Too busy to blog!

As Scott has said, I am indeed fully employed at the moment (it's supposed to be 8 hours a week - but spread somewhat unevenly over the year) as Administrator for Quakers in Scotland, engaging (we Quakers don't go in for fighting!!) with the Filemaker Pro database which contains details of all our members and attenders and from which we publish an annual directory. So just now, not much time for blogging. But since I left you dangling at the end of my last posting, waiting in breathless anticipation to hear how we got on at the Mod.... Well OK, but I just have to say what a brilliant experience it was, and how good it was at my first-ever National Mod to see Islay as a whole do so spectacularly well. Not to mention (as a member of the winning Ladies choir) watching ourselves on the TV. I can't do better than point you to Susan Campbell's excellent account published elsewhere on the web (I'm fifth from the right by the way). We came home somewhat weary after two days and three nights of hard work plus a good deal of celebrating and socialising. A good part of my weariness could be put down to the fact that at 4.00 am on the Saturday I was still participating in a football-pitch-sized Orcadian strip-the-willow in a sports' centre in Grangemouth. Don't ask.... And we were up at 6.30 for the bus back to Islay. I slept from Inveraray to Kennacraig!

So Much for Retirement

Good grief - its 2 months since I updated this blog, though at least Bronwen put something in a few weeks ago. However the weather has turned rather nasty this week - lots of gales and rain, indeed the hail is thumping down as I type, so it must to time to update with what I can remember. One of the main reasons things did not get updated was that the hard drive on our PC went bang - so we've got a new PC, and I bought a new drive for the old one, so I've spent a few weeks restoring stuff and tackling Vista. Luckiliy this co-incided witha week's visit to Glasgow & Edinburgh to sort out Roz & Pam's flats a bit, so I was able to pick up the PC etc when I was over (only my second trip away since we got here).

We have not been idle, even without the PC blowing up - indeed our retirement seems to have come to an end as we both now have part time jobs. I'll let Bronwen explain hers (central administrator for Quakers in Scotland) which seems to largely comprise fighting with a FilemakerPro database. I heard that I'd got mine last night - general secretary to Islay Golf Club. This is basically subscription administration, organising things (but not golf events), and the usual minute taking etc. This of course means that I'll just have to turn out to all the dinners, golf outings to the mainland etc as I am being paid (not a lot) to do so!

As Bronwen mentioned in the last blog, then end of the summer was taken up by festivals. I went to three concerts in the Jazz Festival, the two local ones at Bruichladdich, so that I coudl stagger home, and the lunchtime one at Portnahaven, where is nearly got killed in the rush for the "famous home baking". It was a great weekend, though I did depart the last concert as the amplification was just way over the top (for a trumpet).

A couple of weeks after that was the Small Isles Film Festival where we went to a showing of The Maggie (which was filmed largely on Islay) and to a session showing several small films featuring the island. Some of these have been put up on Youtube, for example Portnahaven in 1948. While you are there look up Donovan singing "Isle of Islay", which he manages to rhyme with "stay" - it is truly terrible (unless you are a Donovan fan I guess).

A week or two after that I was a late substitute for the Machrie Team Challenge which was good fun, although Bronwen had the car on the mainland, so I was dependent on lifts and thus missed the dinners, quizes etc in the evenings, which was probably just as well.

On top of all that the usual round of regular golf, bridge and gardening has continued. We even gave a joint talk to the local church seniors lunch club, which we take my dad to each week, on the Internet for Beginners. It seemed to go quite well. That's all I can recall, except that we've figured out that the pump on our solar panel is driving the water the wrong way round the system, so we are not getting the real efficiency from it. Now we're just waiting on the plumber to turn up and fix it.

Autumn arrives

Six months to the day since we moved in and the sounds have changed. The chattering swallows and martins have all departed on their long journeys south, the lambs have mostly gone to market, along with quite a number of sheep, and instead intermittent honking from above tells us that the geese are arriving. And a couple of times now we have heard the distant roar of a rutting stag. Autumn is here! Today, after two wet and windy days and with two similar ones in prospect, we had blue skies and a warm, gentle breeze, and Bron got all the spring bulbs in (thanks Robin and Susie!!). And then we took Jim down to Port Wemyss and tested his smart new wheelchair (with pneumatic tyres) by pushing him round the Rathas nan Iasgairean and to Portnahaven for a cuppa and scone at the pub. We could see the seals hauled out on Orsay - there's no sign of any pups yet, but that won't be long.

Summer may be over (last time we posted to this blog, six weeks ago, we were swimming in the sea at Port Ban - don't think we'll be doing that again till next year!) but the golf hasn't stopped. Scott is gearing up for a full weekend of it - the team championship - and shows no sign of slowing down for the winter. Meanwhile there are whist drives, the Small Isles Film Festival has just happened - a whole weekend of Screen Machine parked up at the Gaelic College and some excellent showings of new and archive films about Islay, plus The Maggie, which was filmed in Islay in 1954 - and Bron has joined the Feis Committee. Not quite sure whether that was a good idea - watch this space!

And next Wednesday Coisir Ghaidhlig Ile (the Islay Gaelic Choir) is off to Falkirk for the National Mod. Three nights in sunny Cumbernauld! Seriously, I'm really looking forward to my first National Mod - news of how we get on in the next posting.

Visitors, Islay Show & Bronwen's Brithday

The photo shows the local community garden where we try to buy all our vegetables.


Been a while since I updated this - been busy with golf and visitors. The golf was the Kildalton Cross, which is the major event for members here. It comprises two medal qualifying rounds, on the Monday and Tuesday and then the top 32 play matchplay for the cross, the next 32 play for the plate or you can opt for the seniors competition of you are over 55. The matchplay takes the form of two rounds on the Wednesday, quarter and semi finals on the Thursday and 36 hole final on the Friday, so you have to be very fit to win the thing.

Needless to say I did not qualify for the Cross (starting 4,8,5,9 is not good) and ended up playing in the seniors, getting knocked out in the first round, by the guy who finished as runner up. The next week was taken up by Bronwen's brother and sister and their partners spending a few days with us, which upped the alcohol intake slightly. It also co-incided with some weather good enough for Bronwen (and later the others) going for a swim at Port Ban - our nearest beach. The Thursday, apart from being Bronwen's birthday, (photo shows evening meal) was Islay Show, when the whole island seems to shut down and you meet everyone you know at the show ground. I had expected to just spend a couple of hours there but we arrived about midday and did not leave until after 4. The highlight was making your own smoothie by cycling hard to generate the electricity (the co=op guy in the photo is Charles, who is the co-op manager and also happens to be the new golf club captain for 08/09).





Since then I've been to Foreland House gardens to buy some hedging plants - escalonia and fuchia, which has meant digging up a borders to put them in - not easy at all. I've also done a stint at the community garden - (photo at top of blog) on the one wet day we've had this week (until this afternoon - its raining now, show for the Open Day at the airport). Its been pouring all over Scotland, but not here. I also ordered a load of logs - not being sure just how many were in a "load" and the photo shows the result - took me a couple of hours to stack it all in the garage.

That's all for now - Bronwen is away for a week's hill walking on Wednesday, having been all this week at a Gaelic course along with a friend of Pams who has been staying with us.

Fenced in at last

Major progress on the house with the last of the really major items now complete - the fence round the garden. This was put up by a gang of guys in just a few days - all done manually. They even rebuilt the fence round the vegetable patch and put a gate into it to save me climbing in each time - and moved it slightly to accommodate the polytunnel. We also now have a proper farm gate to hang the house name plate on. The first photo shows the sheep trying to figure out why they can no longer reach the house and the second is the gate with the newly reconstructed vegetable patch fence in the background.

With all the bills now in the total build cost is just over £200K which does not seem unreasonable to me for what we have ended up with. We have now prepared half of the patch which will be as close as we'll get to "lawn" and I hope to seed it whenever today's rain stops - yet again we've had a very dry spell, so the ground has been really hard. We can also start to plant hedging etc to make the place look a little less bare.

The past two week's have seen a gap in activities, before my golfing week and Bron's brother and sister arriving, so we've had a sort of internal holiday, doing things we've not yet got around to. First up was a trip to Jura with Pam, who was over for 10 days, partly with us and partly camping on Islay and Jura, and Roz, who came for a long weekend. The photo shows us all having lunch in the sunshine at the Jura hotel. Unfortunately the Jura House gardens were not friendly enough for dad's wheelchair, but we sat on the beach until the rain finally arrived.

Bronwen and I have done a couple of walks and a very long bike ride. One walk was along the Sound of Islay to a bothy (in photo) on a very hot but quite misty day. We could not find the return path "just behind the bothy" as the bracken was above head height. Bronwen was unlucky in that she seemed to pick up a couple of ticks - we are now expert at removing them, in fact the surgery sells a small kit for doing so. Finally a photo of Pam paddling in a frisky sea at Lossit Bay on the west coast of Islay - quite near where the experimental wave power generator is located - you may have seen if being officially connected to the grid on TV. You can see why they put it there!

Gridlock on Islay

Been a while since I posted - been waiting for a wet day with nothing else to do - and there hasn't been one yet, so I'm watching the golf and updating this.

One of the highlights of the last couple of weeks was the visit of the "Liberty Belle" - one of the few remaining B-17 Flying Fortress bombers from WW2. This was organised by Bruno Schroder (of the bank of that name) who owns one of the large estates here and happens to be friendly with the B-17's owner. He even organised a prize draw for a flight in it (I was not successful!). The horrendous costs of bringing the plane over from the states ($120K in fuel alone) means that this will probably be its last visit to the UK, and Islay was one of its few ports of call - and the only one where a trip was possible. Amazingly small and very noisy I'm told. On the way back we met an accident at a narrow bridge (someone rushing to catch the ferry I believe) and got diverted onto the single track road by the bird reserve - unfortunately the traffic coming the other way was diverted to that road as well, which resulted in total gridlock as all the passing places filled up . We had to get out and direct 4 wheel drive cards into fields etc to create enough capacity to get things moving again.

Another highlight was a home visit from Bronwen's Gaelic singing class, (see last blog) including the tutor Ishbel MacAskill, who were out and about and came in for a cup of tea and to sing to myself and my dad - though I had been at the concert the night before.

On the house front, the fencing man has turned up for a look and to figure out what materials are required - he claims he will be back next week, but that could be an Islay week. This also forced me to actually measure the boundaries again and I'm now quite close to the measurement on the deeds, so that should do - its more difficult than you think when there is no fixed starting point at all. Otherwise the builder has sheepishly confessed to leaving out the costs of the bathroom fittings, which I told him he'd missed, but he insisted were included, so a slight increase on the costs. No bill as yet for the house painting and I'm still chasing the electrician for the remaining missing heater for the bathroom. The polytunnel has arrived but I'm waiting for the fence to go up before I decide its final position.

We are also having fun with the VAT man, trying to claim back the VAT we've paid out on the house kit and other stuff. They only had two queries - first demanding our bank details to pay the loot into, despite the guff saying they'd send a cheque - and indeed nowhere on the form to tell them the bank details. The only other query is they want to know how much was for the house and how much for the garage - goodness knows why.

Otherwise life continues at a relaxed pace. I am now officially on the Bridge Club committee and am getting dangerously close to the golf club one. We had our neighbours Jackie & Dougie round a few nights ago and had an impromptu bit of fiddling (Jackie being a very good fiddler indeed).

What Bron's been doing

There's been a theme running through my 3 months on the island. Though I 've done a good bit of digging in the garden, climbed a few hills (see a couple of posts ago) and done the usual domestic things, the rest has been virtually wall-to-wall music. Won't my big sis be proud of me! The past two weeks has been no exception. First there were 3 days of fiddle-playing at Ionad Chaluim Chille Ile - the Gaelic college - taught by a young and brilliant neighbour here at Conisby. Very inspiring, but I do need to practice! Then I went off to Glasgow for a few days with Roz for the wedding of a couple of young friends. Then back home and into 5 days, again at ICCI, of Gaelic song with Ishbel Macaskill. Huge fun, and I've gathered a number of new songs to learn and had a tremendous week. I do seem to have spent an awful lot of time memorising song lyrics since I arrived, but I'm sure it's all a good Alzheimer's preventative.

So I've no idea what Scott's been up to and will be interested to read his next posting! We seem to have a few clear weeks coming up now, before the next visitors arrive, so we plan to spend some of it together exploring a bit more of "our" island. Can't do much more in the garden until the fencing arrives. Yes... we still have a patio full of sheep!