An extra hour in bed :-(

British Summertime is over, CalMac have finished the ‘Summer Timetable’ and the first snow has fallen on the Storr, winter really is here. Sure there are still plenty of trees clinging onto their leaves but each icy blast of wind deposits yet more of them onto the ground to block drains and make natures compost. After a couple of reasonable night’s sleep I’m once more up at ‘stupid o clock’ only this morning it’s an hour more stupid I say it every year but I hate all this fecking around with clocks, am I the only human who’s life is turned upside down by it? Do other folk actually manage an ‘extra hour in bed’ ?

I mean what is the point, if it’s cos school children have to go to school in the dark then leave the feckin clocks on GMT all year. After all that is the ‘proper time’ and more or less UTC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time . Personally I prefer the lighter evenings of BST but I’d happily forgo the great pleasure I get in March from ‘springing forward’ just to be done with this whole clock moving carp.

I wonder how many people will miss a ferry or bus today or how many seasoned sailors will make a complete f**k up of the tide tables I know I did, every year for eighteen or so I forgot to add or subtract an hour at least once, leaving me ‘high and dry’ in the boat or missing ‘slack water’ under it The pigs, dug and hens don’t move their clocks so why the feck do we???? 4:53 GMT now, tis ‘black as the fire back’ outside and so far the only advantage I can think of is that the BBC World Service is now informing me of the ‘correct time’ along with chaos in Chile, basket ball in China, ‘special school’ abuse in Nigeria and that buffoon in the White House’s latest incomprehensible Tweet.

What will I do now?

Well, that’s it, it’s 5:00am which is really 6:00am and I don’t actually have a clear plan for the day,

it’s looking like a good one ahead so I reckon the first task will be finishing off the generator exhaust at Torran.

Boodly clocks

Half past boodly six in the evening now and I’m ready for me bed!!!! Well, I’m not gonna do it, I’m gonna grit my teeth, grip my pint of water, have a big swig (not through gritted teeth obviously) and ‘man up’. The day never turned into the ‘wall to wall’ sunshine that XC promised but it wasn’t a bad day with just the faintest of showers and none of them needing a jacket or wet enough to produce a meaningful rainbow.

 

First thing I did until it was daylight was tinker about with my ‘Mickey Mouse’ MIG welder that was having trouble with its wire feed. I got it from Screwfix when my Land Rover needed its first dose of welding, which wouldn’t have been that long after I bought it 18 or 19 years ago. To be fair the Ferm 150/1 is hardly a serious welder and it has done all I’ve asked of it but I got sick of buying those disposable CO2 and Argo shield bottles at around a tenner each so got a proper cylinder some time ago. Trouble is I only seem to use it at MOT times so it gets a little neglected. Methinks rusty wire and a dicky trigger switch were at the root of my problem, running a few meters of wire out and some WD40 in the trigger seemed to sort it.

Back to ‘Mr Lister’

With that going well, the sun risen, pigs fed and muesli demolished I headed for Torran, having first loaded the quad with tools and a wee dug.

I finished off the exhaust with some plywood and a piece of steel fitted snugly round the pipe so as it wouldn’t heat up the wood. Then I set about doing the valve clearances (tappets), fuel and air filter whilst cold before getting it good and hot to test out my exhaust and then change the oil. A trip home for ‘second breakfast’ of fried PEK, eggs and tomatoes and some Hylomar http://hylomar.com/ for the Lister rocker covers in-between. By gum, I did enjoy that fried PEK  https://groceries.morrisons.com/search?entry=pek Cheers for that San and I still have another tin  

Where was I ???

  

The settings are around 6 thou cold, Lister’s spec is .006 feeler blade will pass through but .008 will not so I spose you could call it .007 Either way it’s not crucial and when I was at college a teacher once told me ‘a noisy tappet is a happy tappet’

Unbelievably that took me most of the day, after which I went to do a little remedial work on my neighbours drive.

  

Getting so carried away that I forgot to take any pictures afterwards

so here’s one before I started

There wasn’t much more to it really, well apart from fitting yet another starter button to the dumper. This time a dedicated 50A one and not a Chinese horn button  

The north wind creating a swell that was breaking over a reef south of Grian a Sgeir, it’s not often you actually see that

This windswept birch finally shed it’s last leaves today, who could blame it, perched high above Sonas with nothing betwixt it and Lewis. The bitter and dense northerly responsible also saw my wind turbines producing around 100kWh.

Golly gosh, it’s almost 19:30 and I’m still awake!!!!

All ‘tanked up’ :-)

Looks like a damp day of westerly winds ahead with perhaps a little sunshine. Sounds OK but I’m just back in from collecting me camera out of the car and I’m not inspired Nope, it’s boodly cold out there and that rain, not that there is much of it, feels boodly freezing. As with yesterday I had yet another great sleep, well apart from the SAS wannabes ‘yomping’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yomp about the car park at 11:30 Wee dug woke me up and I was confronted by lots of lights and car headlights milling about on the car park. No big deal seeing lights or cars at night you may think, well it is here. Barring the snow plough I don’t think I’ve seen any in thirty years Last I saw of the ‘SAS’ they were charging down the road in full packs heading south. Me, I just went back to me cosy bed and thought of the poor chaps and chapesses going up the hill at the other side. I once walked up it carrying a load and it nearly killed me

First snow

Well, that was a surprise when dawn broke, the first snow of the winter and it was boodly cold outside, perfect for sitting in a nice warm car for an hour and going to collect my bowser of diesel which had finally been filled.

  

As I headed south the Storr was replaced by Ben Tianavaig, it’s ‘Golden Cliff’, the Cuilin and some ‘Bolshy’ rams massing at the cattle grid by the Youth Hostel. No doubt desperate to get at the ewes that would soon be ‘in heat’.

 

It took me quite a while to get by the horny sheep and I made a mental note to take the ‘Low Road’ until they were ‘let out’ in the first week of December.

   

The ‘SAS’ were obviously ‘yomping’ to catch the 8:55 ferry, well at least they would all fit on it now our trusty Hallaig

 

was at last back home Me, I hitched up my trailer and headed back north, slowly, the day was getting better by the minute.

 

After Brochel I engaged low ratio and let the ‘Traction Control’ do it’s stuff.

 

With such a heavy load I’d normally stop half way up the drive to Sonas where the drive isn’t quite so steep so as to avoid wheelspin but the ‘TC’ dealt with it nicely without leaving trenches in my drive. I even let ‘wee dug’ into the front of the Disco, she was most impressed, like me, I think she hates that ‘privacy glass’ in the back where her cage is. Privacy glass, along with electronic hand brakes, radios without knobs, altering the clocks and Donald Trump added to the long list of things the world would be better off without in my humble opinion of course

Good for another year

So, after the muesli I got on with pumping the 1000lts of Vimto into my oil tanks, which is the sum total (much less actually) than what I have used in a year. That will be for the generator, digger, dumper, builders at Brochel and Torran Schoolhouse too. I say ‘much less’ cos I thought my tank on the container roof was empty, when I came to actually fill it there was still 400lts in it!!!!!! Camilli the clown has been using white diesel in his plant for over a week cos someone had turned off both taps at the bottom of the tank and he hadn’t the sense to check!!!!! Still, on the upside that means I used far less red diesel than I thought

  

With both tanks now full and 40lts left over I went for a proper ‘second breakfast’ then started back on my road/pipe burial project.

  

With help of course, May is on heat and acting a little strange had to push her out of the way with the bucket

Well, there was more,

 

like abandoned boats and trailers eight miles apart and no where near the sea!!! It just has to be ‘SAS’ related However, my first job is to go and recover a vehicle that’s come off the road round at my neighbours house, I wonder if that is ‘SAS’ related