9:50AM, exactly an hour after the autumnal equinox and I manged to stay in bed until 6:00, well almost, but that wasn’t too hard cos it was pitch black outside. Half an hour later it was light enough to sit by an open window watching ‘the world go by’ which in my case was a wren hopping about looking for breakfast. Sadly it was way to dark to get a picture of the wren or solitary hind munching away at the heather nearby.
Dark it may have been but cold it was not, with no sign of the autumn ‘nip’ usually associated with this time of year. The ‘first frost’ when it does arrive will come as a bit of a shock methinks. Time to re bury the water supply to the house, check the antifreeze on ‘the fleet’ dig out all the torches 
Soon the stags will be roaring and last night I saw my first woodcock which came as a bit of a surprise, they don’t usually make an appearance until after the equinox. One or two at first then a huge wave arrives along with the first full moon after it.
The ‘cursed’ sheets
Well, it’ll be 10:30 now, the pigs and hens let out, the Disco and caravan washed and me just finished breakfast, probably my first one This muesli, fruit and yoghurt lark may be tasty, it may even be healthy but it certainly does not ‘keep me going’ 
Nah, another couple of hours outside and I’ll ravenous. Sure enough, come midday, after longer than I’d imagined, I was boodly starving, having spent the morning moving corrugated iron sheets and fitting some of them as windbreaks on a fence.
18:00
Now any sane person would have said no, one look at the pile of rusting corrugated iron sheets, by a rational being, would have said NO. Not ‘yours truly’ right enough, nope, when Norman Gillies asked me if I wanted them I should have run a mile and let him put them in a skip. The thing is, I have made some fine sheds, shelters, hen houses and pig arcs out of what looks at first sight like scrap sheeting. So, like a pure eejit I ‘bit his hand off’ took me 2 ton trailer down to the Alamo and got them loaded on with a telehandler. Corrugated iron sheets are deceptively heavy I remember 25 years or more back collecting a whole pile of new 7’ sheets with a small Peugeot van and putting them on the roof rack. I dunno how many there were but by the time I had finished loading, there was in effect a 3’ 6” x 7’ sheet of solid steel around an 1” thick on the roof There were even more of these and they were 10’ or 3m long, I reckoned almost a ton.
Well it went badly from the start, they were gonna take up a lot of room so I figured I would put them out of the way near where I’d be likely to use them.
I should have known better than to try and get up that hill with the best part of 2 tons hanging off the back of the Disco. The ‘Traction Control’ and ‘Hill Decent Control’ failed to ‘save my arse’ Down in came, almost knocking my wall down and loosing my sheets in the process.
The neighbours pigs were well amused, Calum the digger saved the day and the only damage was a few trenches in the road. So much for the early finish on Tuesday, by the time I’d sorted it all out the best part of two hours had passed.
So, after this morning’s breakfast, which included raspberries from the garden along with grapes and banana in the ‘rabbit food’ I got on with sorting those pesky sheets and fastening some to various bits of fence.
The hens were also amused These two enclosures were never intended for pigs and already Snowy has burrowed her way out to the left of the ark whilst I was at work. I had repaired the fence but putting the tin sheets along too will ensure no repeat episode. I’ll be going to dry dock shortly and leaving house in the capable hands of MiL, she’s a great ‘pig and hen sitter’ but I’m not too sure on her fencing skills
That’s better, a stack worthy of anyone with OCD
Sweltering
It was boodly hot doing all that, especially wearing overalls, gloves and face mask for cutting the sheets so I had me a second shower and ditched all my clothes into the washing machine before heading out for a dive. At least that’s what I thought I was gonna do.
We headed up to Eilean Tighe but it became increasing clear that ‘wee dug’ was not going to let me get out of the boat. Boodly dug, the boat is like the car, she’s desperate to get in it then whines all the time she’s in, trying get out Well, in the car she cannae but I’d visions of arriving back at boat after a half hour dip to find it dogless In a rare ‘sensible moment’ I opted to ‘skip my dip’ and break out the mackerel feathers in Kyle Rona to ‘try my hand’. Sure there were plenty of saithe and small rock cod but after half an hour or so of throwing back tiddlers I gave up. I guess there would have been more than enough for fish cakes but it would have been an awful faff and most of them were only lightly hooked in the mouth so went back quite happy. Not that I know what a happy fish looks like but I’m sure they’d have been less happy in a fish cake
This will be the Fraoch Eilean (left) which means Heather Isle and is a lot easier to say and spell Centre and right we have Eilean Tighe (House Island) on the right is the byre belonging to the only ‘house’ there.
And there is the gable of said house just visible.
The wee dug was so happy to get back on dry land.
Aye, Molly was happier once we got home and started working on the car
All in all, not a bad equinox really
