Not even 20:30 !!!!

Well it’s not, it’s only 8:20pm and I’m wrecked, and by the time I’ve finished posting I’ll be even more wrecked I know, it’s been a while since I was on here but I’ve been kinda busy with house related stuff. Not only that but Valentine’s day intervened and I had to do the romantic stuff with wifey Or should I say I had to give my darling all the stuff that Calum Don bought her I really don’t know what I’d do without Calum on the romantic front, he seems to know just which card to buy, which box of chocolates she likes and what wine to pick, perhaps he’s not telling me something Whenever ‘I’m in the brown stuff’ I ask Calum to buy me a bottle of wine or chocolates and he drags me out of the mire

Actually the swineherd was not the only person he bought flowers for on Tuesday, the check out girl must have thought he was some kind of Romeo as he arrived to pay for two bunches of flowers, one bottle of red wine and a box of Thornton’s

The longest load yet

I think the last time that I put ‘pen to paper’ so to speak was at some ungodly hour on Monday morning, after that I seem to recall it was quite a busy day.

At a full 19m long Matt Purdie’s ‘road train’ arrived on the 15:00 ferry from Sconser, as far as I’m aware the longest load ever carried to Raasay aboard the MV Loch Striven.

We’ve had some pretty strange loads on the ferry and one or two that have been turned away due to lack of lashing points but Matt Purdie’s http://www.mattpurdie.co.uk/  Scania had plenty of clearance and easily accessible lashing points, very professional

On the ferry maintaining front I did a repair on a capstan spool valve

 

that was suffering from a dodgy O ring and finished off all the stuff that I should have done earlier

We had a fire on the car deck at Sconser well not a real fire, just a drill, and that was about it.

 

Wednesday

My ‘back to back’ let me away early on Tuesday and I arrived home in daylight, or at least twilight An early night was had in preparation for lots of time spent on the phone and computer with carp associated with building a house.

As well as all the paperwork there was the physical work of trying to make the place look respectable for the surveyor, estate agent and anyone interested in buying 3 South Arnish.

 

It’ll be a bit of a wrench parting with the old croft house after 23 happy years but the banks are such a shower of robbing b*****ds that it has to go

 

The tw*ts  want to charge me almost £1000 for setting up another mortgage, they’re going to screw me for over £900 a month for the next ten years and want to charge me £1000 for the privilege

Thursday

After spending all of Wednesday cutting down trees, pressure washing paths and burning rubbish I called it a day. Wifey’s parents arrived and after a few glasses of wine we all went to bed

 

Thursday arrived a little damply but with promise of better things,

Bracken’s wee wains are getting bolder by the day and were squeezing under the gate to go exploring

We managed to acquire another ‘helper’

and got rid of some scrap.

My new ‘helper’ may not be able to drive the quad like her brother but she’s very enthusiastic

It really felt like spring today with leaves out on the hawthorn

 

 

snow drops, daffodils, daisy’s

 

those prickly things that come from Tierra del Feugo

 

and heather, lots of heather.

As well as all the exterior work I spent much time sorting out shed’s, burning rubbish and filling bins, coming across many a memory as I did.

 

My goat milking stand in the byre being one of them I think I came by this design in John Seymour’s book ‘Complete book of self sufficiency’ http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Complete-Book-Self-Sufficiency/dp/1405345101/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329430569&sr=8-1 and I have to say that it was perfect .

Hazel or Rosie our two Saanen goats would hop onto the frame and stick their head through the hole at the end to access the feed bucket.

 

Once the head was past the hinged flap it trapped the goat and you could milk it without breaking your back. I kept goats for about a year but they just weren’t compatible with the lifestyle of a fisherman that was likely to get stranded away from home. Many is the winters night that I’ve headed back to Rassay on a stormy black evening just to milk them, when a sane person would have stayed put.

After all that it was time to give Cyril a run,

 

Cyril being my 40 year old Lister SR2 with only 60 hours ‘on the clock’,

wifey was baking a lasagne and MIL was hoovering the house whilst I was using a grinder on the roof. The regular battery/inverter would have coped but it seemed like a good opportunity to test the ‘back up’ system of 6Kw generator and 50amp 48v charger