We had a boat on Friday to cover the cancelled one and most of the Christmas post we were waiting on turned up on it. Friday seems so long ago I can’t remember what else we did. Oh, I made a candle with Scarlett for her secret santa gift to Jinty. Davies finished his picture for his too so they are all done. We took a load of laundry down too and washed it then put it in the tumble drier and left it to do it’s thing.
Saturday morning Ady and I both worked – he was working for the reserve rather than the castle loading 40 deer onto a trailer from the larder and then meeting the boat to load them onto the game dealer van which came off. The Calmac was waiting for them as it was just one boat so it was quite stressy apparently – it was Manager Mike, Ady, Lesley and Ross but I heard Ady was the one doing pretty much all the lifting. Lesley and Ross are tiny and Mike is not a strong bloke, Ady is very strong, my own Geoff Capes!
I was at the shop, it was busy-ish but plenty of time to drink tea and chat to folk. I went along to meet Ady from work and he made me a cup of tea while he had a shower to wash off deer blood! Mairi had come off the boat but gone to have a cup of tea and chat with Deb while Ady and I finished work so she walked along to the hostel to meet us after 1 and we all came up to the croft together.
Ady did various bits and pieces outside in the afternoon after lunch. I made bread dough, pizza dough and chatted with Mairi. It was fab to have her here, we get on so well and she is lovely company. She was quite happy to slum it and sleep on the sofa in the lounge which worked well. She had been up since 4am to leave home to get to Mallaig so we only stayed up til midnight but managed to sink 4 bottles of fizz between us. Mairi only drinks fizz 🙂
Sunday we had a selection of pastries and croissants for breakfast that Mairi had brought with her, then Davies and Ady went to chop a christmas tree while Mairi, Scarlett and I went out with secateurs and collected holly, larch branches with wee cones and cotoneaster branches with red berries on them and met Ady and Davies at Dave’s cabin. We had a plan to install and decorate a Christmas tree for him as a surprise. It was crazily windy and frequently hailing but Mairi insisted we sat on camping chairs on the decking and made decorations which we felt Kirstie Allsopp would have been proud of 😆 Meanwhile Ady was determined to create a cross shaped stand for the tree ‘just like the one Mickey Mouse make in Disney Christmas cartoons’. It was generally hilarious and quite giddy all round. The tree was massively too tall and having nailed the stand on and manhandled it into the cabin we realised it didn’t have room to stand up so had to chop about 18 inches off it. More hilarity! We found two old water bottles over there and some tealights so Scarlett and I showed Mairi how to make the plastic bottle icicles which may have added burning plastic fumes to the mix :). Once finally the correct height we decorated the tree and it looks beautiful. Mairi is convinced Dave will put it out in the porch once he arrives but he will certainly be touched and we had several hours of much entertainment over there.
Back to our croft for a late lunch and then Mairi and I walked down to the shop to buy supplies – another six bottles of fizz which were not all supposed to be for drinking – one is my Christmas present from Mairi which she insisted on replacing and one was her present to Dave which she has left me money to replace too! Ady cooked a lovely roast pork dinner, we had a very funny napkin folding contest. On the way home Mairi and I had rescued an injured jack snipe which had been ringed so the kids noted the ring number down and I emailed Sean who told us he had ringed it back in 2012 and then caught it again in 2013 here and that if it could fly we should release it as they feed at night. So after dinner, about 10pm, several bottles of fizz down we all put on coats and went outside to release the jack snipe. It didn’t fly so after a chance to escape we decided it was more likely to get eaten by a rat if left outside so put it back in a cage in the horsebox and then stood for another 20 minutes or so watching the meteor shower which was just fab.
Back indoors Davies spent nearly an hour talking to me about conspiracy theories which he has been researching on the internet and is fascinated by, while Scarlett and Mairi did somehing together on Mairi’s ipad and looked at old photos. The kids finally went off to bed, so did Ady and then Mairi and I stayed up til 3am chatting.
Today I have been a bit broken 😉 Mairi and I walked over to the cabin to collect some bits, then sat and chatted on the sporran. We showed her the house site and then had one last cup of tea while she packed up her stuff. The kids were outside hunting for ice so we collected them, swung by the hall to get Mairi some venison, our freezer to give her a joint of pork and then off to the pier where the boat was already in having not been to Muck today. We waved Mairi off, welcomed back Fliss and Joss, waved off also Deb, Sean, Ali & Eve and Bad Neil who were all leaving today. We called in at the shop to work out veg orders for the next couple of weeks and buy a few bits, carried the shopping up to the fork as we have had a rat in the jeep so want to leave it parked in the village to see whether the rat lives in the car all the time or just comes in and out and lives nearby where we usually park it. Ady loaded the Rangerover up with a load of wood while I walked back down to collect post and something from our freezer for dinner, then I got back just as he had finished loading up.
Back at the croft I went up, brought in firewood and had a shower, while Ady finished emptying the load of wood and fed the animals then we watched Home Alone and Home Alone 2 which were the 2 films we didn’t watch this weekend as Mairi was here. Perfect hangover cure with popcorn 🙂 I cooked dinner of bacon and cheese pasta bake and garlic bread, more comfort food and had a very small hair of the dog glass of wine with my dinner, which restored me sufficiently to watch Scrooged which was tonights film.
And now off to bed where I imagine I will sleep very well indeed!