Lost in ‘Trip Hop’ :-)

A circular tour of Skye followed by a 400 mile trek south has left me ‘dazed and confused’, but here I am, a ‘million miles from home’ in the Clifton Guest House South Shields  http://www.theclifton.co.uk/contactus.html Absolutely nothing wrong with this fine establishment, in fact I’ve been made most welcome and the room is lovely.

I just feel like a ‘fish out of water’ and all the driving is killing me  

For twenty odd years all I’ve ever done is drive up and down the rapidly deteriorating Rassay single track roads, make the yearly trip to dry dock, go to the odd festival and go shopping in Portree. Over the last few months I’ve driven thousands of miles around Scotland and the north east of England and I’m pure traumatized by it

Fifteen away

Anyway, before the long drive south I had to dispose of 15 piglets to customers on Raasay and Skye. It was a little earlier than I’d have liked but it was a case of ‘now or in a months time’ So, on Saturday morning we set about getting the full nineteen piglets into the trailer and dosing them with .6ml of ‘Panomec’ wormer prior to delivering them. It all went surprisingly smoothly and by 9:30 we had them all ‘jagged’ and four of them removed for fattening for ourselves and other customers.

 

What we generally do is tempt all the piglets into the trailer with feed, once they’re all in I inject one at a time then mark them with paint. We used to use an ‘in feed’ wormer (and still do for the large pigs) but found that not all of the ‘wee darlings’ were getting their fair share so resorted to the needle, at least that way way we know that they’ve all had ‘their dose’.

The first three girls were not going that far, a mere ten miles in fact to the sunny shores of Oskaig on Raasay.

Here I know they’d be be well looked after and be happily grubbing about in the gorse and heather

The next two ‘wee tammies’ went to Heaste on Skye, from where their mother (Ellie) had come from.

A good refuge for Land Rovers as well as piglets

 

As you can see, it was not an unpleasant drive

 

You could not get a finer vista in the height of summer, in fact you’d be eaten by midges and clogged up by campervans and tourists Today it was perfect, no ‘Sunday drivers’, blue sky, no traffic and no caravans

   

The next lot went to Fiskavaig, four to Glendale and the final two ‘spotties’ to Bernisdale.

 

After well over 125 miles of ‘Skye travel’ we arrived back at Sconser to meet another friend who had had our most ‘laid back’ boar, Rocky on hire since before Christmas. We swapped trailers and carted Rocky home on the 18:00 ferry, whereupon he got straight on with ‘servicing’ our two recently lactating sows

Sunday

Today it was just a case of ‘up and away’, though this time it was in the newly MOT’d Nissan and not my Land Rover I simply couldn’t afford to take the ‘Old Girl’ sowf once more so used wifey’s car instead. It may be quicker and more comfortable but it just doesn’t have the same choice of listening. My old ‘bucket’ has a huge selection of music and stories ‘onboard’ in the form of cassette tapes and CD’s but the Almera is severely restricted in that department and I was confined to ‘Poirot’s Last Case’ by Agatha Christie, which ended around the Forth Road Bridge This left me stuck with the likes of ‘Borders Radio’ for the remainder of my journey when I could have been listening to some delightful and melancholy ‘trip hop’ from the likes of the Sneaker Pimps.

 

  

Whatever happened to the ‘Sneaker Pimps’ ????? their rendition of ‘How do’ from the film ‘The Wickerman’ was awesome.

 

Perhaps it was just my mood at leaving wife and child once more, but I craved for some Portishead, Massive Attack or Morcheeba  to keep me company

 

How I’d love to see the Sneaker Pimps and Portishead live, my darling wife proposed to me after a Morcheeba gig some thirteen years ago and we celebrated our twelfth anniversary yesterday.

 

Truly awesome stuff

About these ads