which has since turned into 11 and gotten oh so much crazier but I liked the intended title for last nights blog post so I’m sticking with it!
Not going to attempt to catch up really so will do some soundbites.
Mum & Dad – had a great visit. Five days and nights. As ever it is lovely to see them, fab to spend time with them and a relief when they pack up again and go home. They have our bedroom which given they have funded so much of our adventure so far I would never begrudge them. I just wish they’d spend more time actually using it! Dad seems on a mission to spend every waking moment with us when he’s here and then a sort of super mission to make every moment a waking one! The first night was 3am, the second 5am and so on… I think 2am was the earliest to bed we were for the duration.
My Dad particularly is having some sort of life changing epiphany where he is aware of his mortality and desperate to live every moment to the full. He loves Rum, adores the river at the foot of the croft, is totally unfazed by the lifestyle in terms of water, electric and so on as it is not that far from his childhood home and he gets a real kick out of our animals, spending loads of time down with the birds and pigs.
We didn’t really leave the croft while they were here, they are not particularly interested in the rest of Rum, in meeting the rest of the people here or in exploring but that’s fine. We did lots of lovely home cooked food which is far from their usual fayre, let them do looking after livestock and crops with us, Mum helped trim the willow, Dad helped secure the bird pens and they both spent lots of time with Davies and Scarlett.
We waved them off on Wednesday which was a mad crazy day – I’d spent lots of Tuesday baking ready for Market Day and have gone for high end fancy schmancy breads to sell alongside my midges in resin and moods of Rum scarves. I made flat breads with pesto and mozzarella, tomato, olive and herbs or mushroom and garlic. I over-made with the intention of freezing stuff for next week but ended up selling out of everything and also selling three scarves which meant I took the best part of £100 making it my best day ever! Ady came down too as there was a ‘meet the candidates’ event with the 6 short listed people for the Reserve Manager job coming over to see Rum before their formal interview the following day.
We waved off Mum and Dad and Thursday was spent in a bit of a recovering daze including a lovely Sheerwater trip where we didn’t see any cetaceans but had a great birdwatching trip seeing arctic skuas, the first guillemot chick of the year, lots of rafts of shearwaters and the usual kittiwakes, shags and gannets.
I cannot recall what we did on Friday, it seems way too long ago! But Saturday was the Small Isles Games and Rum was the host. It was a fabulous day all round, amazing weather, hundreds of people, fab food, great games (axe throwing, bungee run, wellie wanging etc). Scarlett came second in the kids hill race, Ady rocked at axe throwing, I was consistently poor at everything remotely sporting but thoroughly enjoyed myself nonetheless 🙂 Ady and I nipped home to feed animals and for me to get changed (I’d spilt ketchup down my top from the barbecue) and then back to the evening ceilidh which was equally amazing with a fab band. We left after midnight due to being responsibile parents and all 😉 Word on the street is that the party didn;t stop until well into daylight hours 🙂
Yesterday was a slower day = Ady helped with hall cleanup, we took down the marquee and generally recovered. I do have lots of photos of the games which I will upload soon.
Today was overshadowed by Sandy who is here having been left behind by Fliss and the girls. I have neither the energy or the inclination to go into the Fraser household politics but it is quickly becomming a friendship I could live without…