Concrete here we come :-)

Been a while hey, truth is I’ve just not been enthused enough to put ‘pen to paper so to speak. Sure I’ve been busy and much has happened, not that I can actually remember what but in reality it’s been no more than usual. Anyway, thought it was about time I ‘got back on the case’ so to speak. I am halfway through my ‘off shift’ and haven’t really got a great deal done yet. It’s been one of those weeks that you get when your getting on in years, weeks when you waste half the day on visiting doctors, opticians, dentists, solicitors and the vet. I kid you not, I’ve spent almost as much time on the ferry travelling to Skye and back as if I was working on it

The weekend was quite productive right enough, managed some serious work up in the hen and wind turbine fields in preparation for the impending arrival of piglets. It’s been many a year since we had any of those born on Raasay for sure

 

The two pig arcs had to be collected from Tarbert and Arnish and carried to their new homes on the croft, an area I’d previously prepped with Calum the Kubota.

  

The flooring needed repairing with larch boards cut by Callum at the Raasay Sawmill. Actually that’s my next task, to go out and finish one of them. The main job today is concreting down at the slipway but it’s high tide just now and I’ll not be able to start pouring until 11:00ish.

  

Was down there yesterday drilling and pinning the bedrock with galvanized bolts and rebar until the tide caught me out around 17:00.

 

Bugger, now it’s daylight it looks there’s too much motion for concreting below the high water mark Was hoping the good blast of south wind we’d had through the night would nock the stuffing out of it. Judging by all that white fluffy stuff around Grian a Sgier, it’s not happened, still, I can bond all those bolts and rebar into position with Hilti resin and make up some shuttering, meanwhile I’ll bash on with my pig arc flooring.

So what’s been happening this last month?

Well someone who shall remain nameless fastened their jet ski to a ring on the pier when the tide was coming in Had we not phone them from the ferry methinks it would have been an insurance claim

Ode To A Jet-Ski Person

Jet-ski person, selfish fink,
May your silly jet-ski sink,
May you hit a pile of rocks,
Oh Hoonish, summer, coastal pox.

Noisy, smoking, dickhead fool
On your loathsome leisure tool,
Give us all a jolly lark
And sink beside a hungry shark.

Scream as in its fangs you go,
Your last attention-seeking show,
While on the beach we all join in
With ‘Three cheers for the dorsal fin!’

– Michael Leunig –

Whenever I see a jet ski I just can’t help thinking of Australian poet Michael Leunig’s amusing ditty though I’m sure not all jet skiers are ‘dickhead fools’

The slipway got an unofficial testing and we launched and recovered a Pioner Maxi with the Subaru

My son and I did some more salvage work on anchors and moorings.

   

And of course Norman and Iona got married and what a good bash that was. The bride arrived in a six ton dumper and the bridesmaids in the back of a ‘red neck hillbilly pickup’ awesome. https://www.facebook.com/IsleOfRaasay/videos/340870446658032/

  Gotta go, see you later.