Lewis Memories: Moving and Gardening

When I was looking for a house on Lewis in 1975 there were two available outside Stornoway within commuting distance.  I opted for the one nearer to Stornoway in the township of Coll, 7 miles from my office. It was an old 3-bedroom bungalow with an upstairs room reached by a loft ladder in the hall. However it had a large 'barn' built as an agricultural building but in effect a large double garage capable of housing both a caravan and a car or, in our case, a Bedford CF Autosleeper.  There was also the original byre attached. In addition on the ¼ acre plot was a good sized garden and a plot of trees. The latter was very unusual.

I had come from a village in Cheshire where houses were both expensive and sought after,  However on Lewis I had to pay very substantially (over 60%) more for a similar sized but detached house. Moving was not going to be cheap. Ironically when I sold the house in 2005 it had almost trebled in price whereas the house in the Cheshire village had multiplied in value over 10 times when I last looked in the '90s.

C'est la vie.

When I bought the house the neighbour opposite said "Oh. You're English. That's okay. The house has a garden so you'll be at home. You can always tell the English. They have gardens."

Outwith Stornoway it was true that few people had gardens in the '70s. They didn't have the time because they were tending the croft nor the inclination to have a hobby which was more of the same. For me, desk-bound during the day, the luxury of manual labour in the garden was wonderful.  

How things have changed. Within 15 years the neighbour's sister (they both lived in the family home) had insisted that her brother fence off a garden area for her. Nowadays there are so many gardeners that there is a Western Isles Gardening Facebook page and two substantial garden centres and quite a few people growing plants and food on a part time commercial basis too.  

Mind you when I came to the Island incomers were relatively rare. Now the place is full of them!

Concreting: Day Four: Conclusion

The rain finished exactly at the time the Met Office had predicted late this morning and the blanket grey sky gave way to a mixture of blue and high cloud.  The rest of the weekend looks pretty dire so we uncovered yesterday's work to discover that the rain damage was minimal.  We set to work to do the final piece of the job which we had scheduled to be done when the rest was dry.  We decided that Molly had suffered enough being shut in the house and was unlikely to walk in the bit to be done today.

 Molly loves hoses!

She will do her best to 'catch' the water

Molly loves to know how things are done.

Job done

I still have to make a new flush manhole cover.  So hopefully from now on I'll not be tripping over the uneven surfaces and through puddles to get to the garden shed.  A job well done which I am sad to say I could no longer do alone.  Thanks to David and The Gazelle.

Concreting: Day Three

Before breakfast and the weather forecast was for rain at 4pm.  "Let's start early."  said David.  So we did.  The Gazelle was brought into town by his Mum and I picked him up whilst David started making the concrete.  Half way through we realised that a ton of concrete mix was nowhere near enough.  I ordered some more.  Would it come this afternoon?  Possibly.  It didn't.  However The Gazelle wondered whether the pile of coarse sand and stones that I had inside my gate would do.  Duh.  How could I have forgotten about that?  So we used them but when we had used all the cement and mixture we were left with this tiny bit to do:

Pondering:

A phone call to a friend up the road and we were in business again.

I'd show you a picture of the final result but for the fact that at 4pm the rain started and we had hastily to cover all the new concrete up before the rain did too much damage. When the rain stops I'll show you.

Concreting: Day Two

Today I felt my age.  My right knee has passed its use by date (I'm not complaining because I brought it on myself: I used to be a fencer and fencing coach).  It doesn't give me a lot of pain but it does make lifting heavy concrete or wheeling wheelbarrows down slopes rather difficult and very tiring.  Fortunately David did most of the really heavy work and his thirteen year old grandson went up and down the slope with the wheelbarrow like a gazelle.  Not that, I have to admit, I've ever seen a gazelle pushing a wheelbarrow.  Today we managed two panels of concrete.  The cement mixer is effective but doesn't have a very big capacity.

Yes, something or things did crawl across the first panel!

Concreting Day One

Yesterday was the day for doing the shuttering for the area between the house and the toolshed which I am intending to concrete after I had to dig up the previous concrete to lay a new drain.  Today the plan is to start the concreting.  Why, today of all days, did the wind have to drop and the midges descend in their thousands?

David surveying the afternoon's work

Who Trusts Whom?

I'm writing this on a beautiful, warm, sunny morning on Lewis with sufficient breeze to keep the midges at bay.  You see.  It does happen occasionally!

I'm waiting for the plumber to come to instal the toilet etc in the mini-en-suite.  The family has been responsible for my house and business plumbing for the last 37 years.  That's quite a customer/provider partnership when you think about it.

Because it is such a beautiful day CJ and I are off to the far West side of the Island as soon as the plumber is here and under way.  It made me think, though, of a recent occasion when the BT (telephones) engineer came to work on the house and I needed to go out.  "That OK?  Do you need me?" I asked.  "Well we're not supposed to work in a house without the householder here but as I know you that'll be OK." was the response.  Er?  "Well some engineers have been accused of things you see."  Oh.  Right.  It hadn't really occurred to me that the world had altered so that those I invite into my house now have to trust me.  I'm sure it used to be the other way round.

Anyway I'm off to the other side of the Island as soon as the plumber's arrived.

Thankful Thursday

It's becoming harder each week to think of something new about which to be thankful.  It's not that I don't have a HUGE amount of things about which I am thankful but trying a) to think of them to order and b) to make it interesting is not so easy.   Actually it reminds me of what Richard Burton said on his wedding night when he married Liz Taylor for the second time.  He knew what was expected of him but he had no idea how to make it interesting. Ho hum.

Anyway I think I'll go for a biggie (or is it biggy? - spillchucker says biggie ) today.  OK so, yes, I am thankful for being alive and, no, I don't take that for granted.  Today I am thankful for warmth.  Now that might sound silly.  But let's think about it for a minute.  I was at a friends' recently and his ladyfriend was there so the house was cosy.  However left to his own devices his house is cooler than I enjoy.  That's because he doesn't like the heat and I do.  Conversely my house is too warm for him.

Ok I'm rambling.

The point is that when I came back to Scotland nearly a month ago I wore shorts in the garden when I was working.  Today when I went to town I wore jeans, a thick padded gilet (vest) and a Berghaus jacket with a separate down lining.  The weather is horrible.  So I've migrated from my Study with it's beautiful views and lots of light and all my computer gadgetry into my living room with it's ancient roll-top desk and books.  And I've been warm and cosy.

Actually looking at that chap in the chair I'm not sure I recognise him.  Last time I saw him from this angle he had hair!  His sleeves in New Zealand must be a bit longer as well judging by the white patch above the tan!

Anyway the point about this post is that, unlike millions, nay billions. in this world I have the wherewithall to ensure that I am warm when the outside temperature is cold.  For that I am truly thankful.

PS I'm also thankful for the small things this evening.  I dropped my camera with the lens extended.  It appears to have survived.  Oh yes.  Very thankful!

A Real Letter

A couple of days ago I was sitting at my roll-top desk

writing birthday cards and so on when I suddenly had the urge to write a ‘proper’ letter.  With the advent of emails my letter writing has almost ceased.  Sometimes I think this is a shame but then I realise that the ability more easily  to communicate outweighs the more lasting and personal qualities of a letter for most of our communications.  I do have a nostalgia however for the letter.  When a dear friend from my teens moved to Canada many years ago we communicated by letter weekly for many years.  I still have every one of those letters.  I don’t keep emails although we can speak more easily (ie cheaply) by phone nowadays too.  I was reminded of that because I used to start so many of my letters ‘It’s early morning and I’m on the Suilven….’  MV Suilven was the ferry that used to ply between Stornoway and Ullapool at nearly 4 hours a journey.  I am writing this posting on board her successor first thing in the morning as I ply the 2 hours and 40 minutes which the journey now takes. 

The other thing I miss is using a fountain pen.  I enjoy my fountain pens.  A while ago Heather happened to make the comment that she loved using a fountain pen.  It was that comment which made me decide that I was going to do a fountain pen posting.  So when I wrote my cards the other day I also wrote a letter and I used a fountain pen.  I opened the drawer in the desk with the pens in it and thought I’d lay them out for a photo.  Even I was quite surprised with how many I’ve amassed over the years.  The one in the front of the photo is a Parker which I have had since I was 9 and it has been in use constantly ever since.  Most of the official documents to which I affixed my signature during my career as a bureaucrat were signed using that pen.  It has been overhauled once over 35 years ago.  It says something for the quality of the ink sac that it has lasted since the overhaul and is still going strong.

The Lights in The Night

One night recently I got up in the middle of the night (just around 3am actually!!) to visit the smallest room (actually it’s not my smallest room – I have two rooms which are smaller than my bathroom).  I have four small flat-screen lights (like aircraft binnacle illumination) in strategic places so that  no one has to put a light on in the night when they get up for the bathroom or whatever.  As I was wandering through the house I was struck by the number of lights that glowed out from every nook and crannie.  I counted 26 lights!  Yes 26!  It then occurred to me that the master switch switching off all electricity in the Study for the computers etc was off so the myriad of lights associated with computers and hard drives and so on would, during the day, be added to that number.  Scary.

So what were all the lights?  Digital clocks, the wi-fi, carbon monoxide detector, hi-fi, phone, TVs, DVD player and Freeview boxes and doubtless other things too.  Life’s not quite as simple as it was when this house saw it’s first occupants (which I would guess was about 1930).

An Interesting Concept

There is a house at the northern end of The Braighe which is actually two houses - an older improved croft house and a newer bungalow - joined into one house by a large living area. It is such a neat idea and one I've admired ever since I was in it some years ago.