Whoops, there go another 4 months since I last wrote. Amazing how time flies. I guess the problem is that very little has happened that is worth recording and life just drifts by.
I seem to remember August and September being fairly wet and full of midges. More work was done on the house to make it warmer and less drafty. I even replaced the front door and removed a wall to make the kitchen bigger. An alcove has been built to house the kitchen sink but I haven't installed this yet...
The hot water tank has been on it's travels again and is now a feature of the living room. The idea is to connect it to the fireplace heating coil which will give me the luxury of running hot water in the kitchen. At present I wash up in the bathroom and use the shower to fill a washing bowl.
A Calor gas fire keeps the kitchen area at a reasonable temperature and encourages me to cook proper meals instead of eating pre-packaged stuff. Another luxury has been the purchase of a tumble dryer - how did I exist before !.
A surprise e-mail from BAS led to a short contract to provide cruise support on the JCR. I flew to the Falklands around mid November and returned a week before Xmas. It was a great cruise, good weather and met up with a lot of friends. I am sure that some did not realise that I had actually left BAS.
Xmas day was spent up at the Rhiconich Hotel. Somehow I had been placed in charge of the turkey - a great but worrying honour. It nearly turned into a disaster when the hotel kitchen ovens decided not to work properly and after a couple of hours the bird was showing signs of boredom. A quick burst of panic saw me taking the turkey for a walk to the hotel flat and another oven. By some miracle it was ready on time and tasted pretty good. Not sure if Delia Smith wants to publish my cooking style but it seemed to work. The whole day was excellent and it even snowed in the evening.
New year was pretty quiet. I decided to "pop" down to Inverness on Jan 2 to do some shopping but had no idea that Scotland has an extra day's holiday. 100 miles is a long way to travel to find that Tesco is closed. Eventually went back on thursday to re-stock my food shelves. Of course shopping at Tesco now takes much longer as they seem to add new items every day. I am still waiting to see someone purchase a widescreen telly and put it on the conveyor belt - swipe that then !!.
The landrover is still going strong and I had the timing belt replaced just before I went south. It is now due for a 60k mile service so I hope not too many problems are discovered.
My range work starts up again in a couple of weeks time and should be fairly intense for a few months. The first week is always bad as I have to get up at 6 am - not something I have done for a long time.
My "sheep adoption" progam has not been very successfull, in fact I have not received any sponsorship at all so I guess it was not such a good idea. The sheep are still away from the croft at the moment but should be back soon.
9 Jan
Saw my first eagle today !. Just looked out of the window and noticed that the skyline towards Foinaven had an extra bump on it. Not sure what sort it was but there have been reports of a sea eagle that visits the area on a regular basis. Unfortunately it sat still for a long time and of course I was not watching when it flew away.
The other event today was the eclipse. Did not think we would see anything as there was a lot of cloud and it even started raining. However the weather cleared long enough to view the initial shading and it was quite clear by the time the eclipse had finished.
Ok that's enough for now, I don't want to get carried away with this writing lark.
