Autumn

Much of our time has been taken up with the new arrivals to the household who are both doing well and growing rapidly. Harvey seems to change daily and Sarah and Joe are thriving as parents.

Poppy and Rhema get on well although I think Rhema sometimes misses her peaceful evenings with us since Poppy's favourite toys seem to be different parts of Rhema!

Another burst of visitors kept us busy for a few weeks - Joe's Mum, Dad and brother who came to meet the newest member of the Francis family. Kaye left having bought a house up here! She will be moving up towards the end of November and we are looking forward to seeing more of her. Elodie also came and won 'guest of the year' award by not only spending several hours helping me in the garden and stoking an enormous bonfire but then cooked us a delicious meal afterwards - 'haste ye back' as they say up here! They were quickly followed by Richards two brothers and sister-in-law who came primarily to see Gran and Grandad but who were also pressed into service to help collect some logs donated by a friend - many hands make light work and now all I have to do is cut them up and split them.

Despite the snowfall on the hills we have been enjoying some mild weather which has been a real boon and has allowed me to get on with some of the garden jobs that have been neglected somewhat over the last few months including a little pruning!

There is still plenty of colour in the garden and it is hard to believe that we will soon be snowbound.
Before that happens we are making what will probably be our last trip down South this year for a concert given by friends from our old church and Leo's dedication, both events that we are very much looking forward to. Sarah and Harvey are joining us on the trip and as we can't really leave the dogs with Gran and Grandad the car will be pretty packed and it should be an interesting trip!

Seven months - condensed!!

Having been chided by a number of my friends for my failure to keep up with the blog I can only apologise and hopefully this summary will get you up to date after a fashion.

The snow finally disappeared and this year we were able to hold the easter egg hunt on grass rather than snow and actually enjoyed an amazingly hot April where we barbequed and generally enjoyed being outside - just as well as the rest of the year has been pretty disappointing weatherwise and visitors over the summer didn't experience the sunshine that we had come to expect at that time of the year. Tim and Ruth in particular noticed the difference as the children were running around in shorts and t shirts in April and bundled up in jumpers in August.

It has certainly been 'the year of the visitors' this year with guests here for around ninety nights since the last entry!! In terms of 'bed occupancy' that translates to nearly two and a half times that number of nights and I have been heard to remark that if we were running a B&B we would be very pleased with our occupancy!! As it is, we have really enjoyed being able to have so much time with friends and family and are getting our 'tour guide patter' down to a fine art. For some, it has been the first time that they have visited the highlands and we hope that it has been a positive experience and that they will return. Highlights of these visits have been watching the capercaillie lek at 5.00 am with Steve and Mary, watching for pine marten and badger late at night with Kevin and Maria, a trip in wild weather to Skye, also with Kevin and Maria, a lovely meal out with Steve, Mary, Richard and Judith overlooking Loch Ness and introducing Matt's friend, Nick to the world outside Aviemore. We have also had the pleasure of renewing some old and neglected friendships. The grandchildren have enjoyed collecting eggs from the chickens, riding on nanas tractor, riding on the steam train and the purple train up the mountain, swimming and of course all is accompanied by much cake eating!

In addition to the visitors here we have made around eight trips down South , including a celebratory meal after Richards brother made his inaugural speech after being made a professor at Canterbury University where we also celebrated Richards Mum and Dads 65th wedding anniversary and Dads 88th birthday! Liz managed to sneak in a few hours in Sutton before flying back the next day! Their anniversary celebrations continued over several weeks and included a cake, balloons and a speech at the community coffee morning and a trip to the Castle of Mey which they really enjoyed, not forgetting of course another card from the Queen. We have also attended a reunion of a crowd of our friends from our days at Kings College Hospital where we both trained, Richard spent a day watching the cricket in Birmingham the day after the riots and then spent a few days in Sutton catching up with friends as well as attending the funeral of an elderly friend from our previous church. Sadly, he also recently attended the funeral of an old school friend who died following a cycling accident. We were thrilled to be able to share with Daniel and Julie in the adoption ceremony for their oldest son and also to get to know his younger brother, also now very much part of the family. Richard has made two overnight trips to Glasgow with Mum and Dad to see the eye specialist there and Liz spent a week at CLAN (Scottish branch of New Wine) camp with some girlfriends and enjoyed glorious weather which showed St Andrews at its best although the heat made the smell of the manure in the field where the camp was held eye wateringly pungent! It made a change to be off site and not catering for the 5000!

Travelling aside there has still been a lot of activity here. The library is now complete and has already been the scene of much snooker playing and whiskey sampling. Putting the books in order is going to have to wait until the winter but we are thrilled with it and guests have spent a lot of time hunting for the two secret cupboards! The electrics are pretty much complete as is the insurance part of the decorating so we are looking forward to being able to start putting some pictures on the walls.

The chickens now have a new run in the paddock, courtesy of Pete - after they stole a cake at the easter egg hunt we decided that they couldn't be quite so free range and although I miss their greeting when I get home, overall it has been a good move, certainly meaning that the garden remains more intact. They are still effectively free range as they have a huge enclosed area with the burn running through it and we are hoping to get a few more soon and start selling eggs at the gate. We are waiting for a fence to be installed to divide the paddock as we are hoping to rear some weaners next year and have our own free range pork. The turkeys are arriving this week - just two this year for Pete & Trish and us as we decided that we had too much on to deal with all the slaughtering and plucking etc even though we had been asked if we would be rearing this year. We are also hosting two horses - Magnum and Rosie who will be grazing the paddock for the forseeable future.

The wildlife continues to entertain and although we were disappointed that the osprey didn't appear to have had any eggs hatch this year we still had plenty of bird life around as well as the red squirrels and were entertained for several weeks by a curlew chick in the paddock, fiercely protected by one parent who circled angrily around any perceived predator.

The polytunnel has been a great success and we have been almost self sufficient in vegetables and salad since May. We have been hiding courgettes in just about every dish and although production is slowing as the temperature drops we have been very pleased overall. The star of the show has to be the mooli radish tho' which grew to be monsters. We had a bit of a disaster with some of the veg when we had a sheep break through the fence from the fields behind us. She lopped the foliage off all the swede, mange tout and french beans as well as cutting the leeks down to about half height! Leo declared her a 'naughty sheeps' and I am inclined to agree! I am about to lift the onions and potatoes and plant out garlic and onions for next year as well as get some more winter veg in the polytunnel. We still have parsnips, carrots and swede to lift as well. It will soon be time to start the end of year clear up in the garden and the recent high winds have caused a lot of leaves to fall making it suddenly seem like autumn.

Many of the activities stop over the summer in the village but Mum and I have enjoyed trips out with the SWRI to Logie Steading and the Cairngorm mountain rescue centre where we had a great insight into the work the team do. Liz has given talks and demonstrations about the neonatal unit and machine embroidery. Sadly, Liz too sang as part of the SWRI choir at the funerals of two of our members, only two weeks apart but on a happier note (!) came third in the competition for six voices being only two points behind the winning choir. We hosted a strawberry tea here on what was possibly the wettest day of the year but still managed to raise around £180 from the stalwart souls who turned up. The coffee mornings run all year and are always well attended and the youth group have successfully completed the yurt and have hired it out for several events as well as a group travelling to Glasgow and Edinburgh for a 'two cities trip' which was great success.

Moy church was officially closed on March 25th and it will be sold in due course but it will take some time before it is valued and marketed. It was a sad event for the community as there are many associations with it. We had enjoyed having folk back for coffee after the service for the final few months and had a packed house on the evening it was closed.

So that was pretty much the last seven months - which brings us to recently..... a month ago we collected a golden retriever puppy, something we had been talking about for some time but hadn't felt was quite the right time. She is delightful (what puppy isn't?) and seems to be settling in well. We are getting broken nights as we tackle the housetraining but not as many as Sarah and Joe who welcomed Harvey Jack into the family at 03.50 on Sunday 11/09/11 weighing 7lb 8oz. Sarah had a straightforward delivery and was able to come home later that day. They are all doing well and are very happy. We are looking forward to a more settled few weeks while we all get used to being a larger family.

Good intentions.

With Christmas and New Year behind us we were keen to regain momentum and resume the work on the house but somehow it just hasn't happened which is very frustrating. The days seem to pass very quickly with little to show for them. There has still been intermittent snow albeit fairly short lived but we did have a nasty period when the temperature rose slightly during the day causing the snow to melt and then refreeze ovenight. The snow was packed where it had been driven on and the net result was surfaces like an ice rink. Endeavouring to get the car up the drive one morning I completely lost any kind of grip and slid backwards down the drive unable to steer and certain I was going to end up in the pond. Fortunately I came to rest against the fence but across the drive. I called Richard to see if he could turn the car by towing it and as he shot by in his 4x4 I was just about to call out 'show off' when he too started to slide backwards - towards my car!! Fortunately he stopped a few feet away but it was a nasty moment! The ice melted enough to move the cars a few hours later but that little episode cost £149 to replace the tail light which had cracked when I hit the fence and as the car had to go for MOT the next week I had no option but to replace it. I now try to stop anyone driving on the snow until I've had a chance to plough it.
We spent a lovely week away in Winchester looking after Bethan and Toby while Tim and Ruth went ski-ing and were able to meet up with Daniel, Julie and Leo twice during the week as well. They will be coming up in March which we are really looking forward to. While we were down we were also able to catch up with several sets of old friends which was great.

Back here we have had visits from both Richards' brothers, David and Trevor who came to see how Mum and Dad are settling in. They have decided that they don't have enough storage space in their bedroom, so next week they will move into our bedroom while the fireplace and built in cupboards in their room are removed and they have fitted furniture installed. Their radiator is being moved as well and the challenge will be to get the work finished and them re-installed before Daniel and Julie arrive as the contents of their bedroom will be in the spare room! The remaining units in the library are due to be installed this week which is exciting and will mean that we can finally unpack our books. We have had trouble getting workmen back to finish the bathrooms but do at last have hot water in our shower and underfloor heating - Sarah and Joe are still waiting for theirs to be connected.

Other than a bit more paint stripping I have made little progress myself but did take advantage of a lovely sunny day to clean out the greenhouse and do a bit of tidying in the garden. The first seeds are in the polytunnel and I am looking forward to seeing how it performs this season. It certainly stood up well in the 100mile/hr wind that we had one day! We had to move the chicken coop into the walled garden as it was at risk of ending up in the field but all was well and the girls are back to full laying again.

Sarah and Joe took the opportunity to go to Lanzarote for a week and came back having enjoyed temperatures that we have forgotten existed. The golf course should re-open in March and then it will be a busy year as the Scottish open is being held up here this year. They have held an 'open house' games evening here for their life group which was thoroughly enjoyed.

Contrary to popular opinion life does carry on up here despite the weather and Mum and Dad are enjoying a hectic life with Church, the community coffee morning, church teas, SWRI and the SWRI choir. Dad has also attended a computer class but decided that he'd rather play scrabble so we are looking at starting a village board games group. We had a crowd back for coffee the last time that the church service was at Moy and are expecting to do the same this week. Sadly, the church will be closing next month as it is the most expensive of the three to maintain and there are only five members of the congregation who actually live in Moy (and three of them are Mum, Dad and me!) Somehow they manage to fit in all their GP,hospital, hearing aid etc appointments as well and Dad is gradually finding his way round the unfamiliar territory although the road conditions have meant that he hasn't done as much driving as we had hoped and so it is taking longer to find his way about. Mum and Dad also had a long week-end in Sutton meeting their latest great grandchild and catching up with some of their friends from the flats where they used to live. Assisted boarding gives them a degree of independence that they wouldn't have otherwise and we are grateful to Graham who takes such good care of them at the other end. They had one amusing incident where the power was switched off while work was being done leaving Mum stranded in her electric recliner chair with her legs in the air - technology isn't always a good thing!

Other activities have involved (for Liz)cooking for the homeless ( a project that runs for six months throught the winter, providing a hot meal and a bed for the night and is very necessary with temperatures down to -20), giving a talk about life on a neonatal unit to the SWRI and taking on the role of treasurer for the Stratdearn youth group. Their current project is building a Yurt - a large, wooden framed, tent-like structure, which they hope to use/hire out in the future. This has involved them learning skills such as bending wood using steam and one of the young men has been given some short term employment with the company as a result- always good when unemployment is such an issue amongst young people. They are going to organise an easter egg hunt here for us in April which should be good fun. Spotting seville oranges half price in Tesco provoked a burst of marmalade making which I hadn't done before and resulted in eighty jars which worked out at around 35p a jar. Richard has been heard to remark that now I've done the trial run I'll be able to go into production properly! Work has been spasmodic with a few shifts before Christmas but only one since and the promising start hasn't really amounted to much - the cutbacks are certainly in evidence here.

Richard continues to volunteer one morning a week at his church coffee shop but has taken a break from honing his barista skills in order to master the till - tricky when you forget your glasses and end up trying to charge someone £40 for their coffee! Most of his time is taken up however with a group he formed to try and secure community benefits from a windfarm company who are building one locally. It involves lots of meetings, lots of fraught phone calls and days in e-mail exchanges interspersed with trips to a coffee shop or two - nothing new there then....

We are enjoying the days lengthening and now have ten hours of daylight which hopefully will soon start everything into life in the garden. The grass is beginning to green up again - it goes a kind of dull yellow when it is under snow for any length of time and the neglect of last year is very evident. However - we have to remember that this time last year we were living in a house with walls so wet that the paper was peeling off, with the dining room unusable, no ceiling in the stairwell and were waiting to hear when we would have to move out - this year has to be better!

Civilisation!

Having been so remiss in keeping the blog up to date it is difficult to know quite where to start. The weeks between the last entry and Christmas passed in a whirl of activity so I think I will have to update in instalments!!
We had a lovely trip South and enjoyed time with the Oxford and Winchester branches of the family while Sarah and Joe held the fort here. We had our first snowfall during the previous week and so the snow plough was put to the test - and failed! Subsequent trips back to the workshop have left it useable but with some problems ie it can't be fixed in the 'up' position and so when reversing it has to be held up manually otherwise the snow is scraped back onto the part that has just been cleared. At least we can get the drive clear tho' and that has made a huge difference and was really important as we were still needing to get vans up and down the drive for the workmen, let alone our calor delivery.
That week-end was the first one where the central belt of Scotland became gridlocked by the weather and as we drove back we became stuck at Edinburgh at nine o'clock at night, when finally the last road into the highland was closed. Fortunately we were able to book into a travelodge for the night and fared much better than the 700 people who were put up in halls in Perth and the hundreds who spent the night in their cars on the motorway.

We were in constant communication with Mum and Dad as Sarah and Joe had left to travel South (and also had a very tedious journey) and were grateful that our plumber was on site when the decorator said that he thought there might be something wrong as steam was coming up through the floorboards!! It turned out to be a joint weakened by the radiator being taken on and off several times rather than a burst pipe but it sounded very dramatic when recounted to us.
Once back, the house began to resemble the set of a programme such a '60 minute makeover' with contractors of every description working to deadlines - with the family all arriving for Christmas we had no leeway at all. Two weeks before Christmas the living room was still piled high with boxes and covered in a thick layer of dust and grit from the removal of the fire,(which was successful and we are enjoying the woodburning stove immensely), the two shower rooms were unusable and we were still camped out in Sarah and Joes spare room with our spare room still full of furniture.. We finally moved back into our bedroom the week before Christmas and although for some reason our shower only pumps out tepid water and the underfloor heating isn't connected everything else was able to be put back in its rightful place just in time enabling us to accomodate thirteen people over the Christmas/New Year week.
In the middle of this of course the turkeys were still needing to be fed and the snow meant that the tups, who shared the paddock became very hungry as they couldn't get to any grass. Feeding the turkeys became an exercise in ingenuity as the tups followed us and pushed their way into the feeding troughs. In the end we had to feed the turkeys in the enclosure morning and evening to keep the tups away but one day they manged to knock the top off the metal trough that we kept the feed in and demolished two sacks of feed which diminished the profit margin considerably! Eventually the turkeys had to be slaughtered and they went for their final journey in the back of Petes van in the middle of December. The abbatoir were very impressed with the condition and size of them - all over 20lb and they came back to us a few days later neatly packaged in plastic bags. I wasn't sure how I would feel about eating something I'd nurtured for several months but in the end they bore no relation to the boisterous birds that had followed us about the paddock since august and tasted delicious. We sold all but one and that one is in our freezer due to be split with some friends when we can find a mutually convenient date.

The chickens have not been impressed at all with the snow and stopped laying for a few days. The white one then started to moult and looked very bedraggled so now they get porridge and poultry spice for breakfast in addition to their normal rations and we are getting a couple of eggs a day again. Keeping their water from freezing is a constant battle and no, we can't put anti-freeze in it as one rather dim poultry keeper did....They cluck reproachfully at us and prefer to spend their time in the stable given the chance but with temperatures as low as -20 it isn't surprising that a bird descended from a jungle fowl wouldn't take kindly to the snow.
The snow caused a few other problems as well: - Richard got hit in the face with a lump of ice falling from the roof and had to make a trip to casualty to have a couple of stitches in his lip and had two impressive black eyes for a week or so afterwards and as it continued to thaw, horror of horrors , water started to come in again over the stairwell and in our bedroom! Fortunately the thaw was quite rapid and it stopped after a few hours but we are left with a watermark on our freshly painted wall! The snow we have had since then has thawed rapidly each time but we are aware that there are several months to go yet before we can say winter is over.
Despite the busyness we were able to take part in a number of festive activities. Mum and Dad arrived in time to attend the SWRI christmas meal, the pensioners Christmas lunch and have started attending the regular community coffee mornings and the local church where they are beginning to get to know people. We attended the service of nine lessons and carols, both in Inverness cathedral and at midnight in the tin church at Tomatin - as we left, guess what, snow was falling! We also went to the parade in Grantown where Santa is pulled into town by real reindeer, similar to the one in Aviemore that we went to last year but smaller, and we felt, more enjoyable. The Choir that I am part of entertained a group of around 100 senior citizens who turned up, despite treacherous conditions to their Christmas party in Kirkhill.
It was wonderful, finally, to be able to have family and friends to stay again and we had a great time with much feasting taking place (and much snoozing afterwards). We enjoyed a meal together at The Dairy ( a favourite local restaurant of Mum and Dads) before Matt flew back to Sutton for his New Year celebrations. Bethan, I think, opened just about every present, taking her role of father Christmas very seriously and enjoyed making a gingerbread house with me. Toby was entranced by the sparklers on New Years Eve when Joe and Dan put on some fireworks for the kids (big and little). Mum and Dad, who had returned from spending Christmas with the Nottingham branch of their family, had a ringside seat in the conservatory, tucked up with a glass of mulled wine and a plate of nibbles and were joined by Rhema who used to sit in the garden in Belmont watching fireworks in the sky but clearly wasn't so keen close up. The year was rounded off in the time honored manner of games and yet more food and as we started 2011 and my birthday we were thrilled to get a phone call from some of our longstanding friends from Sutton. We are looking forward to seeing some of them up here later in the year.