Hard to believe that it is now almost a year since we exchanged on The Old Manse. Equally, we have now lived on Gigha for almost 6 months meaning our time in Ferrymans’ is coming to an end. The latter means much of the next three weeks will be around our exit, with mum moving to a single bedroom bungalow on the Island, and Karen & I taking up residence in the caravan adjacent to the Old Manse. Let’s hope the storms have abated before that!
And those storms that I spoke of last time have continued into March. Strong winds have meant disruption to the ferry schedule and a couple of cancelled trips to the mainland. Not quite in chronological order since the last post, but the cleanup of the damage to the woods has started and I can now walk unbarred from the back of the walled garden to the meadow once again. Whilst I have some firewood there are a number of casualties in the tree population that we are really disappointed for.
The other repair that was really important to us was that of the shepherds hut roof. Crucial that we protect the interior from the elements and without roofing felt or tarpaulin for a couple of weeks water has been getting in. The temporary nature of tarp’s hasn’t been successful so we took the initiative to try and patch as best we could with leftover roofing felt from the initial work. Some scars in what’s gone on but a mixture of glue to patch those holes and batoning to prevent lifting will hopefully have kept it in place until we can get the tin roof on.
With the storms raging we have had the opportunity for more planning and more administrative tasks. The move of mum has necessitated the usual move of electoral register, bills and council tax. All of these systems appear to have you wait in queues for hours or portions of hours at the very least. But Karen has also had the opportunity to start drawing and planning the walled garden and that is certainly more pleasurable.
And our other indoor task, painting. The colour scheme we inherited was not to mum’s choosing so Karen and I have been doing a makeover in simple white for now. I shall not be sad to see the back of this task that should be complete tomorrow. Then to storage for the furniture that wouldn’t fit into the cottage and hopefully we will have mum installed by the end of next week.
Not all work though. Paul visited, as earlier pictures showed, but as well as putting his skills to good use we had time to walk the Southern paths of the island with him. Coming back through Achamore gardens the camellia walk has started to bloom and is well worth a look. It certainly helped to walk off the fuzzy head gained at the previous nights pub quiz!
Middle Age Musings 