Surveying the damage :-(

Home at last, in a toasty kitchen having just demolished the best part of a joint of ham some roast potatoes and a tomato salad. A little bizarre I know but it was just what I fancied, all this talk of ready meals and horsemeat making me crave something who’s providence I trusted. One thing about having your dinner wandering around the croft is that, at least you know where it’s come from We don’t eat much in the way of processed stuff anyway, but as soon as all this carry on came to light I instantly thought of several Lidl lasagne’s that we’d consumed of late. Usually when wifey was charging up and down the road to Glasgow, with little time to spare and a mountain of chores to be done before even thinking about dinner.

I remember thinking at the time ‘how can they make something with so much meat in so cheap’ Not that Lidl have found any equine DNA in their products, but it was very tasty One thing for sure, if we do have one in the freezer I won’t be sending it back, seriously, this is no worse than much of the fast food and processed muck that constitutes so many peoples regular diet. Until people are actually prepared to pay for ‘proper food’ then I’m afraid this kind of thing will only become more prevalent as markets expand and processors seek cheaper and cheaper suppliers.

Sat in my ‘rigger boots’

I know, I’ve been a ‘little seldom’ on the posting front of late but to be quite honest I’ve been ‘scunnered’ as my darling wife would say.

A Scots word used to mean that you are world weary, down-trodden, and thoroughly bereft of any lust for life when these words and expressions are simply too inadequate to signify the magnitude of your slide into "shitdom".

A word that I’d never come across until meeting her http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=scunnered it summed my mood up of late perfectly. Not that there was a great deal wrong with any of it, the digs were good, the college course interesting and the people nice enough. In fact more than ‘nice enough’, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of courteous drivers that stopped to let me walk across the road. I even saw a regular citizen picking up litter and was staggered to meet smiling happy shop assistants everywhere. Or at least everywhere I shopped, ate and drank.

 

Not that I drank out much, but when I did it was here in ‘The Steamboat’  http://www.facebook.com/thesteamboat an award winning pub with more beers than I’ve ever seen in my life. Sadly on my last night there I made the fatal mistake of choosing Weston’s Old Rosie 7.3% Scrumpy as my tipple, after my third pint I was a gibbering wreck. You know you’ve had enough when the barmaid serves you a pint of water What an angel she was, it was just enough to water down the last pint and enable me to walk home unaided My compatriots having wisely chosen ‘Doombar’ managed to sink a few more before going out for dinner, me I was in my bed around 19:00 wrecked

However, I’m not a ‘town person’ and with my son sick at home, my new house going up, winter gales at their fiercest and my wife ten miles from the next living person, I was not a ‘happy bunny’.

Anyway, I made it and I’m sat here in my pyjamas drinking Sue’s finest primitivo  from Puglia wearing my size 9 DeWalt rigger boots instead of my UGG slippers

Not that I’m big on labels but I’ve been wearing out a pair of slippers every six months for years until my mum bought me these in Christmas 2011and they still feel like new. So much so that I take them everywhere I go, Holland, South Shields or the Finlaggan, my UGG’s are my favourite indoor footwear   So why am I wearing boots inside the house??? I’m neglecting my slippers because, whilst these boots are the best I’ve ever come across they do take quite a bit of ‘breaking in’ I hate wellies and these babies will cope with all but the deepest of mud without letting water in yet still allow your feet to stay warm and breathe. Not only that but I generally get a year out of them before confining them to lighter duties, far longer than any wellie and about the same price as a reasonable pair, £50 to £70.

Picking up the pieces

After a tortuous journey north I arrived at a chaotic Sconser in plenty of time for the 10:30 ferry having spent the night at my parents on the mainland.

 

There was no sign of the ‘Five sisters of Kintail’ as I left, but traces of the previous weeks storm were everywhere. I’d cleared up a few large broken branches from my mums garden but there were also the remains of building materials on nearby roads and the odd missing roof section from rickety sheds along the way.

The swineherd had already told me of one or two problems at home, a lost satellite signal and moving caravan fixed by Simon of http://www.raasayengineering.co.uk/ but a broken skylight and clunking wind turbine needed dealing with.

There were some big changes at Sconser, our store room demolished and the toilet/waiting room gone  

 

I dunno what that tool is on the end of the big crawler crane but I like it

This will  be our recently re roofed store

 

And this will be the ‘temporary slip’, I’m saying nothing

My journey up Raasay’s spine to Arnish was peppered with the remains of last weeks destruction, recently cut trees, new satellite dishes, lashed down offices at the water treatment works and random bits of plywood and roofing material.

 

The first thing that I noticed at home was this birch tree that had managed to uproot the BT phone line as it went over

Once the homecoming, flowers, hugs and tea were out of the way we all went up to admire the new house

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which, thanks to Lachie, Angus and Donald had come through the storm unscathed.

 

Love the table

Not only was the house coming on fine, so was the ‘dunny’  http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dunny

toilet (Australian slang)

Where’s the dunny located?

Apart from a various bits of wood distributed about the croft and that tree we seemed OK, the Proven is making a noise, which from experience sounds like a broken spring, so not crucial. So my next concern was the caravan at Tarbert, wifey had reported a broken skylight and Simon had tightened up the loose jacks, but when we arrived there it became clear that it had moved a good four feet.

 

Hard to see but it was actually sat on that pad on the top right when I left,

 

not only that but a landslide had happened too in my absence

 

The skylight I managed to cover with a sheet of aluminium after removing its remains, after which the Dude and I went to Torran to check on the properties there.

 

Not all of them were as lucky as us

There was more but it’s almost 22:00 now and I’m wrecked.