7. Its a long one.

From: Stokes, Fiona.
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2007 08:03 PM
FWD: Its a long one.
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Hello again from the Isle of Lewis!

How are you? Well, I hope, is it October already?? That must mean summer is properly over now, it suddenly seems late in the year – not long before Austin goes off to pre-school in January – yikes! Lots has happened since I last wrote one of these, me and Mark have both managed to get a few days away from the kids (though unfortunately away from each other too!) Mark went mountaineering in Skye, and I went to darling Cath & Anthonys ‘wedding weekender’ in Cornwall. But we’re about to embark on a family holiday altogether in a couple of weeks to visit the mainland for a whistlestop tour – Austin and Mo on a plane for the first time – very excited, but very aware it could be a nightmare!!

Enjoying a great wedding, perhaps a little too much...

Anyway – the roundup …

Firstly – Facebook.

In some ways I wish I’d never looked at this website, because now I have I’m completely addicted (thanks Cath for that one!). It is such a phenomenal way to waste perfectly good time, but I can’t help myself. (Thank God I don’t work in an office anymore..) For anyone who doesn’t know about it, it allows you to post various newsey things about what you’ve been doing on your own webpage, and put large amounts of photos on for free. Then you invite everyone you know by email to join facebook and create their own ‘profile’. The website will give you a run down of everyones news, new photos and who has just joined. So you end up getting in touch with people you haven’t seen for years, people you’re rubbish at keeping in touch with and generally chatting away happily while wasting evening after evening when you could be watching a perfectly good telly programme! Its great, and as Mark and I cant find anything worth watching on telly nowadays anyway (is it just me or is the news clinically depressing all the time?), we spend our time sorting out old and new photos and browsing other peoples histories instead. So if you want to keep in touch minute by minute with how we are (Mark is wishing he’d tidied his van up today, Fiona is still hearing piping music in her head from the celidh last night) or just look at some photos here is a link

Marks epic mountaineering on Skye with the CUMS in August http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4250&id=559722923&op=6

Pics of the kids and home http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9986&id=731090754

Perfect place to try canoeing

Kids in Kayaks with Otters

I managed to get out on the water one evening recently and chatted with a couple on their yacht moored further up the loch, who had just sailed down from Norway and Sweden and were on their way back to Dublin. That was cool. But I have to admit it’s been mainly our neighbours kids who have made best use of the kayaks this summer. Madeline (15) often rings up and asks if they can go out, so we lend them the life vests from the shed, and they help themselves to the boats and paddles at the bottom of the garden. The other night they came back, soaked from a water fight as usual, but telling us how some otters had come to play with them, swimming alongside the canoes. We often get a seal in the loch, but I’m looking forward to seeing some otters now – those big whiskers and sharp teeth – what handsome fellas!

Duckwatch

Our neighbour bought 4 ducks recently, which escaped and now live down at the river, 2 at the bottom of our garden and 2 further up. As they arrived about the same time as Alistair and Jenny visited, we have named the ducks after them and love to go and feed them and watch them waddling around (the ducks….) A great sound to add to my list of favourite things is the sound of webbed feet slapping along the tarmac road to chase a bit of bread. Funnily enough they have grown a lot thanks to our bread crusts, and next doors ‘stale biscuits’! A few people have their eyes on them for the Christmas table though….

webbed feet slapping the tarmac

MJS Property Services (we have cards you know www.vistaprint.com very cheap…!)

We think we have worked out what happened to the last plumber in south lochs – he must have died from exhaustion! Mark is very busy plumbing in stoves, fixing leaks, plastering new builds, 1^st fitting in renovations and putting in the odd bathroom or shower room.
We had a nasty experience with a customer who couldn’t pay, so have lost a bit of our own money on materials bought up front, but they seem to be trying to put things right with Mark and the other contractors that they can’t afford to pay. Mark dealt with the situation the friendly way, by working out a monthly payment plan that they agreed they could afford and giving them time to look into alternative loans. The contractors who built the road up to the house, said they would park a digger across their gate unless they paid and told them their house was haunted! (We have now had a hefty lump sum as part payment, I’m not sure if the drive people have been paid yet…)

A little party for Mo's 1st birthday

Birthdays

Morris had his first birthday in June – we had a little party with Nick (2 months younger) and Finley (a year between Austin and Morris) and it was 2 hours of noise and chaos even at that age. We have since been to an 8 year old's party on the hill opposite and had a startling vision of what is to come…..

Austin turned 3 in September and enjoyed a trip to the toyshop in Stornoway where he fell reverently silent in the aisle of large dumper truck / digger / tractor type things. After a starry eyed few minutes he focussed on a bright orange bin lorry complete with 2 wheelie bins and the choice was made. It is still his favourite toy a month later only now he uses it less to scoop rubbish into the back, and more as a ride on toy to skid around the downstairs hot on my heels whenever I go.

Accidents

Ooh, ouch. Yesterday Morris dropped a tin of beans on Austin’s big toe and the nail has gone completely black. Lots of tears for a while there, but a bit of magic calpol calmed him down and he’s learning to be careful not to knock it whilst riding his bin lorry!

Mark on the other hand has too many ouches to mention, except for his broken jaw! He was smacked in the face by the handle of a stuck hammer drill, which split his bottom lip and gave his jaw an almighty whack, but he took it on the chin – ha ha !! :o/ Dr Lizzy at Gravir surgery gave her usual non-phased diagnosis, she shon a torch around and prodded him a bit but said that so long as he was talking he hadn’t broken it. Mark is not so sure though as he says it still bl***y hurts a week later.

The 6 million dollar van had some extensive work to get it through its MOT (we’ve only had it a few months) and then again when the clutch went. It finally had a nasty turn…into the ditch next to the house. Mark rang Iain and Richard who obliged with winching duties and it only took them 5 hours to get it safely back on the road undamaged (I think Mark is missing his off-roading weekends and quite enjoyed the morning in a funny way!)

The Gaelic (you MUST pronounce it GALLIC, not Gaylick…)

I have been trying to learn the native language again, this week with a 4 week course taught by the retired primary school teacher Christina – a lovely lady who has a career of patience behind her and a lot of stories to tell. It has been brilliant, and I really feel I’ve learnt much more this time (7 weeks previously with the course designer who was a promoter rather than a teacher). I obviously still find it hard to follow fluent spoken gaelic, but I can at least now politely ask people how they are, or introduce myself a bit. The library in Stornoway has a big gaelic section with lots of kids books. Austin enjoys the adventures of Peasan, a cheeky lamb, and his friends on the farm, Morris likes Where is Spot, or ‘Caite Bheil Spot’ and I like the Calum Clacha videos – this is Bob the Builder dubbed into Gaelic only Bob is now called Calum and has ginger hair..?

Buying somewhere to live and work

We have a semi-should-be-okay-not-really-sure-how-definite-but-could-be-fine-knowing-the-way-people-are-up-here agreement to buy a croft in nearby Cearsiadar. Its got plenty of room, some old sheds, a bit of bog, a steep hill, a windy plateau and a crackin’ view for a new build. But there is a lot of stuff to sort out legally as the sale depends on 2 other buyers also. Sounds like a nightmare? Yeah, but as I say it really is a great spot… will keep you posted – wish us luck!

could this be it...?

In the garden

Austin and Mo have been helping me harvest compost over the last couple of weeks. We are mulching the veg beds with seaweed taken from the loch, and digging in horse poo to where potatoes will go next year.  Handily Gravir has a couple of ponies that graze in different fields, so me and the boys had an exciting afternoon walking up and down the road with buckets full of horse poo, after Austin had run around the field shouting ‘there’s a good one Mummy!’. And to think half a tonne of muck would cost £40 down at the alotment!

The vegetable garden had mixed results this year, mostly due to Morris not being steady enough on his feet to toddle in the garden and being young enough to want to put everything around him in his mouth (thank fully he’d passed that phase by the time we harvested the horse poo!). But I managed to unearth a couple of old lazy beds – these are strips of land that are raised so that the rain runs off the peat and the drainage is better. And I made some terracing on the steep garden which was good for some onions.

Not many people grow their own up here, mainly the older folk, but I managed to swap a few seedlings and sets with a few of the girls and we each had a mixed crop. I grew good old faithful courgettes which were covered while they were little to protect them from any wind, but when they got too big for my home made cloches (old bed frames covered in polythene) they managed ok outside and produced some delicious courgettes. In another lazy bed I tried some butternut squash but I put them in late and even with a cloche on, they didn’t do too much. I did have one grow (about 4 inches long!) so I know they will work and will just start earlier next year. A neighbour took some plantlets to try in his polytunnel and they did much better. I bumped into him at the Lochs show and he was chuffed to have just won a prize in the veg class for his potatoes and carrots – he asked whether I had entered anything this year, which of course I hadn’t, but it has given me ideas….

Otherwise we had lettuce, the onions and a couple of potato plants planted in old coal sacks which worked well (thanks Amanda for that idea). I really missed not having any beetroot this year, and again I was too late with the tomato plants so didn’t even make green tomatoes for chutney :o(

The big thing in the garden however was the rhubarb – the house has an old fruit garden with blackcurrant bushes, wild raspberries and a massive rhubarb patch, so after a grand harvest at the beginning of the summer Mark managed to make about 60 bottles of rhubarb wine! It has such a lovely pink colour, a ‘blush’, and a very light taste not at all bitter as you might expect. As far as strawberries go however, I kept the plants mainly for runners this year – we did get strawberries but as they weren’t netted most of them got nibbled by the birds. Mark has a vat of strawberry wine fermenting in the lounge near the nice warm stove, but they all came from the Co-op!

And finally, the weather

It’s autumn, but with a sunny day yesterday where the thermometer on the windowsill measured 35C, the Hebrides climate again surprises. I guess everyone in the UK had a crappy summer, but I’m told Lewis was let off easy in one way this year – or should that be in a million little bitey ways…. The midges have apparently been late and not so bad this year. I hadn’t been to the west coast of Scotland in the summer months before, so had never really encountered a swarm of them – but one morning here I looked out of the window and it looked like a blizzard – billions of them. They have reminded me of the film ‘28 days later’, where zombies eager to consume human blood mill around buzzing and groaning until fresh meat is spotted and suddenly they attack the victim. A simple trip to the recycling bin outside can quickly turn into a flappy sprint, yet looking out of the window it looked like it would be safe…. I bought Mark and I midge net hats – very fetching they aren’t, but they work well teamed with a polo-neck and some gloves! Not all was lost for summer playing however, as the wind here picks up by lunchtime and midges can’t fly in the wind so they retreat to the ground.

(If you’re going to come and visit the best time is April/May or September onwards to be sure. Well done to Jim, Alistair & Jenny, Dave and Charlie for braving the tricky season, so good to see you!)

We have been preparing for winter though, mostly with the purchase of a chest freezer, and a tonne of coal. Mark has moved the stove from the kitchen into the lounge now, which is a useable room no longer stuffed full of moving boxes, so we have that heating the radiators and water. Our previous landlord from the holiday house, has offered us free firewood so Mark spent a lot of July chain-sawing down fallen trees until his chainsaw broke – typical! – and thanks to the tonne of coal we might even manage to season the wood for next year now!

So I’d better stop rambling on (though I have managed to ramble up onto the hilltops opposite and found some old peat roads unused for about a 100 years, very exciting - and the views….!)

No, must stop now!

Keep in touch

With love

Fiona, Mark, Austin & Morris