Two birthdays :-)

Still no internet so you’ll not get this until tomorrow and there’ll be no links in it I can’t go back and check the bull in my last post either so you’ll have to forgive me if I repeat myself or tell any porkies As if

Anyway it’s Monday, May 7th and 21:00, I had intended scribbling a few lines down last night and replying to all the comments but fell asleep at 18:30 and did not wake up until 5:30am on my birthday!!!! It had been a lovely day, starting as usual with a spot of pig feeding and udder squeezing before trundling down to work in the old girl.

 

The sun was blazing down the cruise liner Albatross was just heading for Portree

 

where she dropped anchor shortly afterwards.

The morning at work was busy enough with a few cars and plenty of walkers enjoying the bank holiday sun,

me, I did some more painting OK, I know it’s a little rough but it looks great from a distance and it’s very hard using a roller on the end of a broom handle

Lunchtime saw the wee dug and I going for a wander around the pier and its environs,

Molly being far more enthusiastic about walking than sailing.

Our first ‘port of call’ being these steps hewn into the rock then levelled off with concrete, just by the boathouse I suppose they were done to make boarding boats easier for ladies in long skirts

After that it was up to Raasay house to creep around the security fencing and admire the new windows that had just been fitted

which should go a long way to reducing the heating bills. You have to laugh at these halfwits at ‘Historic Scotland’ who would not let decent windows be fitted in the first refurbishment. The most popular and photographed castle in Scotland is Eilean Donan that looked like this in 1910,

 

would it have been so popular and generated so much income for the local economy had it not been refurbished to look like this ????? Would it feck, no one would have given it a second glance as they sped past Dornie on their way to Skye.

 

Would it have featured in James Bond, Highlander, several thousand biscuit tins and a million calendars looking like the result of an air raid??? not a chance. Would you wish to get married there ??? would you heck. So why do these buffoons in quangos  answerable to no one get away with this carp?? These old buildings and castles need using, not leaving to rot, they are organic bits of history that need to evolve to survive not burdened with a gazillion conditions because they are ‘listed’.

 

Having said all that I don’t think that they should be repaired with breeze blocks and flashing tape, you just have to admire http://www.macleodroofing.co.uk/ , http://www.kdltd.co.uk/, and Firth Plumbing’s work to see that

After our ‘recce’ of Raasay House we wandered back back in almost Mediterranean conditions back to the boat.

Doing a spot of tide gauge cleaning before we sailed again at 16:00 for Sconser,

you would not believe that I just power washed that two weeks ago!!

Bank holiday Monday

With the lovely day at work out of the way I headed home with the full intention of doing a few jobs around the croft before retiring. After all it was an early finish and a lovely day, however the massive portions of haddock in bread crumbs given me by wifey for dinner had me going for a ‘wee lie down’ from which I never recovered

Even when I awoke this morning at 5:10 I wasn’t fully ‘compos mentis’ and by the time I’d had a bath, done the dishes and sorted myself out it was almost time for work. By the time I’d gone into the barn to check on Jamie Lea

   

and discovered a farrowing sow with squashed piglet it was getting late

 

Wifey had checked her last night at 21:00 and all was fine, our most prolific sow was just grazing merrily outside the barn. At 6:30 this morning however she’d managed to rip the wooden panelling off the barn and turn the polystyrene lining into snow. She had a piglet trapped underneath her and two others looking for milk

 

After getting the weakest one latched onto a nipple I ran back into the house to raise the swineherd

leaving her and Molly to deal with the piglets whilst I headed south for work.

which was another lightning quick day, though not half as busy as we’d expected for a bank holiday Monday. Not that ‘Eyre Plant’ and Raasay’s own ‘Hugh Mackay Plant’ ever stop work on a bank holiday Duncan’s old Scania dragging Hooky’s 13ton Komatsu back home after a spell of working away. Perhaps it will be coming to Arnish shortly

 

I think folk had been put off travelling by the forecast. Ever since Friday the radio has been telling everyone how rubbish the weather is and what a carp holiday it’s going to be. OK, we had a spot of snow and it’s been boodly freezing on the ferry in the north wind but on land and in the shelter it has been a beautiful May so far. We even had a frost this morning and there was ice on the puddles at Sconser but the sun was out for most of day, a few spots of rain at 17:00 didn’t even stop me painting

When I arrived home around 20:00 six of the seven piglets were thriving and wifey had cleaned up most of the polystyrene that Jamie had ripped off the walls.

Number seven was in the house wrapped up but going downhill despite the best attentions of a protective Molly and the family. He had rallied after being put on the teat but could not stand despite his best efforts, a large swelling on his head probably indicating one of Jamie’s footprints and a damaged brain. I should have just shot him there and then to put him out of his suffering, especially after all the effort that we’d put into Tam in January

  

but at least Tam could stand. This wee chap was getting colder by the minute and definitely not going to make it through the night. However he seemed settled enough and it seemed kinder (and easier on us) to let him go in his sleep.

Sure enough he was dead this morning

Time to ‘phone a friend’ :-(

Sunday already, the Sabbath, my favourite day, or at least my favourite ‘working day’, my Sunday’s on the croft are pretty much like any other day Anyway it’s arrived a little earlier than usual on this particular Sunday as I was up at 5:30 in an effort to get a few lines down on here before going outside to do a few jobs. Though before that it was outside for a quick peek at Jamie Lea to check for piglets

of which there were none No piglets but they can’t be far away for our most prolific sow is bursting with milk and has been brought into the barn to farrow.

Serious ‘geek speak’

I had intended doing a little post last night,  nothing much on account of me not actually doing a great deal yesterday. A little painting in a safety harness on the ‘monkey island’ being about the sum of it the rest of the day being taken up by lots of walkers and cyclists on the ferry and lots of moaning about the weather. For I’d arisen to two ominous things, snow and some serious ‘geek speak’ on my laptop.

I mean what the photon is all that about ???? I was going to email Andy for a translation

Hey Paul, before you went SCUBA diving I bet you did some training. I bet you did lots of training and learning before you went solo underwater. I bet you didn’t even think of going solo with knowing a lot about diving, working out times to decompress, knowing the medical effects diving can cause etc.

So what makes you think you can use a computer if you’ve not had training and you don’t know what the words mean?

but he’s left one of those paranoid disposable ‘Mailinator’ addresses that you can’t reply to. The first of my many hundreds of commentators to do so, even the slightly bonkers ‘Meat is murder’ left a proper email

Hi – you seem like a nice guy. What a shame you cant find a better way to make money. Somethign that doesn’t involve premature death and suffering for those poor creatures. If you had any respect for the pigs you wouldn’t tart up your blog with cuddly images and romantic twaddle about how how much you like them. At least consider removing their pictures. those poor wee guys are brighter than any dog – yet I doubt if you would eat your dog and smile about it. Guess you probably don’t have the courage to witness their end? how could you hand them over to some mouth breathing moron who cares not a jot for them and the the manner in which they leave this world? In a few hundred years mankind will wonder how with all the food alternatives at it’s disposal our lot couldn’t give up our beloved meat – but of course they will forget to factor greed into the equation.

And in ‘boat speak’ which will, I’m sure be regarded as many by my own particular brand of  jargon (we all do it ) the ‘monkey island’ is the wheelhouse roof, I know, why didn’t I just say that Well, I was just trying to enlighten some of you After all there are plenty of my readers that live thousands of miles from the sea and monkey islands

Anyway, where was I, oh the satellite terminal is down and it’s friggin snowing outside, not hail but real snow

OK, not a great deal of it and it’s only really lying on the top of Dun Caan but snow nonetheless

The wind had fallen away, so that was something but it had still left in its wake a steady heave from the north that was thrashing the shores of Loch Arnish, and would no doubt be rolling up the ferry slip.

That was about it really, I never even left the boat yesterday choosing a lunchtime nap over a visit to Jessie at School Park or even Willie in the village. It’s 6:30 now the cuckoo is still at that stage where I welcome it’s song the sun is pouring over Creag na Gaoithe onto the Sithean Mor behind our little house http://www.iosea.co.uk/3sarnish.shtml

and I’ve got things to do So I’ll post this from my 3g dongle on the ferry