Thursday and Friday

Yesterday was a trying to be efficient but still chasing our tails sort of day. Ady and I went to meet the boat at 1135am, taking down one of the batteries (we have 4 batteries; 1 on the pig fence, 1 on the invertor that runs the internet and 1 running the lights and water pump plus a spare to be on charge) to put on charge, collecting something for dinner from the freezer, putting a wash on at the castle and collecting our milk direct from the boat to put in the freezer (10 x 4pinters, should keep us going when boats don’t run or we’re broke). The plan then was to swap the washing over into the tumble drier and come home for the soup I’d made earlier but when we popped back to the castle we bumped into Lynda who I’d invited up one afternoon this week for a coffee asking if it could be today, in about 2 hours time. I said yes and so we didn’t wait the 15 minutes or so for the washing machine cycle to finish but headed home for lunch instead with the plan of Ady heading back to swap it over after lunch. We left the car at the castle and walked home.

Except after we’d eaten lunch it started raining and carried on for the next 2 hours. So Ady didn’t walk down and Lynda didn’t walk up after all. Instead Ady and I eventually walked down and swapped the washing over into the drier then came back to the croft to feed the animals. I had a look at the house site that Ady and Sandy had plotted out (very exciting 🙂 ) and we collected the kids and went back down to collect the now dry washing and get our veg box from the shop. Fliss was there so we stopped for a drink before coming home for dinner.

We watched Arietty which had come on Lovefilm and Ady cooked spaghetti bolognaise for himself, Scarlett and I and spaghetti and meatballs for Davies which proved very popular with empty plates all round.

Today – I’d been really surprised yesterday at the boat when Derek asked me to come to meet with Richard from SNH with him. The stalking concession goes out to tender for the deer cull from next year and there have been rumblings about various ways of keeping it within the island including setting up a community interest company and getting a grant to fund the first year, making it an offshoot of the venison processing company and various other options. I wasn’t really sure why he wanted me to go along but I did. It was an interesting meeting in terms of learning a fair bit and feeling there is a definite opportunity there while remaining very protective of the things I want to do with my life and not overstretching myself for something that doesn’t quite fit my dreams. More thinking required there I think.

I got hailed on walking home but a fantastic double rainbow ending on the croft made the sogginess worthwhile. Home for lunch – left over soup, leftover pizza and then back out again to go down to Fliss’ for Friday crochet and chatter. We had a really nice few hours including all sorts of chatter with Fliss asking me to go into business with her! Clearly what I actually need is a cloning machine, wonder if I could get crowdfunding for that or build one out of pallet wood…. 😆

Ady and the kids joined us and we ended up staying for dinner. Sandy had a few drinks and it got a bit fraught between him and Fliss for a while which could have been our cue to leave but Ady decided to talk to Sandy a bit and I stayed with Fliss and we left them in much better form. In lots of ways this is a broken island filled with broken people. We know it won’t break us though and I think although we can;t fix it we can certainly be part of the papering over the cracks and finding new ways forward.

We got home to lots of messages from my parents so I rang back to hear the wonderful news that Kat had their baby today. A little boy, all fine but yet to be named. I’m an auntie 🙂 Frazer texted me a couple of pictures and I can honestly say it’s the first time I’ve felt the tug to head back south since we’ve been here.