Week 8 - What’s on the slab?

A lot can happen in a week, and certainly this week has been more productive than last. We have a huge handwritten list stuck to the wall in the static in addition to a spreadsheet on Keith's computer, and we are slowly ticking things off. Keith is concerned about our pace as he is struggling to figure out how long the house foundations will take us. The slab for the shed had taken far longer than he thought it would. As it is mostly just us doing everything, we might have to rethink the plan for the house kit to be delivered in July. We shall see.

The weather has been a bit mixed this week, just like the rest of the UK, with the general theme being very low temperatures and cold winds! Thankfully there has also been a good dose of sunshine which helps. I’m slightly ashamed to admit it but we’ve been fair weather builders this week, avoiding going out in the worst of it.

The highlight is that we have finally finished the concrete slab for the shed! Yay! Whilst it has taken us a lot longer than professional builders, and still looks a bit like a concrete patchwork, we are chuffed that we have done it. We lost a week waiting for a delivery of ballast but this arrived last Saturday. I’m sure it will look great with a bit of sanding and a coat of garage floor paint. Keith carefully removed all the wooden forms, trying not to damage the sides and seems to have managed that. He was very anxious when we measured our creation … the critical dimension is the diagonal - you can easily end up building a rhombus instead of a rectangle … all the sides are the right length but your shed steel will not work! Phew!!!! 11 meters 66 cms … bang on! There are no hand or paw prints but I did embed a cowrie shell in it which you’ll have to try to find if you visit us.

Ben is now back with us for at least 2 days each week which is a godsend. He strimmed all the reeds down this week and we can actually see the full contours of the entire plot.

After the terrible fire last week Keith wants us to have a bigger fire pond - he might even stock it with a few trout! Any excuse for more time in the High Castle me thinks!

Since the “COVID relaxation of travel rules” there seem to be more people on the island and occasionally we are having to share our showers at the village hall! Up to now we have had them to ourselves. We could shower in the caravan (if water supplies allow) but we are using it as a drying area for our work clothes and wellies at the moment. It’s also nice to pop down to An Cridhe (village hall) at the end of the working day.

Our pals Lucy and John have been on the island all week, surveying the work on their house at Hyne, which is on the other side of the island. Their project has suffered delays due to covid, but they are now at the stage of installing the internals/flooring etc etc - which is what I cant wait for. I know I will find it far easier to decide on what colour to paint the walls and where to put the lights rather than current decisions which include which sewage treatment system to buy etc etc! Poor Keith is ending up doing all the technical research and procurement of “stuff” … he is really good at it but it does frustrate him as there are a lot of decisions to make. I also managed to get a swim with Lucy at Hyne, and stayed in for 5minutes 46 seconds, a personal best. I have to say I’m still loving it.

The other big event of the week was the delivery of nearly all the components for our shed. It arrived on the “big lorry” which Andy tried to reverse up our track but ended up digging a huge hole with one skidding wheel. Apparently the big lorry, although lighter than the other one, doesnt have a “diff lock” so it can’t get up the steep section of our track.

Yours truly was sent to make emergency repairs…

We also had another 20 tonnes of aggregate delivered which we are going to use to install field drains all over the place, and means we can close up some of the open drains we have just now - this will make the site both look a lot nicer but also reduce the risk of someone falling into one of them!

Yet another pile of "stuff" ... taken out of the ground only to be put back in it! :-)

Keith had a nightmare with a wood order which, turned into a saga including the wood having a holiday on Tiree and two trips to Oban before finally getting to us here. This wood is for the shuttering for the house foundations and also to give to Patrick to replace the wood we borrowed.

I cant wait to get going on the shed build. It’s like a huge 3d jigsaw puzzle. A steel frame and then walls and roofing. When I sat down to read the instructions however, I spent most of the time having to search what everything was - anyone else not know what a Purlin is?! We had to use the tractor to off-load the shed pallets which was stressful and Keith’s least favourite pastime… He loves Digby (the digger) and hates the tractor!

I’ve spent a lot of time this week decomposing all the wooden forms we have taken off the shed slab and trying to recover the screws and nails for reuse. It is probably a false economy but it is somehow satisfying renovating the concrete coated planks and sorting out the bent screws from the straight ones (that sounds like a quote from the TV comedy, Porridge). It is something we can do in the evening in the warmth of the caravan, as we dont have a telly!

Big excitement today - I was planing supper and Keith suggested he would go and catch us a fish. He has, in the past, made rash promises like this so I had an emergency chicken if needed. He went down to a rather precarious rocky outcrop up the coast which, in his own words, is a "tricky scramble” and returned a couple of hours later with these two beauties…

After watching a couple of youtube videos he managed to fillet and de-skin them and I had enough fish to feed an army - I’d decided to make a fish pie! It turned out very well and we are looking forward to a lot more fish suppers in future.

Woolly hasn't been back since Keith's reinforments but she is sulking on the hill next to us...

And we have been joined by a herd of cows, so we have sheep on one side of the fence and cows on the other. Let’s hope we don’t have a Leather Jumper!! So the Otter has been back and a male hen harrier occasionally flits across the site and somewhere nearby a cuckoo has arrived be we haven't seen it yet. Keith has seen the Sea Eagle too but he does have a track record of falsely identifying eagles… definitely need that sighting confirmed.

This week has felt quite sociable and we seem to have enjoyed a bit of human contact! Not sure why exactly but people have dropped in to say hello, we’ve had John and Lucy on the island and it feels like people are coming out of covid hibernation. We had our second jabs a fortnight or so ago now so we are feeling safe!

The poor folk who lost their house in the fire have been up here looking for their cats. A sighting of one of them has been reported here so we are keeping an eye out. The cats fled when the house burned down and are very feral and shy so it may take some time for them to be de-spooked.

Dougie and Jane came over this week and Dougie flew his drone and we now have a few arial shots of the plot which is fab… Thanks Dougie!!

Keith mentioned my trip to Tiree which was fab and I’m planning to go again on Wednesday as another pal (Sarah SeaShell) is there, so I’m going for the day as a foot passenger. Can’t wait.

I cut Keith’s hair again this week. The clippers we bought have definitely paid off now, as he hasn’t paid for a haircut for over a year! I’m not sure if my attempts are any good but hair wax can cover a multitude of sins… if only he’d remember to put it on…

And finally, the fashion corner! I have pretty much lived in one of my pairs of jeans since getting here and they are slowly wearing thin and ripping. I have had them for donkeys, but kneeling on concrete and stones and just wearing them means that they are ripping in so many places - not sure that they will last another day, if I want to be decent!! Oh well… another amazon prime order… or maybe I’ll wait for a city break! We must be due a trip to Edinburgh soon…