Tuesday – work in the morning for SNH. Still on the office move and still not remotely organised or properly planned so lots of standing around waiting and a small amount of moving boxes and dismantling furniture. All a bit of a joke really. We went to the shop after work for some snack food for lunch and I begged a cup of tea off Jinty too, there were a few of us round there so we hung out chatting before heading back to the castle for the next installment of our work on the Japanese bridge. We planned to strip the old chicken wire off the bridge and had gone armed with tin snips and thick gloves. We should have also gone armed with midge nets and spray! It was very midgey and not very pleasant work but we got it all done and then headed for home.
It was a lovely afternoon so after a cup of tea, chocolate brownie and catch up with the kids I turned the music up loud and did my Teashop baking and made dinner, Ady went outside to water the polytunnel and strim the pig fenceline as the grass was touching the electric fence and earthing it and the kids went out to play outside. I made 30 flatbreads, some banana and choc chip muffins, a loaf of bread and a steak pie for our dinner, finally getting everything on the table just after 9pm – four solid hours of baking! The sunshine and music helped 🙂
Today was Teashop for me and Deb was working with me today. She had made soup and cakes and we did a good solid trade taking nearly £200 between us. Ady went along to meet the boat as we were expecting petrol off but it got bumped as there were more than 100 foot passengers (random maritime law which states no dangerous goods can be transported if there are more than 100 foot passengers meaning that gas, petrol and diesel will all get bumped in favour of people despite Calmac in theory offering a lifeline service rather than a tourist line plus it being acceptable to put 99 people’s lives in danger but not 100!?). Our next stash of vacuum bags arrived though so that is the plan for Friday 🙂
We have a family here this week who are interested in moving here so they called in for a chat and arranged to come up to the croft on Friday to meet and talk properly. Am slightly fatigued by Rum politics just now but will try hard to be positive and continue doing a good PR job 😉 We learnt last week that Gav & Laura (croft 2) have split up which was quite a shock and found out today that Stuart & Julie (retired headmaster and his wife who was the nursery and clerical assistant, they left Rum a few month ago) have also split up after 30 odd years marriage. Am slightly reeling from hearing about both those couples. The Locks are wanting to come and stay on the croft in our tent in a couple of weeks too and I am just exhausted at the prospect of it. It’s like meeting new Home Educators All The Time and knowing that it’s really important to help and answer their questions and assist and help spread the word and swell HE numbers and give something back to the community that helped you so much when you first started out, but also just wishing that everyone could bugger off so you could just get on with HEing you own children and living your lives too!
I caught up with Dev Officer Steve who is over and we chatted for ages and ended up going next door to the shop for Beer O’clock, then Bad Neil bought me a beer, then the IRN security guys who manage all the fire alarms on the island and come over every 6 months to service and check them and Ady and I get on really well with arrived and Kenny bought me a beer. Then Good Neil the Farrier arrived and offered beers but it was suddenly nearly 7pm and despite emailing and voicemailing Ady I had not got hold of him so I headed off with the kids home for dinner having arranged to go back down for beers with them all tomorrow and bring Ady too. It’s Bad Neil’s last night before he goes off to meet Lesley to have the baby and his life changes forever… who will I chat to on Saturday mornings?!
I rang my parents when I got home to tell them we’ve been scheduled. I had an email from Kate today so say she will hopefully have a disc on the way to us tomorrow so fingers crossed it arrives over the weekend and we get to see it at least at the same time as the rest of the country. We’ve been invited down to various houses in the village to watch it go out but would quite like to watch it just the four of us first and see what we think before watching it with other people. Hoping there are enough cringey bits to make fun of but enough good bits to have us not look like complete crazies!