One word? When seven would do…

Until we are in a place where I can get regular, uninterupted internet access I simply can’t pull off daily blogging. I find that really hard, infact although it sounds really odd and not a little sad it is internet access or lack of it that I am struggling most with just now. Every little thing, from recording my day on my blog, to feeling like I am still keeping a hand in with maintaining friendships, recording our days and weeks on flickr and on the WW blog, getting straight with coordinatiing volunteers and keeping friends up to date on what we’re doing, setting up a proper WWOOF host arrangement, staying abreast of shopping, banking, croft admin and finally just being able to do a quick google to answer the kids or my own questions as and when they arise is bloody hard.

It is pretty much the only thing I’m finding hard mind you, so that’s not all bad and maybe it is remediable (is that a word?).

So where are we? It’s been a really full on couple of weeks. Norman went off island as he got septacemia from the dog fight bite – first time he’s left the island in 3 years so that was a Big Deal. He’s back now and recovering well. We’ve lost Georgie 🙁 Really sad about that. Her and Mike have split up and she has gone back to NZ where she is from. She left on the ferry today after a very teary, boozy goodbye party yesterday afternoon. Lots of tears at the ferry this afternoon. It feels so huge when someone leaves even for a few days or weeks let alone forever. Mike has gone with her as far as Fort William and will be back next week sometime which is when we get to be his friends and supporters. He is struggling with the breakup of a relationship in such a public manner.

We’ve handed our notice in for the Odd Job job, it was a real farce with every job we were given being either impossible, stupid, ridiculously time consuming beyond what we felt we could charge for or something that people looked at us like idiots for turning up at their houses to do (the trust owns all the houses in the village so everyone is a tenant, they come up with really rubbish fixes for stuff needing doing and send us along looking like pillocks to fix things without proper tools). That is a relief 🙂

The static *might* finally get to the croft. Alistair from Eigg is coming over this weekend with his tractor and trailer to get it there. It’s costing us £300 on calmac to get it here and back, plus whatever he charges us for his time and we’ll be putting him up Saturday to Monday but this time next week we might actually be living on our own land. We have a bottle of fizz from Jill ready to crack open on our first actual night on the croft and a big barbecue ready to fire up for a croft warming party for the whole island if it actually happens.

The animals are all well – Tom & Barbara are lovely – really like having pigs 🙂 They are very tame, him more than her and will roll over for their tummies to be tickled. The chickens are slowly being contained – we’ve been given loads of old galvanised corrugated sheets so have been putting them around their enclosure as they have started laying but are all over the croft and surrounding area so every day we spent hours looking for eggs and rounding them back up. Once we’re living down there we might shut them in at night til they’ve laid and then let them back out to free range though as it is nice to see them all over the place, just not when eggs can be sold for 22p each to Jinty’s shop! Bonnie is still lovely, growing fast and persuading me slowly that dogs are not all bad 😉

Davies and Scarlett are still loving it here. Scarlett was pretty devastated to be losing Georgie – they had grown quite close and walked dogs together lots. Claire has offered them drawing lessons and I think Davies intends getting Sandy to show him some woodworking stuff too. They love swimming in the river, have been asked to fill the large community board with a collcetion of their artwork, are making stuff to sell in Fliss’ shop and at next weeks craft fayre to tourists and odd minor wobbles aside are loving it here.

I am loving it too – so much 🙂 I have a special spot on the croft land where I sit on a huge stone and think with all the mountains and rivers and sky around me and not another person in sight or sound. I love the people, the feeling of community (for all it’s frustrations and challenges), the opportunities and pioneering feel. I love my animals and can’t wait to start growing stuff and am looking forward to sharing Rum with family and friends soon. My parents will be here in a couple of weeks and for all my terror at them just not getting it or the weather or midges being dreadful I am still really looking forward to seeing them and showing them everything. I’ve been making stuff to sell at the craft fayre – knitting and crochet. Baking for teashop, selling eggs and trying to read lots about foraging home brew and stuff. There is so, so much to do and the slower pace of life really hasn’t kicked in yet but we are not even 2 months in so I am trying to be the voice of reason being kind to ourselves about what we have already achieved in such a short time. I’m about to start pulling the little library here to pieces, am on the events committee thanks to my brainwave of having an event called MidgeFest where we celebrate the midge and make a proper party out of it – loads to do for that, most of which needs internet or people to bounce ideas off of again.

Croft 2 is being advertised again and I know of 5 people intending applying – all five have asked for my help with their business plans! Which puts me in rather an odd position really!

We’re WWOOF hosts and have already had about 10 people contact us, two are possibles so I’m in the throes of putting together responses to them. My first planned project is the compost loo, for which many hands would be good.

I also want to build a pizza oven on the croft as a fairly early project so that is high on the list and I think would make a great group activity too.

We have hatched a plan to hire the village hall once a week for an evening and give talks about ourselves, We have had such interest from tourists, so many of whom have already read about us either on blog or press that we thought we could put together a 1 hour talk with photos and ask for donations. Hall hire is only £6 and includes use of the kitchen so we could even make some money from refreshments too if we wanted. We need to put together a presentation and get it advertised 🙂 Lots of little ways of scraping cash together should keep us going. Writing simply isn’t an option when I am so unreliable at being online just now.

Ady loves the croft, loves the land and usual worries and frets about whether we can make it work here aside is really happy. He’ll never really manage to let go of stress I don’t think, will always have something to worry about or feel he should be busy elsewhere doing but he looks happier and healthier and company cars, office meetings and the like are now a dim and distant memory. He misses friends and I think all four of us would benefit from more people on the island and time away from each other doing stuff but we more or less manage to get our own space when we need it. I have certainly made the most friends simply because there are plenty of women on the island who I have clicked with and I think women are generally better and finding stuff in common and bonding. He needs a buddy!

We saw a minke whale last week on the Sheerwater trip, along with porpoises, great Skua and the usual seabirds. Our first whale 🙂 Very exciting. Every Thursday I am reminded anew of how lucky we are to live here, we get a two hour FREE boat trip off chasing sealife with rangers, photographers and other experts. I already know way more about seabirds than I would ever have learnt from books just by being out there each week looking.

Overall I think our overwhelming feeling is that this is definitely the right place for us. We are so very fortunate to have our chunk of land, freedom and space and so much choice about what to do next. If the static gets to the croft intact this weekend (not blogging about how scared I am of it getting damaged or just not getting there, will spew that out in relief next week maybe!) and we sort out internet access in the comfort of our own static rather than on public display in the village hall then everything would be perfect!