow it that unofficial line is that if the individuals who operate them and live on the island can give fellow islanders a hand then of course they will, but these are the sorts of arrangements and offers that come about over a cup of tea or a beer, not an email or remote third party while we are down in Sussex or Kent.

I had a lovely email from Vikki today to say she’d read my blog and hoped we’d recovered from our grilling but they wanted to be sure we knew what we were getting ourselves into and that they are positive we are the right people and will succeed and if she can do anything to help or smooth the way she is only too happy to do so. She sent me some links to funding opportunities, some more training courses and email addresses of another couple of likely helpful people. I replied to ask if she thought we’d be able to bring Willow across to live in and park somewhere in the village while we wait for our house to sell. I know we’d need to buy food but other than that we’d have no costs and could start doing things like digging drainage and getting use to the land, while making all those relationships with the community. I think living in our van, close enough to our land to walk on it every day, getting to know our island is where we need to be rather than in limbo waiting for something our of our control (house sale) to happen.

I’ve emailed a publisher that I’d had recommended as potentially interested in our story, back before we even went WWOOFing. No idea if anything will come of that but it feels like I’ve made a move in the right direction there too. Grants and funding are not going to start appearing until we actually start doing stuff (it is usually claiming back money spent rather than getting cash in advance) so I can’t begin chasing those but getting some money coming in would be really good.

So it was all planned; interview on Rum followed by a day exploring, followed by a weekend at Neil & Sue’s on Eigg catching up and then a 10 day stint of WWOOFing for them before heading back to the mainland next Wednesday for the crofting course. Nice and tidy.

Except as we stepped on the ferry with all of the wellwishes waving us goodbye from the pier on Rum the captain told us ‘you’ll be pleased to know we’re just heading straight back to Mallaig’ – it was pretty choppy. We said actually no, we were hoping to go to Eigg at which he shrugged and repeated that they were just going to Mallaig so what did we want to do. We glanced back, looked at each other and I made the decision to get on the boat. Staying on Rum wasn’t really an option – we didn’t have enough money for food or the hostel (even at the very discounted rate the manager had charged us) and if the ferries are about to be disrupted the last thing we wanted to risk waas getting trapped on the island and missing the crofting course.

As we pulled away and headed up to the top deck Scarlett asked me ‘so what’s the plan then Mummy?’ to which I replied I didn’t have one yet. She looked shocked and said ‘what do you mean you don’t have a plan? You always have a plan!’ which I think most people know is not at all true, I am just good at winging it with a sense of authority suggesting a plan! I said that I would have a plan by the time we got off the boat!

The kids had chips while I sat grabbing the odd bits of phone signal to send a couple of text messages and take a phone call from Lynda which secured us a bed for Saturday night, albeit one 370 miles away back down in England! After lots of discussion we decided Eigg was going to not happen – we’d have had to find somewhere to stay until at least Monday when the next ferry was and then worried about not getting off again next week – petrol back down to a free bed at a friends was definitely the cheaper option, with further plans to be made as we got our heads around the fact all of my careful and cunning planning had been thrown into disarray.

We stopped briefly in Fort William for some biscuits, petrol and a wee and then drove straight from there to Lynda & Stuart’s arriving at 930pm. A Very Long day. We went through the mountains which were looking dangerously as though the snow gates may close as it got heavier and heavier with snow and despite gritters going up and down the paths the road was very slippy and quite scary. We did pull over for a very brief photos and snowballs break 🙂

Once we hit Loch Lomond the snow had stopped and we didn’t see any more for the rest of the drive. It was boring and long but we didn’t really hit any traffic and despite the chaos of having our plans ruined we were all on quite a high still from the whole ‘we got a croft!’ news 🙂

Lynda and Stuart were wonderful as ever, feeding us, giving us wine and beer and being so supportive and enthusiastic about our news. The kids made a lego animation on Davies’ 3DS and then went to bed around midnight, Ady and Stuart all but followed them up but Lynda and I were up til 2am chatting. I do love her and I told her so with a big hug 🙂

This morning we finalised next plans and the Wonderful FabBabs & co are putting us up for the week – we did consider driving back to Sussex but Babs is insisting it is fine for us to stay here and it’s certainly lovely to be with friends rather than camping out in our house so we’re taking them up on it!

We came to Babs via Kirsty & James – for cups of tea, congratulatory cuddles, safe handing back of The Humph (Scarlett’s silver lining of not going to Eigg 🙂 ). Talking, looking at croft photos, a gorgeous curry and plenty of playing for the kids before everyone else wussed out and went to bed leaving me to blog and ponder further on all things Rum related.

will be Croft 3, Isle of Rum 🙂

This morning Ady and I both woke early after the best nights sleep we’ve had in ages – all that low lying tension has gone. I know there are challenges ahead but this feeling of right-ness and peace is so very lovely 🙂

We had breakfast and headed out to look at the croft land and make the decision about which one to go for. It has rained on and off all day, showers, mostly light but with a few heavy spells. It is very mild though and has been pretty still wind-wise. We’ve been told this has been the wettest winter in years and certainly everywhere is pretty boggy, not quite Kessingland but close 😉

We walked along the bottom edge of both crofts. The access track is pretty decent right the way to the bottom corner of croft 2 which is the bigger croft and the one we had asked for on our application. We had chosen it for being bigger and nearer thinking on our first visit that there was little between them really. Several people said to us yesterday that they’d have chosen Croft 3 though so we needed to make a more informed decision.

We walked up the side of croft 3 and Davies and Scarlett imediately started to get excited and start planning – there is woodland running alongside one side of it and various clumps of rocks, gorse etc on it. The drainage is far better on Croft 3 and it is criss crossed with small streams as a result ending with a decent size waterfall and stream down the land. The waterfall is both gorgeous and sounds lovely but most excitingly will probably sort out hydropower for us aswell as providing our water. More research and learning to do there then :). We sat on the land on a big rock looking out across the panoramic views – mountains, sea, the castle and village down below us.

In the interests of balance we then walked all the way back down again, along and then up and down Croft 2. By then we had all already made up our minds but were being very considered about pros and cons with Davies particularly doing a fine job of listing each ones positive points. I was really impressed with his reasoning and his recall of some of our hosts from the last year and some cautionary words about them. We decided that actually 8 acres will be more than sufficient and we’ll take views and waterfalls and charm of land over larger with better access. We summed it up with the reasoning that it’s a bit bloody late to start making sensible decisions at this late stage given all the choices and moves that led us to be standing in the rain on a remote Scottish island deciding which chunk of waterlogged, undeveloped land we’d most like to call home 🙂 I don’t remember the last time I’ve felt so excited! It was fab to see the kids all passionate and fired up too, dashing around exclaiming over waterfalls and places to build a hide, calling us over to see the latest treasure on the land. It was fab.

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That decided we walked back down the other side of the shelter belt of trees, crossed the bridge over the river and back to the village. We walked past a guy in a landrover with trailer and he stopped and leant out hailing us with ‘are yous the Goddards?’ he is in the process of leaving – has a 16 year old son who has been HE for a few years before starting at the mainland school at 15 but is now in sixth form and so can’t get boarding and can be away for a month if the weather is bad so they are moving back to be with him. He said he loves it here and maybe will be back one day and told the kids about a spot in the river that warms right up in the summer and is perfect for swimming in – cue more smiles 🙂

We were ready for lunch by then so headed back to the castle and ate before donning waterproofs and heading back out again. We walked all along to the harbour and around that side, considered the nature trail to the otter hide but the rain was very set in and we are conscious of needing to pack everything in the morning to head to Eigg so wet clothes being an issue, along with not wanting Scarlett to have a relapse from hours out in the rain. It was about 430pm by then anyway so a quick walk round the village hall and look at the photos up on the notice board of village residents at various parties and celebrations and we went back to the castle for baths and drying off.

I nipped back out to the shop for some dinner supplies when it opened at 5pm and we’ve had a fairly low key evening. Dinner, chatting with the builders and the chef here and some catching up with blogging, conscious of the lack of signal for such things over on Eigg.

I’m knackered now, lots and lots of walking today and aware of going ‘back to work’ on Monday on Eigg and being up earlyish tomorrow to pack and get the ferry. It feels odd to be leaving here again knowing it is now going to be home but we’re looking forward to seeing Neil, Sue and Struan, I think I’m going to get loads out of the crofting course and we’ll be seeing friends again after that. Now we actually know what we need to be investing energy into it feels good to have a proper purpose and be able to be proactive rather than sitting around waiting for decisions to be made for us.

Up with the alarm this morning at 7am after a far too hot to sleep properly night in the Travelinn at Fort William. We all got dressed and were in the restaurant by about 720am – unheard of hour for at least 3/4 of us 😉 Breakfast eaten we got the car loaded and headed off.

The satnav was having some sort of fit and started telling us it would take nearly 2 hours to get there but seemed to right itself and ended up losing all the time and amending itself so we arrived at 930am as planned, parked the car in almost the same spot we’d left Willow 3 months ago and had a quick jaunt around Mallaig grabbing some 10p RTC cakes in CoOp. We bought our tickets and went to stand at the ferry entrance meeting up with Vikki who was travelling back having been to meetings in Inverness and Fort William for the last couple of days.

The ferry crossing was slightly odd – we knew four of the people on the boat were coming across to interview us – there were some day trippers and the cluster headmaster for all the small isles schools and an engineer coming to fix the heating in the castle on Rum. We sat on one table, the interviewers sat on another and kept glancing across at us and the other folk all sat on another table together. Vikki came over and we talked briefly about the oddness of all being on the boat together and she said that when she’d come to Rum for her interview she was on the ferry with both the interviewer and the other candidate – and then back again having been told she’d been successful and the other person hadn’t on the return ferry!

Scarlett fell asleep on me which was sort of nice, can’t remember the last time a child fell asleep cradled in my arms. The crossing was nice and smooth and lasts just over an hour.

At the other end we were offered a lift with our stuff from Allie, wife of Sean who was one of the interviewers, so we had a brief chat with her as she drove us along to the village hall where Sean met us and made us a drink and we waited for the others to arrive.

The panel was Vikki – Community Development Officer, Sean – Estate Manager for SNH and one of the directors of IRCT, Allan – a director of IRCT and councillor from the mainland, and Douglas and Karen from Scottish Crofting Federation. We all sat down and the format for the interview was the four of us facing the five of them while they took it in turns to read through a list of questions. Allan’s were mostly about the house build, planning, logistics etc. Vikki’s were about the community and how we would fit in and what we would add, Sean’s were about the nature reserve, environment and how we would add to and not compromise that aspect of Rum as a nature reserve and wildlife haven, Douglas and Karen asked practical livestock and crop related questions.

It was bloody tough – harder than I had envisaged and I realised we had not really prepared as much as we should in terms of being more confident about the practicalities of the croft plans. This had been semi deliberate in self preservation – I couldn’t stand the idea of spending hours on researching it all only to not be offered the croft and realise it had all been wasted time and energy. After fudging one question I came clean and said that we didn’t have all the answers and information at our fingertips and that on the basis of a 3 hour visit and no real knowledge of how our application would go what we had done was research sufficient to tell us we could do further research if successful. That we did not sit infront of them with all the answers but we did sit infront of them full of energy, enthusiasm and passion with all the correct skills to go and find the answers and make things work. It felt rather do or die tbh and at that point I realised it was not the forgone conclusion I had thought it was but was indeed a real test of whether they wanted US as individuals with potential as opposed to the perfect text book candidate.

We were grilled for about 90 minutes and then sent off while they deliberated so we walked down to the castle to check in and then we headed up to the croft to go and actually walk on the land. We arrived back at the same time as Vikki and Sean who got out of their car having run the others to the ferry to leave and just looked at us and said ‘yes’. We all shook hands and Vikki said ‘actually we did have a proper speech all planned..’ so they did that too, all about how they felt it would be challenging but that they believed we were up to the challenge and could do it and were the right people 🙂

That left us slightly shell shocked really – we have been told we can choose either croft 2 or 3 and to spend some time on the land deciding, so that is our plan for tomorrow. We headed back to the castle to get something to eat, unpacked our stuff and then went off for more walking round the island. We walked along the campsite, past the school, on the beach and rang my dad who was predictably reticent but claimed to be pleased for us ‘if that’s really what you want…’ at which point a beautiful double rainbow appeared over our heads which sort of cemented everything for us.

On the way back to the shop (open from 5-7pm) we were hailed by Sandy as we walked past their house – he is married to Fliss, the woman who’s blog I’d found and decided sounded nice. He invited us in for a cup of tea and we met 2 of their 3 daughters and then Fliss arrived home too. They are really nice, very excited about us coming and were already promising help and support 🙂 🙂

We left there and popped to the shop for some supplies for dinner – for a tiny little space it is incredibly well stocked and we found everything we needed, then back to the castle. The kids watched some TV and chilled out in their bedroom (we have two twin rooms next door to each other), Ady and I both had baths and then we went down and cooked in the self catering kitchen, chatting to one of the builders working on the castle and one of the chefs over here on a 6 week contract while they usual chef is on annual leave. Freakily although she is Scottish and lives in Lochaber she lived in Worthing from 1989 to 1993 and was also in Tarbert during August when we were there so we will have walked past her in various places at various times over the last 22 years without ever meeting before… spooky!

I’m sure I have loads more to process and loads more to say but my head is in a spin… I am so happy to have an answer to our questions and know that this is indeed where we will make our home. It feels right 🙂 We do have challenges ahead and it won’t always be easy but I am certain this is the right next move for us 🙂

More tomorrow…

So is Willow our first or second home? Osborne Drive – where does that come? I was about to claim FabBabs as Our Second Home and them remembered that actually Mich and Marcus have made us very welcome in their home and I feel just as able to bimble around their kitchen to make a cup of tea or shove a load of washing in the machine there too. And then all those places we lived at last year … we’re off to Neil and Sue’s on Saturday and Sue has already told me I’ll be baking daily bread while we’re at home at their house.

I’d not realised the post below had been saved in draft from Sunday night so I’ve released that, which explains why Babs and Kirsty didn’t know all about the Earthship already, because I’d not actually blogged it yet, not because they don’t read my blog 😉 😉

Anyway, a bit of a catch up post before I likely go AWOL again.

Monday we were up early, packed the car up and manage to leave within half an hour of the time I’d planned to be away by. We did manage to forget the kids wellies though – they have always just lived in the back of the car so are not something we are good at remembering to put in, but thanks to all the tip runs over the last week they were – and still are – in the garage. We were far enough from home upon realising that the price of new wellies was less than the cost of petrol and time for returning home to collect them. We reasoned with our kids form on getting the insides of their wellies wet a reserve pair each would be a fairly good investment given how regularly worn wellies are in our family.

We had a really good run to Stockwood, where we’d arranged a snatched hour with Chloe and Michelle. Cuddles, super quick catch up, handover of a couple of parcels we’d had sent there during our period of homelessness and uncertainty over new year, and a walk in the pretty snowy gardens. I’ve missed Mich lots – 6 weeks is a long time not to see someone when you’ve lived with them 😉

Back in the car and ever northwards to FabBabs’, arriving at theirs within a very short space of time of them getting home :). Tea and cake, play and chats ensued. Babs had done the much raved about slow cooker curry – we all decided it was nice but not really ‘curry’ as we’d define it (it would never have cut it on Spicey Saturday).

People drifted off to bed with Babs and I the last at around 3am, having had very high brow conversations about alcohol, parenting, money and more. We can do serious and grown up 😉

Tuesday – a nice late start 🙂 Much needed after a weeks worth of alarm wake ups for various things including Gitting Fencing and Troublesome Gates. Unfortunately the latenessset us back all day. Chris had found a pair of wellies to lend Davies but Scarlett, who can be quite selective about the wellies she wears (they may not be pink, purple, flowery, contain characters or have heels or cute little handles. They must be green, perhaps dark blue or black. They have to come up to just below her knee and Dunlop is her brand of choice. They are workwear dammit, not fashion items!) There is much about her refusal to compromise and insistance on getting her needs properly met that I admire, am proud of and congratulate her (and I) on. On this particular occassion maybe a little flexibility would have been good 😉 She was not in an easy going mood really – the leaving Humphrey behind is a real wrench for her and she has suffered most with the cold we’ve all had. Ady is just about over the cough but Scarlett had relapsed rather and was coughing, snotty and all the late nights and outside time in snow (with no socks and undone coat worn over thin T shirts) had caught up with her I think.

Fortunately Alex was up for a loan of some compromisably suitable wellies (not really high enough but at least green) so that was solved when Ady and Chris took Scarlett off for welly shopping and to collect Kirsty, Alex and Marcus.

Babs was cooking Many Pancakes while I mostly distracted her so when they all arrived back we tucked in to those. Well most of us did. In the ever changing numbers of people, particularly children, one who was in the shower got overlooked and came down, wet haired and fragrant to claim her share of pancakes only to find they were already contained within the rest of us 🙁 Sorry Beth 🙁

We’d just about cleared up breakfast and sat down with a cup of tea when Jo, Tamsin and Isabelle arrived. So lovely to see them all – it was fab to have a proper, not too big a group chat with Jo 🙂 All too soon they had to head off (lunch was more afternoon tea really) so Babs got the mulled wine on and we settled in for the evening.

Large all sorts of food but not enough pizza (thanks to someone snaffling two slices before it even hit the table :oops:) dinner and some Goodbye To Humphrey-ness before Kirsty, James, Marcus and Alex headed off taking Humphrey with them. Scarlett immediately went rapidly downhill with tears, much snot and coughing and ended up having a dreadful night. I sat with her til she slept at about 11pm but she woke again and after half an hour sitting with her I woke Ady to swap with me and he sat up with her for a couple of hours in the end. 🙁

Today was The Long Drive to Scotland. We hit the white on blue cross at pretty much the midway point in our 7.5 hour journey but we came as far as Fort William today, the closest we could get to Mallaig for tomorrow morning without spending a fortune on guest house prices at half term.

We only stopped twice, briefly, thanks to Babs providing us with food for the journey. Once at services for a loo break for Tarly and I where I gleefully discovered vending machines selling tea and coffee at sensible prices (as in £1 each) and once at Loch Lomond, only an hour from our destination for both kids to use the loo.

Ady and Davies went off to Morrisons (literally across the road) to pick up some food while Tarly had a bath and I unpacked and repacked all our stuff ready for the two weeks away, then I brushed her hair which was in an almighty tangle thanks to tossing and turning with being poorly. She looks almost respectable now for tomorrow 😉

We ate, the rest of us had baths and now the kids are asleep – both before 10pm! and Ady and I are roasting in the tropical temperature of the room – the thermostat says it’s 24 in here but I can’t get it to turn down and no heating appears to be on so presumably it’s just the heat of us, having had baths and a well insulated building. I’ve opened the window a smidge so fingers crossed it cools down through the night.

In the car today we talked a bit about how we’re feeling. Ady is nervous but the rest of us are all excited. It feels like this has been a long time coming. We have plenty of energy and enthusiasm for getting on with the next bit really so it’s a big relief to actually feel as though something is happening towards that now.

This morning we drove over to Brighton to join in with a tour of the Earthship# at Stanmer Park. I’ve been aware of it for years as some local Home Ed folk had connections with it years ago but never actually visited despite it being on my list of interesting things to do at some point.

When we realised a conventional house build was not financially viable on Rum, not to mention way out of line with our principles and ideals anyway I googled it and discovered there was a tour for today, perfect 🙂 I mentioned it to Julie and she said she’d been meaning to visit for years too so would come along aswell.

We arrived on time (and oh, what a struggle that was! Ady and I had an hilarous argument about getting out the house this morning with him getting all stroppy that no one ever says thank you for what he does or gives him any praise. I put him very straight on my world view on extrinsic rewards and praise generally and a very long list of all the things I do without ever anticipating or requiring thanks….) and met Julie, Jack & Maisie (Lorna had stayed at home with Chris) and Julie’s mum. There were about 25 people gathered in the meeting p[lace for the tour but as time ticked on and everyone got colder (we have had NO snow at all at home but the other side of the downs in Brighton there was a good few inches) people began to doubt the tour was happening at all. One of the people waiting was a photographer who was on the tour to take pictures and she had phone numbers for people so made some calls and was able to ascertain that the tour leader was indeed on his way but running very late.

He finally arrived at about 11am, full of apologies and led us on a merry old dance all around the orchards and various projects of the Brighton Permaculture Trust and Soil Association. I love permaculture – the more I learnt about it the more it all talks to me 🙂

The actual earthship took ages to reach and we stood outside for quite a while with Jon, the tour leader talking at great length about tyres and lime as building materials and explaining how it all worked. It turned out he had spun it out for longer than usual because in his rush to get there he had forgotten the keys so was waiting for someone to arrive with a set! When they did we all went inside.

The Brighton model is not a family home, nor was it built as such. It is one long room with a kitchen area, a bathroom and an office. In terms of footprint it is not much smaller than we would aim for, albeit with a few extra rooms sectioned into the space for bedrooms / bathrooms. The feel of the place is gorgeous, all light and airy, simple space with gorgeous features such as bottle walls and indoor planting areas for water treatment and food.

This was very much a basic principle tour with an overview of the build and whizz through of the self sufficient principles of the earthship with time for questions. Jon was clearly passionate and knowledgable and has been involved in various earthship builds around the world. We asked a few questions (mostly Davies!) but it was clear than until we know better precisely what our land will be like we are not able to plan anything more. I am SO glad we have arranged longer stays on Rum and Eigg to get our heads round all these things.

On the drive back Davies asked to play ‘beat the intro’ – he loves naming song titles and artists, clearly a Popmaster contestant in the making ;). He made us laugh so much by naming the Rupert Holmes Escape song as ‘if you like cheap chipolatas and getting caught in the rain’ which will forever afterwards be what we sing to that song 😆 Oh the romance!

We went to Mum & Dad’s for late lunch where they were both on their best behaviour and showed lots of interest in the Earthship and got their heads around our schedule for the coming weeks. Frazer came and sat with us too and talked about travel and our plans. I think it has finally sunk in that we are going to do something different no matter what they think or say so they have decided to be supportive and interested. I do love my parents very much despite everything and would far rather have them on my side, even on their terms and in their own personal way. It’s making the most of what we have isn’t it?

We left there later than planned, pleased we had got dinner in the slow cooker this morning before we left – pheasant in gravy with various veg, it was delicious.

We bustled about packing up clothes and putting stuff in the loft space so the house is empty while we’re away. We have an early start tomorrow so the alarm is set for silly o clock and we are as organised as we can be the night before. Baths, Despicable Me, pheasant and chocolate and now sleeping would probably be a very wise plan.

Dad was round first thing and popped along with me to Mike & Rose’s to look at the Troublesome Gate. His suggestion was to cut down the gate. We debated that further and I put forward my idea for bringing the posts out further instead to fit the gate as I was really worried cutting the gate down would be a) hard to do and b) compromise it’s stability. Dad agreed and we whizzed over to their house to rummage in his garage for some batten to do the post extending. We found some suitable bits and then headed back to our house. Dad offered to stay with the kids for a couple of hours and Ady and I went back to the Troublesome Gate.

We spent a good hour doing the extending before deciding that actually it wasn’t really going to work and that maybe cutting down the gate was the best option after all. So we dismantled all our post extending, measured the gate (three times!), marked it and then cut it. Ady now has Super Strong Arms from all the WWOOFing but they still ached from 6foot worth of gate sawing. I took the old gate off (for the third time!) and started taking the hinges, latch and bolts off it for reuse – all rusty old screws that took a lot of unscrewing – I have no knuckles left!

At 1130am we had to call it a day as we’d arranged to meet up for a drink with Dan and Jonathan, also known as Nix and DB. They have been following our WW blog for a year or so, initially from the other side of the world and been regular commenters and even blogged about us! When we realised about a month ago that them being in Sussex would coincide with us being in Sussex we set about trying to meet up. Financial constraints meant our planned lunch didn’t happen but a drink or two was just about in budget so we came back and got changed, picked Davies and Scarlett up and headed along to a pub to meet up with them.

They are lovely – a transgender couple, really gentle, calm and interesting people. It was fab to meet them in person. We began with handshakes, but 2 hours later after lots of chatting and laughing we ended up in the carpark taking self timer shots with them and parted with cuddles 🙂

Then back to the Troublesome Gate. Dad had said we could drop the kids off with him again so we did that, collected a large cardboard box from a skip outside a pub (for later use) on the way home, got changed and headed back to Mike & Rose’s. We’d collected an electric drill and an electric planer from Dad and these proved to be our lifesavers in the end. We planed both sides of the gate which shaved off enough to get it a perfect fit, spent ages extending the post to attach the top hinge, hung the gate and then put all the furniture on it – latch (with hole drilled through the gate), barrel bolt etc along with making an extra bit on both sides of the gate to actually attach said furniture to, drilling a new hole in the post to take the barrel bolt which was now at a different position and further wrestling with rusty screws. Our fingers were getting colder and less effective at working as we finally lost the light and finished the last little bit in the dark at 6pm. Rose paid us and freezing cold and almost broken we returned home.

We were running about 2 hours late by then, but we boxed up the chickens (hence need for box), packed up the car with overnight stuff and went to collect Davies and Scarlett from my parents. We dropped the chickens off at Bruce’s and promised to see him properly when we’re back again in March – he’s now looking after Willow and the chickens!. We called into Sainsburys for some fuel, some wine and some food as we were all starving having not really eaten all day and finally arrived at Tom & Ingrid’s freezing cold, starving hungry and totally shattered.

Lovely friends that they are they fed us (home made lasagne, salad and garlic bread, yum), gave us wine, shots, moonshine and other such alcoholic delights, fed us chocolate, entertained us with chatter, music, Attenborough documentaries for Scarlett, chess for Ady and then were just as wiped out as us by about midnight so we all went to bed.

This morning they cooked us breakfast – the first in a day of Many Sausages, sent us off with a huge jar of honey (from Tom’s mum’s bees), home made marmalade, pheasants (dinner tomorrow, hurrah), all the wine and beer we’d taken round there and extracted promises that we’ll go and stay there again in March. Love our friends 🙂

From there we went to Chris & Julie’s for a lovely couple of hours playing in the garden for the kids, sitting and chatting for us and then a lunch of home made bread rolls, sausages, and a gorgeous creme caramel style pudding that Jack had made as they do a family Come Dine With Me competition most weeks with everyone cooking dinner one night per week weeknights. We LOVE that idea and keep meaning to make it happen but as yet have not managed it here.

Then to Caz and Bid who are currently living at Caz’ parents (long story) for a few hours. Kids played, watched a film and made a Lego animation together. We chatted, caught up, came up with an excellent list of questions for our croft interview (we decided we should have an array of things to ask for that point in an interview when you are asked if you have any questions for them. None of them are remotely connected to crofting or the isle of Rum but we think they should be able to answer them anyway! NOTE we may not actually ask them! :lol:) Oh yeah and we ate sausages! Caz made toad in the hole for the kids. Caz gave us some firewood so we’ve been toasty warm tonight in the house 🙂

We left there and came home via the supermarket for a few bits. Scarlett wanted pizza for dinner (she’s not actually that keen on sausages!) and we wanted some veg to go with tomorrows pheasant. Back at the house Ady and Davies had the first bath, Scarlett and I had the second and I soaked away the last of the fencing aches and pains with lots of bubbles and a glass of wine.

Our dinner was reduced frozen burgers, reduced potatoes, reduced rolls and reduced salad, I think it was about 50p per head 🙂

It’s been a completely mad week since we got home – we’ve redecorated an entire house, done a 2 day fencing job, repainted our garden wall, tidied up the garden, rehomed chickens, done about 5 tip runs, cleared out the lofts and the garage, got our house on the market, spent a night staying with friends, visited various family and friends, met internet strangers in a pub and done all the coordination for the Scotland trip and WWOOFing. I’m looking forward to the no communication status and lack of alcohol and late nights potention on Eigg for the rest!

Up with the alarm this morning for our first days paid work in, well in about a year. Dad was here at the house painting so he said Davies and Scarlett could stay with him for the morning rather than come along with us to Mike & Rose’s (the Not Swingers).

We arrived just after 9am and Mike made us a cup of tea and then scurried back in the house. He came out several times and looked at us rather in awe of our hammering (which was most amusing given our utter ineptitude) but I strongly suspect Mike doesn’t even own a paintbrush or screwdriver. He does have some lovely suits though.

The task at hand was removing and replacing 3 smaller panels atop the garden wall on one side of the garden, including re-siting the end one to a higher position. Removing 3 larger panels and a gate on the other side of the garden. We’d eyeballed the smaller ones as 6 x 3 panels and the larger as 6 x6 panels although we realised one of the larger ones was not quite 6 foot wide and we’d need to cut down a 6ft panel to make it fit. Ady had taken advice from Dad on this and knew how to do it (put batten along where it needs cutting, cut along the side of the batten). The existing gate was only 5ft high and Rose wanted it replaced with a 6ft gate.

The gear had all arrived last night and was waiting for us when we arrived. We decided the first job was to remove the smaller panels so took them all down. This was the point I friendfeeded about feeling like one of the Chuckle Brothers. Ady is classic Frank Spencer with tools, always treading on the rake, misplacing the hammer and sawing off the branch he’s sitting on cartoon character stylee. We had to clamber on garden chairs (brittle from frost), behind bushes and chop down a honeysuckle which was holding up the middle panel. That done we managed to drop a fence clip into the neighbours garden and both peered over the wall at it, Chuckle Brothers-esque and realised in trying to reach it we would likely cause more damage or drop something else so shrugged and left it there.

We then struggled to bring in the 6×3 panels, pretty heavy as they are new and were cold and wet. Having huffed and puffed and tripped and slipped on tools and a wet lawn Ady looked at them leant up against the taken down panels and observed that the one’s we’d taken down were not 6×3 at all, but 6×4.

😯 😯 😯

And UU

A plan was swifly hatched for Ady to drive home, get Dad to come back up with his van and take me and the wrong panels to the shop to swap them over for the right panels.

I continued removing the other side panels which were very rotten and mostly came down easily although the brackets took a lot of getting off and I kept getting tangled in a rose bush trailed on some trellis.

Dad appeared, most entertained by the whole business. He does a fair bit of fencing work and had been jokily indignant about us ‘taking food from his mouth’ by doing this job. I greeted him with the words ‘first rule of fencing? Use a fucking tape measure!’ thinking if I didn’t say it first he surely would 😆

We loaded them onto his roof rack – both of us sadly surprised by the unspoken but rather obvious realisation that I was far more able to lift and carry than he was. I suppose at 38 and 74 that is the right way round but still a bit of a wake up call to us both that I am at my fittest and he is declining from his peak.

The bloke in the shop was equally amused by the error and I took further ribbing from both of them before we got the correct size panels and loaded them on the roof rack and took them back up. Dad then left and Ady returned.

On the plus side Ady got to listen to Popmaster back at home while I got to listen to it with Dad in his van. Every cloud…

Ady and I then got the 6×4 panels all up, they look good and despite a challenging aspect to the end on which didn’t have a post to attach to so we used some batten and the wall they are all stable and sturdy and straight 🙂

I whizzed back with the intention of collecting the kids and some lunch for Ady and I but Dad offered to take them back to his house with him for the afternoon which was a far better plan so I gratefully accepted, made him a drink and some lunch, some sandwiches for the kids, some for me and Ady and went back to carry on.

We were almost smug at this point – potential disaster abated, half the job done, childfree afternoon…

Then we laid the first 6×6 panel up against the prepared posts and brackets and realised that it didn’t fit. By about 6 inches. Turns out that only one of the three 6×6 panels was actually 6×6 – the other two were both butchered versions thereof. We’d known about one but judged the other to be a full size one.

So came operation fence panel trim. We took some battens off one of the panels we’d removed, sawed them to length, removed some nails from old panels and banged the new battens on (narrowly avoiding putting the batten through the next door neighbours bathroom window and with much losing of hammers). It more or less fitted ;). With some hammering and kicking and sawing a little bit more off and plenty of swearing it was installed.

Then the one single straightforward correctly sized panel. Complete with gravel board (which I’d heard of before but didn’t actually know what one was until today) from the old panel, slightly rotten but already cut to shape and mostly hidden by the nice new panel. Third and final panel went in with cutting down, Ady nearly garrotting the dog who had come out without him realising and got bashed by the batten as Ady snatched it from me and called me an idiot for not having cut it down. I laughed so much I got hiccups. And had to hide while I composed myself as Mike came out to offer another cup of tea.

Finally the gate. Ady finished banging in extra nails in places while I started taking the hinges off the old gate before deciding that maybe we should just check one more time that the new one was the right size. You already know the answer….

We’d measured it at 5×3. It was infact 5×2.10 1/2.

At which point I screwed the hinges back on and started tidying up instead.

Rose returned home and we gave her the options; we cut the new gate down to fit. We take it back and see how much a made to measure gate would cost, we move the posts it sits between to accommodate the new gate.

We decided to go for option 3 so tomorrow we’re back, ready to get the gate sorted. Dad is coming up with us to look at it and check our plan will work.

Overall I am pleased with what we did. I learnt a lot from today. About measuring. About never assuming a first glance at a workload is accurate, about knowing precisely what tools and gear are required. That for jobs like this one screws may take longer to put in but are preferable to nails if there is any chance at all you may be removing them and putting them back in again.

I was proud of us though. We did it, we sorted out the problems, made a good job of it, had the right ideas to get past some of the problems and above all laughed lots and lots :).

The house is pretty much finished 🙂

Dad came round this morning and has painted all the walls magnolia – ah the benefits of a small house and a builder & decorator for a father :). Everything is suitably blanked out and smelling of fresh emulsion. He’s back tomorrow to white out the rest.

Ady finally got to do the garden which is what he’s been itching to get at since we came home. Trimmed hedges, mowed lawns, raked various dead debris, moved the big barbecue into the garage, cleared the garage out, loaded the car up ready for the final run to the tip.

I baked bread – did the mixing and kneading and put it in for the first prove in the grill after having it on to make Tarly some toast for breakfast, then knocked it back and let it do second rise while the oven was pre heating to cook it. I made two loaves which will see us through til Friday, although everyone eats far more home made bread than shop bought, so it may not last that long…

Then I headed out to do some painting. The wall which faces onto the main road has three large panels which were a very chipped and tired white and look awful both in the photo online and when driving by and looking at the house. It only took less than an hour and makes such a difference. I also painted out a small patch of brickwork on the back of the house where a coal bunker once stood so had never been painted and was on the list of ‘always meant to get round to’ stuff for years. It tried to snow while I was out there and I stopped feeling my toes after about half an hour. It did strike me today that this was fairly similar to how life will be though as I made bread, worked outside for a bit, dealt with the chickens and spent some time with the kids.

Just before lunch one of Ady’s ex work colleagues came round. He’s been someone we stayed in touch with all year but is in a bad place just now. He had a really nasty accident at work within a few weeks of us leaving and his foot got caught in a machine and nearly severed. Eight days in hospital, skin grafts and foot rebuilding and he is still on crutches nearly a year later with regular hospital sessions, counselling for the post traumatic stress (along with being generally a bit fucked up), can’t drive his beloved landrover without expensive modifications being done and still has his lower leg and foot in a plastic support as regular shoes don’t fit. His quote for the specially made shoes he will need is £1000 a pair!! 😯

He stayed for a coffee and a chat – he’s very supportive of our crazy plans and offered to come and spend time helping. He won’t be much use physically but is an engineer and very clever so may well be a useful person to sit on a chair and point at people and tell them what to do! It was great to see him if rather sad to realise what a massive impact a chance accident has had on his whole life 🙁

He left and we had lunch with Dad – fresh out the oven bread :). Dad left, promising to return tomorrow to finish off and also keep an eye on the kids for the morning so they can stay here rather than come along with us all day to the fencing at the Not Swingers (I’ll nip back and collect them at lunchtime). Ady went back outside to do some more in the garden and I stayed in to clear the kitchen up and spend an hour with the kids.

Davies and I have decided we’ll do some reading together every day. He has been doing a fair bit on his own but wants the practise that reading aloud to someone else will provide. He read me two books (picture books, The Gruffalo and another similar style). He was still a little slow and faltering but I know plenty of adults who never read that well. Given he is keen to improve and has his own plan (with my support) to do so I think I can now officially consider him a reader. This is HUGE 🙂 When we embarked on Home Education all those years ago if someone had told me my son would be past 11 by the time he was competantly reading I think I would have panicked and sent him off to school. It has been a real leap of faith to continue on this path when all around have dropped off. I don’t actually know anyone else IRL who has seen this approach through all the way, most have either had early readers, or they have learnt at school before being HE or they have used reading schemes or workbooks or something structured. I know it’s not the right path for everyone, maybe not even for Scarlett but for Davies I am delighted that he has got to this point and that all important standard of being able to read has been passed which qualifies Home Education by our rather different methods as a pass for Davies 🙂 🙂

Scarlett was upset today agonising over what to do with Humphrey while we’re away. We’re gone for just over 2 weeks and our trip involves 1200 miles driving, three ferry crossings, 6 nights in three different hotels none of which accept pets, a 10 day WWOOFing in a wood burner warmed byre stint and encounters with all sorts of people and animals. I have extensively googled and read about travel with hamsters and I think we could manage with a smaller cage with sufficient room for his wheel and time each day outside the cage but it would need disgusing and smuggling into the hostels and it would be a stressful experience for Humphrey. I’d talked to Tarly about this at length and we had a Humphrey sitter lined up, someone who has already spent time with him, handled him lovingly, will care for him and adore him and do a great job. Scarlett was okay with it and then wobbled. So today we discussed various options ; bring him and risk it being really stressful for him and us, leave him with the Humprey sitter or me go on my own to the interview and crofting course so Scarlett can stay behind with Ady and Davies or even see if we could just leave Scarlett and Humphrey behind. Clearly none of these was any sort of happy or easy choice so there was much discussion about options and whether it had been the right thing to get him in the first place. There were tears 🙁 She talked and reasoned it all through and finally made what I consider the right decision of leaving him with the Humphrey sitter. I am prepared for this to change again yet but I think she has made her peace with it and knows it’s the right choice.

Further talk with Scarlett about reading. I think what Michelle suggested is definitely a big factor here – I have in the past used the lure of ‘wouldn’t it be good not to need me to read to you and for you to be able to read to yourself? If I am busy or tired or not able to read you can just read yourself. At the end of a chapter at bedtime you could take the book to bed with you and carry on to see what happens next.’ This worked for Davies who agrees that yes it would be good not to have to rely on someone else to read for you. For Scarlett, who is always going to be my baby and has always been adamant that when she grows up she is still going to live with me forever the very suggestion that reading may be tied in with not needing me is enough for her to decide if she never learns to read she’ll never not need me. I think there is slightly more to it aswell although fear of failure and unwillingness to put effort in are not characteristics she really possesses so I doubt it to be that. Seeing Davies and I snuggled up reading together with him getting undivided attention may well assist in making the learning process an attractive looking one if the end result isn’t going to drive her. She does know more letters and words than she credits herself with so I do think continuing to read to her while the page is openly on display for her to glance at too will help and I have noticed an increased willingness to write and label things so I guess it’s all moving in the right direction too. The difference is with Davies if you’d asked me even four or five years ago if I thought he’d reach adulthood illiterate I could confidently say ‘of course not’, with Scarlett she is fairly determined to do just that! Threatening, removing control, bribing (doesn’t work with her anyway, never has) etc are all hugely at odd with my parenting style, educational approach and personality and I really don’t want to go against everything I believe in and start turning literacy into a battle at this stage anyway. Scarlett does do things in her own time, I remember agonising over whether she’d ever give up her dummy and sure enough at about six years old she just did. It’s been the same with the Humphrey decision really, tears, hysterics and total lack of rational discussion followed by a very mature, considered and at peace with it all decision on her part. I need to trust she will do the same with reading and just give her both the space and the support to do it. The worst thing to do to Scarlett is make it impossible for her to climb down without losing face over something. Whether I have missed a window or not with reading clearly the window is not there now so it’s right to back off again at this time and try again in weeks, months or (eek) years time.

We did another tip run and then Ady and I worked on a rough outline of start up costs for the croft. We’ve gone down the route of pricing up livestock – shelter, fencing for enclosures, feed containers and one years feed plus cost of buying animals. Crops – polytunnel and greenhouse, tools, seeds etc, housing of static, generator and first years diesel, septic tank, water containers for rainwater harvest and freshwater supply (either filtered or otherwise treated rainwater or spring), bottled gas and food for us. We’ll then be left with a sizable chunk to invest in a house build once we know the lay of the land properly – either a traditional conventional build (unlikely) or something like an earthship or hobbit house style dwelling (far more likely). It all looks nicely achievable and will allow us to get set up, have a waterproof, warm home which will be useful for holiday let / WWOOFing accommodation / place for friends and visitors to stay, get our second years self sufficient food supply up and running and have our energy and sewage already sorted out. I’ll type it up properly and email it across tomorrow along with information I’ve gathered about kit houses, quotes for building and delivery of those and info about the earthship with a note to say we are attending a tour of one on Sunday and planning to go to Ecobuild in March for ideas.

Ady and Scarlett went off bargain hunting at CoOp and Sainsburys and picked up some cheap food to keep us going – Ady had read a tip about checking freezer sections for end of line products and picked up two packs of burgers and some frozen fish for 25p each. Davies and I tended the fire and I had a bath and I finished a book – Before I Go To Sleep – S J Watson which I quite enjoyed.

This evening’s film choice was Bedknobs and Broomsticks – we know the granddaughter (and great grandsons) of Mary Norton who wrote the book which always makes it that bit more special to watch.

Film fest and tip tastic day today.

We had a lazy start and all ate breakfast still curled up on sleeping bags watching ET on video.

This morning we had the most excellent journey to the skin clinic to have my patches removed. I only showed two allergic reactions – a biggish one to nickel, which I knew I was allergic to anyway, I can’t wear cheapo jewelry and used to even react to the inside of my jeans button, clasp on bras and the back of my watch face. I don’t anymore (not sure what’s changed) but that was the most itchy patch and the doctor swabbed it with steroid cream. The other reaction was to fragrance mix one. The patch for fragrance mix two had fallen off on Sunday morning and as there was no reaction underneath and we couldn’t find any tape we didn’t bother to fix it back on, they suspect I may have reacted to that one too if left on though.

That both does, and does not help really. Fragrance can be found in the biggest list of things including cosmetics make up, hair products, deodrant, shampoo, conditioner, bubble bath, soaps, perfume and body spray, room spray, air freshener, scented candles, washing powder, cleaning products and more. So that’ll be all sorts of everything then. Which if I spent most of my time with a reaction I could understand but given it seems to only flare up at certain times and I have already spent the last 2 years racking my brains to try and work out what might have triggered it I am still none the wiser really. My long term plan is to go back on the antihistimines daily for now to try and keep it under control, rest assured it is not something I am eating so I am unlikely to have a serious allergic reaction with throat swelling and once I am properly settled start working through all possibilities as and when I next have an episode of Nicface. I can try my own patch testing, one product at a time and take it from there to try and identify it.

So, a rather bogus exercise in all – I’m now allergic to cats, latex, nickel and fragrance. Officially 🙂

Back at home we loaded the car up and took the first load of the day to the tip. Our tip has been revamped while we’ve been away and is now very good at recycling almost all of the waste taken there. This heartens me 🙂

We had lunch (home made bread and fruit) and then loaded the car up for a second time. Ady and I did some wardrobe smashing with a sledgehammer – always nice and theraputic 🙂 and the kids played with the chickens.

Second tip run done we loaded the car for the third time with stuff from the loft for storage and took it over to my parents’. We had a cup of tea and chat with Dad who is here tomorrow painting and saw Frazer who arrived home from work while we were there.

Back home again we put on Men in Black and all half watched that while cooking dinner, lighting the fire, having baths and eating dinner. The kids declared it pretty good and want to see MIB II which I think we have somewhere. I caught up on phonecalls too – one to Julie to rearrange Thursday when we were supposed to be seeing them and one to my Granny just to bring her up to date on what we’re doing. Ady communicated with a couple of his friends by text – he is less good at making arrangements to catch up and fitting them into our week.

We then debated another film and went for Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure which I’d picked up on video ages ago after being reminded of it for some reason and thinking Davies would like it. The kids took a little while to warm to it and even I was wondering if it would actually stand the test of time but it came through well and by the end we were all calling each other Dude and air guitaring. Must track down Waynes World and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey…

The kids have been mithering us to watch a Shrek Halloween short dvd they have for ages so we agreed to put that on once everyone was in bed and did so. Davies was cold so I heated up one of his wheat bag teddies in the microwave – these small things make camping out in our own house feel incredibly luxurious 🙂

This morning we made a job list and allocated days of the week to it – it’s easy to either feel overwhelmed and get nothing achieved or to spend time scurrying around getting obvious tasks done without really touching everything. We now have the house surface clean so have written a list of what definitely needs to be done before the weekend and what would be great if we get round to it. Emptying the loft space was high on the list, as is sorting out the garage. We will have a heap of stuff for sale – things like our chiller and two chest freezers won’t be worth the storage space and moving costs but might raise a few quid, stuff like a lawnmower is never going to be used by us no matter where we end up living, and a heap of stuff to take with us when we move but may as well stay here for now as it won’t offend any potential viewing buyers. We do need to clear all the crap – assorted rubbish from the tenants and the chicken area that is currently piled up around the back of the house. Now I have scraped the flaking paint off the lounge walls repainting in here is rather a priority but if we don’t get around to giving the carpets yet another go over with the Ady machine I suspect that won’t make or break a sale.

We have arranged a small amount of getting together with friends / family this week but I think even that has been ambitious as it feels like it’s sapping our attention from getting stuff done.

So this morning’s task was to clear another loft space – we have done both the ones in our old room, and been through one in Davies’ room although some stuff has been replaced in there and needs pulling out again. The last space in Davies’ room held baby stuff mostly, along with a few books. The books have all been piled up to give to Lorna / Jack / Maisie and the Dr Seuss books have been bagged up to keep by popular request. A large bag of baby stuff like cot blankets and some clothing along with a couple of items of maternity wear I have no inkling of the mentality of keeping were added to the charity shop pile and a much smaller bag of baby clothes – first outfit, first snowsuit, first shoes etc were put in the to keep pile. Holding up the tiny pink babygrow I so clearly remember sticking on the radiator to warm up when we rang the midwife to come to the house to deliver Scarlett next to the lumbering nine year old she is now seems amazing and looking at Davies while stroking a little basbeball suit from New York we bought while 6 months pregnant with him is equally mind blowing. Scarlett’s moses basket had been moused so that had to go.

We whizzed along to the dip and a charity shop to unload the car-ful. I reckon another two or maybe three loads will have all rubbish gone from the place, that is tomorrow’s job.

Back home for lunch – we are doing so well at eating leftovers and making food eke out. We’d gotten used to old habits again of eating too much and although we were good at giving scraps and leftovers to the goats and pigs at Jill’s now we are deliberately over-making dinners to ensure we have spare for lunch the next day, or even dinner. Tonight Ady and the kids had tuna fishcakes made with mash from yesterday and I had leftover pizza from Saturday night. I also made a couple of loaves of bread, proved in the grill which was still warm from cooking crumpets for lunch and cooked in the oven with the fish cakes :).

Then off to Mike & Rose’s. Rose asked us before Christmas if we’d be interested in some fencing work in her back garden. She wanted it done anyway and said she’d rather pay us to do it than get someone else in if we’d be happy to take it on. It’s very straightforward as the fence posts are still perfectly secure and stable from the previous job, it’s literally just the panels and a gate which need replacing. We measured up and then came in to have a cup of tea and price it up. After ringing around and checking websites a very local supplier was not much more expensive than B&Q and Wickes and could deliver cheaper so Ady ordered the stuff to be delivered on Wednesday and we arranged to go and do the work on Thursday. Rose said she’d earmarked £200 for labour and the kids get to come too and make full use of the cable TV in the house, play with their dogs and spend time in the garden with us for the day. It will pay our petrol for the interview and I think we can justify the day away from the house although it does mean we’ll have to cancel plans to meet Julie on Thursday 🙁

We had a chat with Rose and Mike came home from work so joined us for a coffee too and we arranged an evening with them in March and caught up a little on our plans. I’m sure they think we’re perfectly mental for our current ideas but they humoured us just the same 😆

Back home we put the chickens away and exchanged emails and phonecalls with Mike about the deposit for the tenants. It’s all so tedious and I just want a line drawn under the whole thing really. On principle I do think they should pay every penny of what it would cost for a professional rubbish clearance, kitchen / oven clean, carpet clean etc. In practise if we are only arguing over £100 or so and the delay could drag on for weeks and weeks I’d really rather just take off them an amount that makes it worth our while cleaning up this last weekend and sends them off. It is not personal and we shouldn’t try to take it that way. They were shit tenants in paying late every month, moving in late and leaving the house in a not great state. But I have heard so many horror stories about houses being totally trashed, rent not being paid at all and people not leaving at the end of their tenancy that frankly I feel pleased to have had £11k out of them and got them out on time. If that means they get off too easily then so be it, I don’t have the time or mental energy to waste on them when I have so many other, bigger, more positive things to be doing with my life instead. £400 pays our mortgage for another 6 weeks and might just get us to the point where someone makes an offer on the house, which incidentally can be viewed here!

At 6pm Ady did the kids tea and I nipped along to the CoOp to check out their reduced to clear section. I got some pork for £2 down from £5 (so I get my roast pork tomorrow 🙂 ), some breakfast pastries for 35p each and that was all. I checked Asda too which is just along the road and later Ady went out to Sainsburys for fuel and checked in there but there were no bargains.

Tomorrow the patches come off and fingers firmly crossed the itching is more than just psychological or a reaction to the surgical tape and stickiness and I have a positive allergy diagnosis to something I actually start avoiding.

A combination of looking at old photos and listening to old music coupled with headspace while paint scraping today had me pondering on how different I am to the 19 year old Nic Ady fell in love with. I don’t think Ady’s changed much really and when I asked him once if he thought I had he said I was pretty much the same. Apparently I’ve always been feisty, stroppy, determined and bloodyminded. I am still all those things, just about different things these days! 😆

So I was thinking, as I sang along to my music and scraped walls about passion, and life, and possessions, and happiness. About what it’s all for, what it all means, why some things matter to some people sometimes and not at all to others. How we change and grow and let go. I have no conclusions or conjured up wisdom to share, just a vague feeling of pondering.

Following some links to something a friend had said on Facebook took me to Simon Dale’s hobbit house which seemed quite fitting given our current plans to build something along such lines. I did some link hoarding, sent a couple to Ady who is still needing inspiring and selling the idea and called him in at one stage to show him some stunning homes. He did agree that spending all our money to live in a box was a crazy idea if we could spend way less and live somewhere quirky, personal, sustainable and gorgeous but still clings to the idea that unless most people are doing something then it probably isn’t the ‘right’ way to do it. Honestly, have our home ed exploits taught him nothing?! Not to mention living in a van for a year!

The kids played upstairs and watched a film. Davies did a lot of drawing and Scarlett came and helped me for a bit. We made a playlist for her on my phone of her favourite songs – that girl has good musical taste 😉 Her top three favourite songs are Mr Blue Sky by ELO, Daydream Believer by the Monkees and Size of a cow by Wonderstuff.

I’ve felt grumpy for much of the day – period, cold with sore throat and sinus headache, really annoying patches and low level Nicface (patches? cleaning products? central heating?) all combine to make me snicketty. We planned to go supermarket shopping right at the end of the day and grab some bargains to keep us going over the next few days but failed to get anything cheap at all so had sausage and mash for dinner with leftover mash and tinned tuna planned for fishcakes for tomorrow with a plan to head out again tomorrow evening in search of yellow label stuff. We’re going to see Rose (not swinger) tomorrow as she wants us to do some fencing for her which will be a cash injection (she said she needs to have it done and would rather pay us to do it than someone else) and the chunk from tenants deposit will at some point find it’s way back to us but that could take weeks. In the meantime we’ve spent all we need to spend for now and just need to live as cheaply as possible.

as in coughs are cack 🙁

Scarlett fell asleep last night on top of me, having crawled, slug like across the lounge floor in her sleeping bag from their camping mat to ours with plaintive asks to ‘make me feel better Mumma’ 🙁 which blew my planned mention of how stoic she is about being ill and how dramatic and blokeish Davies is out of the water ;). I did loads of online stuff last night while listening to the other three all snoring and coughing and Humphrey giving it some serious wheelage 🙂

The result was the kids and I all overslept this morning – Ady had got up at Ady o’clock and headed outside to dig over the chickens area. He did a fine job but had lost track of time and I’d failed to set an alarm so when I finally roused myself at about 915am it was with quite a level of panic as Neil the estate agent was due at 945am! Speedy calling in of Ady, getting dressed of the kids and applying make up on me and Neil arrived early. I dashed into the loo taking my mascara with me but failing to collect my jeans. Scarlett tried to help by finding them while Ady was having introductory chats with Neil in the lounge but could only find a pair of Ady;s jeans so in the end I did a semi naked dash across the hall and found a clean pair myself! 😆 We do know how to create a professional, calm and ordered first impression in our camped out in home 😆

Neil is classic estate agent wide boy, similar to All over it like a rash Mike but probably very good at his job. I’m happy we’re in safe hands. He chatted to us about various estate agentty things, took photos, used his dudey gadget to measure the rooms (I shared with him my yearning for one of those tools – the type that beam lasers from one wall to the next to measure room size, almost on a par with the snippy sound scissors make being enough for me to consider hairdressing as a future career was that gizmo for me to ponder upon estate agency. He didn’t offer me a go mind you) and we signed a contract with him to get the house on the market – it’s on Northwoods site already but he’ll have it on the various other house sites by Monday.

I did some scraping – the painted walls in the lounge and bathroom have flaked and need the flaky bits scraping off before Dad repaints, and then some hoovering up the scraped bits until lunchtime. I also did a wash and hung it out on radiators – still a novelty 🙂 The kids played with the brio building a very impressive track in Davies’ room, while Ady continued with the chickens area. Lunch was leftovers from the last couple of nights.

Then we nipped over to Mum & Dad’s to collect various things we’d decided we need; glasses (because I hate drinking wine out of a mug!), my big clock (because all of us look up at the lounge wall to check the time about 20 times a day and it’s really odd without it), bread tins, the breadmaker for pizza dough, bowls, a couple more pillows and we picked up the dvd player too

Home via Sainsburys for pizza ingredients where I got sucked onto Toy Story 3 with the kids (oh how Scarlett and I cried at the end!) and then Ady and I finished clearing the loft in our bedroom – Christmas decorations including our photo Christmas cards through the ages and some very old photos of me including one aged 15 where I just look like Davies in a ginger wig!
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Scary to think I am only four years older than he is now in that photo. I remember that day so clearly, I’d gone out with an older friend who had just passed her driving test and we’d spent the day in Littlehampton (the beach where we met Caz and Bid the other day) feeling very grown up. It wasn’t much longer until the same friend introduced me to my first smoking and drinking experiences… definitely not going to think about that in relation to Davies! Also found my student ID card from sixth form, the poem I wrote for Ady and I to read out at our wedding reception, a picture with both Ady and I in it (albeit with our respective partners at the time) and some of Scarlett’s handprints from when she was 9 months old.

I had a long catch up chat with Julie on the phone which had her crying – am crap with crying people, particularly when I can’t even give them a cuddle 🙁 Have arranged to see them twice in the coming week though.

I had a very shallow bath which was most unsatisfying but still luxurious after the lack of baths this year, definitely not an every single day thing any more.

Ady finished off cooking the pizzas I had started and we had dinner watching recorded One Man and his Campervan from before we left last year on the hard drive of the dvd player.

We had a brief flurry of snow but it has since turned to pouring rain. I’m looking forward to a day with nothing arranged, nobody visiting and nowhere to go tomorrow.

The traffic woke me this morning just after 7am. It really is very noisy here! I’d gotten so used to it but having not really slept anywhere trafficky all year (with the exception of one or maybe two badly chosen laybys during the wild camping near Inverness) it was enough to rouse me. Then I needed the loo and a drink and then I was coughing for ages and needed to blow my nose. I could tell from Scarlett’s breathing and snuffling that was she was coming down with the cold too. I laid awake for a while debating making a cup of tea and waking up properly but then dozed off again.

I woke up quite a bit later and Ady was already Ady machining – he’s certainly making up for lost carpet cleaning opportunities this year 😉

The ground by the chickens was very hard with frost so after some discussion and drawing up of a job list for the week we decided we’d focus on the inside of the house this weekend and start on the garden next week. Dad is planning to come and do the painting next week so it makes sense to have all the carpet shampooing, general cleaning and clearing done prior to that so we can be out of his way. Ady carried on vaxing and I made a start on the first loft void in our bedroom. There is one long void that runs the length of the house and is accessible from both Davies’ and our room. In Davies’ room it had several boxes of toys and a few sacks of cuddlies which the kids had already pulled out to look at. In our end it had two sacks of clothes – Ady now has a full collection of Pompey tops again :), a few pairs of shoes (hurrah! had forgotten my gorgeous green oxygen shoes and my yellow London DMs) and a couple of boxes of loft contents type stuff including photos, diaries and a big bag of greetings cards. When I was at Clintons they used to regularly change the ranges of cards carried and the reps would come and write off all the residual stock in each branch. Technically they should have gone in skips but staff were always allowed to take them home so I’ve had a stash of those for about 15 years but never kept them somewhere sensible. I sat for an hour and matched up all the envelopes to them and we now have a lifetime supply of birthday cards 🙂

We had lunch – crumpets 🙂 We are building up a list of things that are worth trying to dig out and bring over here from Mum & Dad’s and I think the toaster makes it onto the list. The grill is just too faffy. Davies started to get all achey and shivery and went from just fine to down with the cold. He does fall fast that lad.

Then off for my patch testing appointment. Scarlett came in with me as I realised after her interest on me telling her what had happened at the skin prick testing that she would find it interesting. She did :). She asked loads of questions and watched with great interest. It was very quick – I took my top off and sat with my back to the nurse who just fixed 9 pads to my back which have about 8 spots each of various things on. I’m being tested for over 100 different things including what is know as the ‘standard’ – common allergens and cosmetics too. I have to go back on Tuesday to have the results read. I can theoretically have a bath aslong as I don’t submerge my upper back but the irony of being denied it after so long is not escaping me 😉

Several places are pretty itchy and the patches are generally uncomfortable – I am aware they are there. They are not very well fixed so I am worried they may move about between now and Tuesday and I’ve been told not to do any strenuous physical activity, incase that peels them off.

We left there and went to a garden centre to collect chicken feed and bedding and Asda for dinner stuff. Our plan is to use the car as little as possible and combine journeys where we can so that worked well as it wasn’t too much further on from the clinic.

Back at home we had a drink and then carried on with the lofts. I found such treasures as the appointment card for my driving test (12th June 1991), a load of albums and 12 inch singles including Now 7, Now 8, Now 17, Phil Collins But Seriously and a Rick Astley album. Also singles including Snow, Informer, Arrested Development Tennessee and rather randomly Please Don’t Go by KWS which I remember not even liking as a song back when it was playing in clubs so I have no idea why I owned or have retained a copy! Scarlett loved looking at the old pictures of me and Ady and was enchanted with a very early cordless telephone :). She went through a bag of cuddly toys sorting them out for the charity shop, discarding the couple of dolls, anything pink or sparkly. There is a newborn baby doll with male genetalia which is naked and she said ‘we can’t give that to a charity shop, it needs clothes!’ to which I replied ‘oh it’ll be fine, people often knit clothes for dolls in charity shops’. She replied ‘really, that should be illegal?!’ which took a few seconds to register before I questionned her and realised she’d misheard me and thought I said ‘nick’ instead of ‘knit’ She was most entertained that I had waited so long to ask her why knitting should be illegal! 😆

Davies had a long hot bath with eucalyptus oil in it and despite being cold and not eating much dinner seems a bit brighter. I think a decent nights sleep or three and some good food will do him the world of good – everyone is happier here than we’ve been for a long time, despite all agreeing we don’t want to be here again permanently. I read to Scarlett today from her new hamster book and then spent time with her going through the loft – it’s stuff like that we’ve not had enough of recently, small meaningless pockets of time that add up to a relationship without even trying.

I made dinner – pasta bake and we all ate together, sat on the floor infront of the fire watching Tom & Jerry cartoons on video :). We’ve all commented on how much like being back in Willow this feels, sleeping in one room, just the four of us, limited entertainment other than radio, reading or a very small collection of videos watched on a little portable TV. Of course Willow didn’t have a flushing loo, bath, washing machine and constant electricity 🙂

Tomorrow we have a man coming from Northwood to take details for the website and print off particulars for the house to put it on the market. I will sort out a second agent just for balance but that can wait til the end of the week once we’ve done some more licking it in to shape. In the meantime I am impressed with Mike moving so fast 🙂 Also on the agenda tomorrow is loft clearing and scraping peeling paint off walls, and collecting a few bits from my parents – we’ve decided my big clock is an essential 🙂

I’ve booked a travelodge for our stay in Inverness while I’m at the crofting course, paid for said crofting course and tentatively booked a B&B in Mallaig for the night before the interview. So our bank account is deplete once more but we do at least have addresses of where we’ll be for the next month, albeit ones at various ends of the country!

I had an email from Jill and a text from Johnny today saying they miss us 🙂

Last day:

Tuesday I spent in the office mostly. I finished writing new copy for the Guest Welcome Pack folders which go in each cottage, printed them all off, did laminating and left them ready to go back into each cottage. I also created logos for the front of the new Guest Comment Books, laminated those and put them on the fronts of new comment books too.

Ady finished off a last few jobs with Johnny in the morning. In the afternoon he headed off for supplies for Taco Tuesday, courtesy of Jill. I spent some time chatting to Sam who lives next door and we arranged to pop round for a cup of tea after work. Sam is really interesting, very passionate about all things low impact, loves Scotland and is hugely inspired by us and our adventures and the way we raise our kids. He said he loves Davies and Scarlett because they are just always so *happy*. We chatted for a while about our Educational Philosophy and why we do things the way we do. It came after I’d said goodbye to Denise who works in the office and was also saying how fab she thinks D & S are and what a good job we are doing with them. It was really heartening and bolstering to hear and reminded me that we are making active choices about our kids, not just leaving them to their own devices. I felt really good about it – ha, so much for intrinsic rewards eh?! 😉

We put the animals away for the last time and headed over to Sam’s for an hour. Further chatting, cups of tea and coffee and exchanges of contact details with promises of a place for Sam to stay if he ever wants to visit and a promise of helping us out if he ever comes and then we went back to the cottage to get dinner sorted. I made tacos and fajitas inbetween having a shower while the others did more cottage packing up. At 7 ish we took all the food over to Jill and Johnny’s for Taco Tuesday – the last supper.

A lovely evening had by all with lots of laughter, food, drink (we had mexican beer with lime wedges and tried Canadian Ice Wine which was delish). We played Scattergories and Leyah joined us. It was a lovely last evening, ending around midnight when we headed back to our cottage.

The Leaving:

We spent an hour or so packing the last bits up, loading the car and tidying up. Then Davies and Scarlett went off with Leyah for a pony ride. It was totally freezing but an utterly gorgeous day with bright blue skies. They both had a go at trotting, on the lunge lead and did really well despite eyes watering with coldness. I think they were both understandably cross with themselves that we’d all been telling them to do some riding for the whole 3 weeks and they only managed it on the very last morning.

We’d planned to be away at 11am and we were, infact a few minutes before. We went and said our goodbyes to everyone and J&J presented us with rucksacks each for the kids – we’d mentioned loving the Life is Good brand after Ady got one of their t shirts in a charity shop and it turns out they used to stock their stuff in their shops and still have a surplus of stock so the kids now have about 5 Life is Good tops and a rucksack each and Ady has another T shirt too – they don’t do tops with cleavage ;), gift cards for Game and Waterstones and £200 cash 😯 They were most forceful about us taking it and as it will help a lot with our cash flow we very gratefully accepted 🙂 Love them

The drive home was fine, Mike rang me about 10 minutes before we arrived at the house to check we were still on track and to say he hoped the tenants had gone but they had not dropped the keys back to him 😮

We pulled up and saw a bike leaning against the back wall and an old wardrobe on the driveway. Mike arrived shortly after us and we all went in They have gone, just not taking everything with them 🙁 The house is probably about as I was expecting really. The carpet is very grim throughout although the Ady Machine is making a real dent in that to the point that I think we will not bother to replace it to put it on the market, certainly to begin with. The walls are chipped and scuffed, but a coat of paint will sort that out . The sinks and loos are all very dirty and stained, but some elbow grease will fix that. The oven was particularly hideous but a £4 oven cleaner from Sainsburys, loads of hot soapy water and scourers have all but sorted that out. The garden is fairly overgrown and the chickens area is horrid, with a very strange netted affair errected and loads of veg peelings all trodden in and rotting that they wouldn’t ever eat along with eggs shells and lots and lots of chicken poo.

Mike took photos, chatted to us about what happens next and asked if we’d let him put the house on the market.

The kids were upset for a short time as all three of the cockerels we’d had here have gone. There is one in their place, but not one of ours. Most of the hens seem original though. They have called the new cockerel Timothy 🙂 I’m hoping the chickens will like Rum 🙂

After a bit of looking round the place in awe we got ourselves together and headed over to Dad’s, stopping to collect some food on the way as we were all ravenous. Fed, watered and caught up with Dad Ady and I left the kids there and came back over to the house to put the chickens away and make a start on Operation Cleanup. Ady had the Ady machine so he got started with the carpets in the lounge and a first go at Scarlett’s bedroom which was by far the worst room. Upstairs is fairly clean but the downstairs rooms are all pretty horrid. They have smoked in every room so the whole house stinks of fags which is possibly what I am most pissed off about 🙁

I gave the kitchen a surface clean, put cisterm blocks in the loos and put bleach down them, scrubbed the kitchen sink and left bleach soaking in it, got the oven cleaner stuff started and cleaned the downstairs sink and bath. By then it was gone 7pm so conscious of the kids and food we headed back to my parents

Mum was on good form and Dad paid for fish and chips for everyone which was nice. Frazer ate with us too 🙂

Today: After breakfast and chatting with Dad we headed over to the house armed with a first load of stuff. It’s hard to know what to bring and what not to bring, we’re here for about 10 days but will need to bring most stuff back away again to keep the house clear for viewings. Kitchen stuff can stay here but the rest will need to go back to parents so that if we were to sell it would only be a speedy task to empty it again and one Mum or Dad could theoretically do for us.

Ady did more Ady Machining. We’ve decided the carpets have come up well enough for the house to go on the market without replacing them. If it doesn’t sell and feedback is suggesting that is a huge downside then we’ll rethink but for now we’ll save the money. So it’s worth Ady spending the time on them. I finished cleaning the oven and then spent the time sorting out the chickens area which was grim. Scooped up all rubbish and old food, took down all netting and other crap, emptied the coop of stuff and cleaned it out and persuaded them I am not to be afraid of and managed to hand feed most of them 🙂 It looks like the amazing disappearing hen of days gone by may have returned and there is one cock and nine hens although we found one hen on the back doorstep this evening and I could only see 7 more in the coop when I closed it so one may have been spooked enough to not go into the house this evening…

We worked for a few hours and then headed into town. Ady wanted some bits from the pound shop, we needed a hoover (kettle and hoover were two things we got rid of when we left as they were very old and tired, we’ve needed to spend over £30 today on replacing them though so slightly regretting getting rid of them. We do have both electric and hob top kettles in Willow but she is a 50 mile round trip away so not cost effective either.) and we wanted to use the vouchers J&J had given us as we were not sure when we’d next be around Game and Waterstones both of which we have in Worthing. Davies used the game voucher for a 3DS and a PSP game and we split the Waterstones one with Tarly – she got a book about hamsters and we picked up River Cottage Meat half price because the spine glue had come adrift and a book on green building which I’d probably not fork cash out for but will be handy for reference. We got chatting to the guy serving us about why we really wouldn’t be needing a loyalty card where we’re going and he shook our hands and wished us all the best because ‘I’d love to do something like that but I’m not brave enough’. 🙂 🙂

Back home via Mum & Dad’s for a few more bits and the pet shop for some Humphrey the Amazing Traveling Hamster supplies and some shavings for the chicken coop. I finished cleaning the oven and did the kids tea then got in a bath/ Oh how I have missed my bath 🙂 Ironically tomorrow I am having patches put on my back which will mean no baths til Tuesday so it was an even more enhanced luxury for knowing it’s the last for another five days!

We had dinner and then all watched loads of The Good Life on video with the fire burning all camped out in the lounge. It feels all sorts of strange to be back here really, particularly as it is 18 years ago since we moved in (1st Feburary 1994) all but to the day. A FOR SALE board went up today and it’s already on the website which feels rather final. The kids are both slightly sad about selling the house and say that while they don’t actually want to live here themselves anymore they liked the idea that we still owned it while we were renting it out.

In other news the hostel on Rum rang me today to say they have shuffled rooms around to fit us in and we’ll be staying in one of the castle rooms but only being charged hostel rates which is good 🙂

Hmm, stuff that’s happened today:

Exchanges of emails with Rum – it looks unlikely we’ll be able to get hooked up to the SNH owned hyrdro power electricity at any sort of sensible price, if at all. In many ways this makes decisions easier as without that as an option we are pushed towards self sufficient energy which is where we started as our ideal anyway. Options include diesel generator either as a starting point and emergency back up or as sole energy. To be looked into further but prices on generators and red diesel are not actually that scary (not terribly green either mind you…. will also look at recycled cooking oil conversions). The email I got copied into between IRCT (need to introduce this acronym really, suspect it will be used on here lots – Isle of Rum Community Trust, the body that the village of Kinloch, approx 25% of Rum is now controlled by with a planned gradual independance from SNH altogether. The organisation that is offering the crofts and trying to build the community) and SNH was on the bleak side and said stuff like ‘the person who take on croft 2 and tries to build a house either needs to be very self sufficient or have deep pockets!’. I emailed IRCT back to say we most certainly do not have deep pockets but we do have plenty of energy and enthusiasm and hopefully the right skills to make things happen albeit in unconventional ways. We’re off to look at the Earthship in Brighton next weekend and hopefully our visit to Rum the week after will either galvanise and reassure us it is worth all the potential challenges, or put us off sufficiently to have gotten it out of our systems ;).

I exchanged several emails with the woman organising the crofting course and got that all booked up. Need to sort accommodation now – I am seriously considering getting Willow back on the road – between at least one night in Mallaig and at least three in Inverness I’m thinking it’s quite possible even the additional costs of petrol, tax and insurance might prove cheaper than four nights in hotels! I’ve checked local B&Bs and campsites for Mallaig and can’t get cheaper than £70 per night. I can get a youth hostel space for just £10 per night for me in Inverness as the SCF (Scottish Crofting Federation) subsidise it, but costs for the other three and getting a family room rather than all bunking in with loads of others look scarily high. I’m also waiting to hear back from the hostel in the castle on Rum about 2 nights stay there which I think might be £16 each per night. Eek! Have also arranged a visit to a nearby croft for all four of us through her which will be good. By then I think we will know what we are planning to do next croft wise.

I’ve had another ‘sorry we’re full’ email from a potential WWOOF host but it looks like we have somewhere for all of April if we want it, just checking if we can camp onsite with our tent – it sounds good, loads of woodworking and bodging, they make charcoal and have lots of off grid living experience. I reckon we’d learn a lot there and it sounds like an interesting one for Davies and Scarlett.

I spent most of my day outside with Ady today, bored of inside the cottage and being online. It was good to be outside (in the snow!!) and we did some lifting and digging and siting some rainwater barrels and talked lots and lots. Also spent time with all the animals, leaning on the fence chatting and planning and sharing anxieties and excitements.

Davies and Scarlett spent the morning packing up their stuff and starting to tidy the room they’ve been sharing and the afternoon watching films, playing with geomags and Humphrey. I am really looking foward to spending some time with them in the next couple of weeks. Davies has a few projects he wants some help and input with and as lovely as this time in Glastonbury has been we’ve still been in the 9-5 mindset with too many distractions. I read them a couple of chapters of a book at bedtime and I’m looking foward to that being what we do every night at bedtime again.

I had an email from Sue on Eigg confirming our WWOOFing dates with them, so that will be nice whatever happens on Rum – good to see them again, to spend some time on Eigg and know what questions we want answers to, and to see the croft up for grabs on Eigg too which remains an option.

Whilst cleaning up tools with WD40 I realised my face was getting itchier and itchier so stopped. I’m hopeful I did so in time to prevent a full on outbreak and of course it may have been something I touched before rather than that but a bit of a google reveals latex and WD40 allergies seem to have some link and latex was one of the things I had a positive test result to on the prick testing. One of those things that could well have been present for all previous attacks as it’s always around for starting the car in the damp, cleaning stuff, oiling squeaky things but I would not have necessarily noticed and made the connection. I have my patch testing on Friday anyway so will mention it to the clinic and see what other results I get back. It would be excellent to have identified it though.

I crocheted yet another string bag but despite spending hours on it I don’t love it enough not to pull it all out again. I’m liking crochet but need to actually make something I’d use!