My Diary

Jabblog on the subject of her new diary recently said, amongst other things, "When I was a teenager, it took me ages to write a letter because I had to keep starting again after I’d made a mistake. Quite ridiculous!"

I read that at the time that I was filling in my 2024 pocket diary. Without it I am absolutely lost. Like Janice I start off trying to be very orderly and neat. It is helped in my case by the fact that I only use pencil for appointments. However birthdays and other dates are in fine red ink so as to stand out. I cannot understand how it is that half way through the year I will have a few entries that are a day out because I copy across from the old diary without concentrating. I find it irrationally annoying.

I have been using the same diary format which fits into a leather cover for many many years. I am used to it. It is a sort of comfort blanket. On the odd occasion that I have mislaid my diary over the years (I have always eventually found it) I nearly have a nervous breakdown. My diary, like my car keys, carry a reasonable reward for its return if lost.

Given that almost everything else I do I do on my iPhone and associated MacBookPro and iPad (which Apple users will understand because everything done on one is automatically available on the others and is instantly backed up in the Cloud) I cannot understand why I don't do the same for my diary. 

However my diaries go back continuously to 1974 well before I had any form of electronic recording device.

Returning to Janice's original point I write a lot of letters using a fountain pen. I have been known to start again because of an error. However a few years ago I decided that this was causing me to lose spontaneity and all of a sudden the occasional crossing out almost became the norm. It certainly doesn't worry me any more. 

A Diary Entry: 21 April 2015

Since 2006 I've been in New Zealand during the winter so have I not been here in Eagleton in April. Yesterday and the previous three days have been perfect Lewis days for getting into the garden so I have been doing things about four weeks earlier than I might usually have been doing them. On Saturday morning when I woke my body reminded me in no uncertain terms of the 9 hours hard labour it had been subjected to on Thursday. Since then the physical labour has made me feel more alive and more fit (I did get a gym session in yesterday morning) than ever.

The reason I said this is a diary entry is that I would like a reminder as to when I started in the garden this spring. When I started the blog it was supposed to be part diary and part family communication tool.

These four glorious days have enabled me to fill a large wheelie bin twice with moss etc scarified from the grass (I'd like to call them lawns but that would be stretching it a little more than a tad). This should give the grass a good start this year.

I finished off the wind covers for the raised beds, did a lot of sorting out in the shed and prepared an old slip drum with drainage holes etc for use as a potato barrel in which I planted First Early potatoes. I planted the first rows of beans, peas, beetroot and lettuce and some herbs in the raised beds. I prepared pots of over-wintered begonias etc. It may be too early for all that up here but time will tell.

Then, with the help of a pickaxe to get at the deep roots, I took out a hedge of hebes to give light to the rockery, a better view of the perennials in the other part of the garden and generally open up the garden.

The outdoor chairs have been sanded and painted. In summer they live in front of the kitchen window giving a view over the pond, the front garden, the Bay and The Minch over to the Mainland.

Old slip holding drum with it's new use for potatoes

The back grass area duly scarified and it's first mow (it's had two more sessions since that was taken).

One of the new raised vegetable beds ready for its covers and planting 

The wind covers (which should also protect plants from the pigeons and other birds too)

The garden with the hebe hedge

and without

All ready for morning coffee in the sun (the chairs were a present from the ladies in the Pottery when I sold it 10 years ago).
They are a constant reminder of good company and are very well used.

Why Blog?

I've had quite a few comments recently about my blogging habit: usually along the lines of 'I couldn't be bothered' or 'How do you find the time?' or simply 'Why do you do it?'

Now this posting is really one of those odd things that one does for the simple reason that one can. It will be read by people who read or write blogs and understand anyway. But wotthehellarchiewotthehell. It may also be read by people who can recall my blogs Ideas, Busses, Buses and Missing Blogs and Sucked Into Blogland. I'd almost forgotten that I'd written those postings.

I started my Hebridean In New Zealand blog as a way of letting people in the UK who were always asking what I was up to know exactly that. It was also a diary which I could look back at and, hopefully, re-live and enjoy some of the best times of my life. Like many people I briefly kept a diary as a young man but I never persevered. I wish that I had. There is something beautiful and satisfying about nostalgia. As someone with an appalling memory and no conceptual ability whatsoever a blog is just about as perfect way as I can think of for satisfying the nostalgic diarist and photographer within me.

And I've made wonderful friends. For what more could one ask of life?

Idea, Buses, Busses and Missing Blogs

It was never an idea set in stone that I should post on this Blog every day as I attempted to do in New Zealand. There I was both trying to let friends know what I was up to and inform them about the wonderful country in which I was living. It didn't really occur to me that when I came back to the UK that experience would make me look more closely at where I am and what I'm doing and how it might be made to look, or even be, interesting to others. I didn't realise just how it would heighten my awareness of the apparently everyday things around me. It helps, of course, that CJ's blogs are always so observant of his surroundings or books or - well, you name it.

Anyway this morning I was thinking to myself as I did a few emails, scanned in some more slides, listened to some more music, pondered on the weather (again), looked at the changing beauty of the land and seascapes visible from the study (they would be even more visible if the blind wasn't partly drawn against the bright sun but then I suppose that's partly ameliorated by the fact that the door is wide open because at 0900 it's 20 deg on the north wall of the study which, I would remind readers in the southern hemisphere, is the 'cold' wall of the house), listened to the birds (and pondered on whether sparrows had a 'standard speed of flight') and wondered what to have for breakfast. What was I thinking all those words ago? I was thinking that not very much had happened to blog about. How silly is that? When there is so much. But I couldn't get any ideas to germinate. And then they hit me. And I thought of buses and the calculations we did at Uni on statistical probability - or something to do with why buses all end up coming at once.

Perhaps I could do a blog on spellings - the Portuguese have apparently decided to rationalise their spellings and I couldn't decide whether it is 'busses' or 'buses' (it's either or both).

CJ always (and I think that always means always) has a little notebook with him and is constantly jotting notes in it. He is, I think, the would-be diarist of old and is, in fact, by using blogs the modern equivalent. So I decided that I would use a notebook too because by the time I'd got to a pen and paper such ideas as I do ever have have long fled the brain. So this morning when I was having my shower.......