One word? When seven would do…

I was going to not bother blogging tonight as I have to be up for work in the morning but I notice I signed off my last post by saying I had to be up for work in the morning which means its a whole week. Oops.

Last Saturday was a very quiet morning at work, I think I had about 2 people in. The system was not working for the first hour so I had to ring the helpdesk, which sounds straightforward but Jinty had had a fit of post Christmas tidying and reorganised all the folders and posters so I couldn’t find the number for the helpdesk for at least 20 minutes and had to look through loads of old newsletters. When I did find it and ring them they asked for our branch code which I couldn’t find either and had to then leave them on hold for about ten minutes (was not going to hang up having been in a queue to talk to someone for ages) while I tracked that down. Argh! Finally sorted it all out, rebooted everything and got it all up and running again at about 11am.

Jinty and her visiting sister called in before the boat and then dashed off again and I finally got a flurry of customers just before closing time. I realised that due to being closed on Thursday (Boxing Day) there was no totals of cash in hand in the safe to copy across so I had to pull all the change out and count it. It took *ages* and I just finished as Jinty came back with loads of green looking people who had arrived on the boat for Hogmanay on the seasickyness boat all year – I think all ten or so people had thrown up on it!

I said hello (no hugs!) to everyone and then headed up the hill for home.

Ady had spent the morning digging out the wind turbine pole and rigging it up ready for the new one. We had lunch and then put our oranges on and headed out to finish installing it. It was the stillest day I think Rum has ever seen but finally during the evening the wind finally got up enough to spin it and test that it was indeed in full working order once more. Hurrah, yippee and woohoo!

On Sunday we mostly faffed with the washing machine. We eventually concluded that it would not work from the water butt as the pressure was not sufficient so moved it over closer to the static and hooked it up to the burn water that we have piped to that. Sure enough it worked! 🙂 This is fantastic! The joy of a washing machine working ON OUR CROFT within 20 feet of our washing line is possibly one of the greatest achievements yet. I know it’s not compared to getting the static up there, getting water across, finally getting the compost loo, growing crops, rearing animals and all of that but a bath and a washing machine are the two big home comforts I most miss so to have finally hit the point that we are making those happen rather than just lifeline survival things feels like a real leap forwards. Further faffing as the Honda genny (Ady’s pride and joy, cost over £1000, very precious) struggled with the spin cycles which the internet tells me do spike at just over the 2kw mark (our genny’s capacity is 2kw) but our cheap back up bargain genny (about £200 but more powerful at 2.6kw) cannot manage the start up bit to get the water flowing. So a combination team effort between gennys is currently required and the fast wash cycle takes over 2 hours which is a whole lot of petrol to run a genny for. Will be less than the £2.50 per time we pay for a laundry token and minus all the hassle of going down to the castle and back certainly but still tweaking required.

Monday was BART DAY! Eagerly anticipated arrival of Kirsty, James, Marcus and Alex on the boat. Ady and I had been further washing machine tweaking in the morning and I had some washing pegged out and more still in process. We all met the boat, Ady and James came home in the car while the rest of us walked. We had a cup of tea on the sporran and then adults walked over to Croft 2 to show Kirsty and James Gav and Laura’s cabin and borrow some petrol from Gav’s stash.

Late night, much drink, lots of kids on screens. You can picture the rest of the day 🙂

Tuesday morning Kirsty, Ady and I walked down to the village to collect veg box, get in some supplies, gather post from the boat (including my birthday present, woohoo it’s arrived in time although stashed away at the moment), sing Happy Birthday to Jinty etc. Barbara Pig was on an escape adventure from the night before and accosted Kirsty and I as we walked home up the hill. Ady spent a lot of time outside taking her back to the pig pen. Other than that much tea was drunk, chatting was done etc.

We saw the old year out and the new year in in style with music, dancing, fizz and at midnight all spilt outside to watch fireworks from down in the village and across on the mainland. Magical and special. Another Rum friends memory banked 🙂
Children went to bed around 2am I think, adults more like 330am, we certainly saw the year in fully 😉

New Years Day was a slower start, obviously. The kids had been invited down to the castle to play xbox and console games, Davies had to light a fire in the yurt and I think we were all in need of a bit of fresh air and leg stretching. We all walked down in various combinations, the kids lit the yurt fire and then headed to the castle with us lagging a bit behind. I’d been unsure whether all of us were invited to the castle or not and didn’t know whether inflicting all 8 of us was better or worse than dumping the kids… in the end I was honest with Mel and we arranged to have a bit of a walk on the beach for half an hour or so before coming back to join the kids. Having mentioned that Kirsty and James had not seen inside the castle before either she offered a tour too 🙂 Yay Mel 🙂

So Kirsty, James, Ady, Bonnie and I had a wander along the beach, we showed them How to Pick A Winkle, Bonnie chased some crows and we reflected a little on previous new years days on beaches we have shared before heading to the castle. Mel and Em had laid on festive snacks of a very high quality and we had a lovely hour or so chatting and drinking tea with them before Em Bonnie-sat and Mel took us (and Scarlett and Alex) on a castle tour. We were conscious of daylight leaving us so headed back to the croft.

Ady was Mr Curry Meister for the night so he did that while Kirsty was wise and I tried out being inspirational again for the first time in ages. I miss friends 🙂 🙁

A lovely last night although poor Davies had succumbed to James’ cold which on top of three incredibly late nights, way more screen time and way less outdoors time than he is used to had him feeling a little delicate and sensitive along with three other children all slightly passed their best selves meant they took a little coaxing before getting back on track.

We called midnight an early night 😉

Thursday was Operation Pack Up and while there is still time to find something so far I don’t believe Kirsty and James left anything behind…. 😯

Some of us walked and some of us drove to the pier, all arriving with plenty of time to chat to fellow Rumachs, very many of whom were waving folk off yesterday (Jinty’s Dad and sister, Lesley and Ross’ Mum, us saying good bye to The Barts and Sandy leaving in spectacular drunk fashion apparently proclaiming there is no love left on Rum!!!). The ferry turned the corner and we all parted ways back to our ‘normal’ lives.

We spent the afternoon emptying the car of the massive animal feed delivery that we’d found in the boat shed having arrived on New Years Eve and starting to carry logs up the hill and split them to go in the wood store. Rats have chewed through one of our feed bins so that needed repairing. Davies needed to mostly sit next to the fire and drink vitamin C drinks, Scarlett did lots of tending to her poorly brother. I made bread dough and by popular poorly boy request moved traditional Friday night pizzas to Thursday. I also trekked down in the dark to the shop for some supplies having decided it would be better done last night than tonight and would mean we’d not need to leave the croft all day today. I also got to test out my new Christmas head torch 🙂

Earlyish nights all round.

The wind has been fierce today to the extent that we tethered the wind turbine for most of the day. Even with that done we have had enough power to charge everything, run everything and still have a full battery without the genny on at all today :). Both kids have had bath showers (filling the very deep shower tray up for a shallow bath) and hairwashes so Davies feels less full of skanky cold germs and better and Scarlett has had her hair detangled. We’ve mostly been indoors all day and played games, watched some TV stuff, knitted, done drawing and generally vegged out feeling the static is huge without guests or the Christmas tree! Oh and I did some paperwork sorting and filed our tax returns for 2012/13 so feel very virtuous about that 🙂

I messed about for ages trying to sort out our non existent phone signal and managed to ring my parents and get a crackly message out to say we are fine but have no phones just now. I might ring again in the morning and try for a more coherent message.

But for now, as I have work in the morning…. 😉