Happy Birthday Simon

I also get emails from Ed Milliband. He sent me one this morning. It was a link to this. Cheers Ed.

Bloggers junk mail

Bloggers get junk mail. Usually it comes from some twerp who runs a dubious-looking health food store in California - and in exchange for a link to their website they promise a free prize draw for an organic cotton T shirt. I don't succumb.

But this time I will. The email is copied below so you can pursue the links if you wish. When will people realise that buying unnecessary stuff, such as that sold at Nigel's Eco-store, is no way to save the world? How disappointing to see Caroline Lucas as chief judge, and various other luminaries of the green world who really should know better - allowing themselves to give credence to this poorly disguised advertising gimmick for Nigels Eco-Store. Cos that is all it is. If Nigel was really green he'd never be running a shop like this.

So I've nominated this blog, and this post, in the hope that the judges might get to read this and wake up to how cheap they really are. Here's the email:

Hello Simon,

My name is Diana, the intern at Nigel's Eco Store. I am trying to raise awareness of our Green Web Awards, now in its 2nd year. You can find info about the Awards at http://www.nigelsecostore.com/green-web-awards/ - any chance you could mention it in your great blog?

Of course feel free to participate by nominating some of your favourite green websites (which could include your own!) http://www.nigelsecostore.com/green-web-awards/nominate/ . Last year it was a great success, you can see the winners in its 12 categories at http://www.nigelsecostore.com/green-web-awards/2008/

I hope that through people like me and you we can push it one step further.

Please check the website and feel free to forward it to everyone who you think would want to participate or have any interest in green web.

You can also follow the progress of Green Web Awards on Twitter or Facebook :
twitter.com/greenwebawards
facebook.com/greenwebawards

Thank you!

--  Diana Office Assistant  Nigel's Eco Store www.nigelsecostore.com Office Tel: 01273 710770   Nigel's Eco Store 55 Coleridge Street, Hove, East Sussex BN3 5AB

Up yours

If the sun was the size of a man and located in the Glasgow Science Centre, Uranus would be in Thurso and would be roughly the size of a small coin. It's worthwhile pausing here and thinking - all that space!

It just so happens that astronomy clubs throughout Scotland are roughly located where planets would be, so we have a Scottish Solar System.

I went to a talk last night where I learnt this stuff. It was very good.

But more interesting were the audience which included a couple of old dears whose parents ran a local post office when they were kids. It was great back in those days (I suppose we're talking 1930s, 40s & 50s). Grandad ran a bakery (you can still see it's chimney down by the harbour) and another relation had a lorry that used to pick up groceries off the train in Thurso then drive round Sutherland selling them on. Few people had cars and children were plentiful and happy.

In the post office the post used to come in around 11pm. The worst time of year was Christmas, because all the local crofters would send friends and relations chickens. You killed a chicken by wringing its neck. Then you tied a label around its neck with the lucky recipients address on it. One year they sent out 16 sacks of chickens 'wrapped' in this way in one day. The stench was awful.......

Postie

It will be my birthday on Saturday. You've still got time.

Relax

If you've come straight from reading that last post you'll need some relaxation. Here, from cheapskate jazz collections is an amusing little ditty to sooth away all that pent up angst.

Lalalalalalal - la la

I have a prejudice against guitars in jazz - this works fine though, and I love the games with the time signatures giving a weird kind of syncopated syncopation - especially in what I guess might be the middle 8, though it's not in the middle and I've no idea how to count to 8. Or as someone else put it:

"The music of Zevious shrewdly juxtaposes order and its opposite: structural intensity pushed to its breaking point in the most appealing way. These boys are brilliant and fearless." --Vijay Iyer

Lose lose situation

F****** W** C***s crop up in all walks of life. Depending on the situation F****** W** C***s can take on a human form, be animals - especially obstinate animals, or they can be inanimate. When inanimate the F****** W** C*** is most often associated with machinery of some kind - however simple. Whatever manifestation it chooses, the F****** W** C*** delights in springing surprises, and revealing itself unexpectedly and turning a simple job into a trial, a quest of mythological proportions.

When confronted with a F****** W** C***, a good tactic is to scream "F****** W** C***" at the top of your voice, repeatedly and with abandon. The act of screaming in this way has the effect of encouraging blood flow to the region of the head and will, eventually, induce a state of calm (or, I guess, a lethal brain haemorrhage) and one can then take stock and seek to overcome the F****** W** C***.

If the F****** W** C*** is worth it's salt it will hide for a few moments before revealing itself in a slightly, oh so slightly, different form, and scuppering one once more. If this happens one should revert to screaming "F****** W** C***", it must surely be that the F****** W** C*** has returned because one didn't shout it with sufficient feeling and venom in the first place.

If this still doesn't seem to be scaring the F****** W** C*** away, try varying the emphasis, for example:

"F****** W** C***" or

F****** W** C***" or

"F****** W** C***" or even putting multiple stresses in the sentence:

"F****** W** C***".

If still thwarted one can add a musical element by varying the pitch of the screams. This is most effective when the pitch is raised, and can also be combined with the use of multiple stresses for advanced F****** W** C*** combat. For example

"F****** W** C***".

Caution should be exercised if considering expanding the sentence being screamed. So for example, it may be tempting to progress to something along the lines of:

"You F****** W** C***y Sh***", but such progressions risk exhausting one, and once one is exhausted the F****** W** C*** has most definitely won.

Yesterday I was confronted by a F****** W** C*** manifesting itself as a wheelbarrow wheel. Verily it was a cunning wee blighter.

1. It began by making it impossible to fit the new tyre I'd bought over the wheel.
2. Then it shifted to making it impossible to feed the valve of the inner tube through the wheel rim.
3. Once this was achieved it was impossible to attach a pump to the valve to inflate the tyre.
4. When this was eventually achieved the tyre deflated most rapidly, thus indicating a puncture.
5. Cleverly (we are talking advanced F****** W** C*** here), it was then impossible to remove the tyre and inner to locate the puncture and fix it.

Unusually at this point F****** W** C*** took a break and decided to have all the tools required to progress readily available. But it was a ploy to lull me further into the cunning F****** W** C***'s trap.

6. Once located and fixed and tested to ensure that the repair was sound, one must return to step one above. So to aid understanding and in the name of brevity I will adopt a notation whereby 1 is the step and in brackets will be the number of times the step has been executed. So we've fixed the puncture and must now reassemble the wheel:

1(2), 2(2), 3(2), 4(2), "Steady on" I hear you cry "You've gone back to having a puncture again". How astute of you. But I was not to be defeated:

5(2), 6(2), 1(3), 2(3), 3(3). Not finished yet!

4(3), 5(3).

The problem was that the puncture was beside the seam of the inner tube and at a point where for some reason the manufacturer had decided it would be really cool to give the inner tube some texture, in this case ribbing. This ribbing made it very difficult to create a smooth enough surface to get the whole patch to stick down. As for testing the repair, well I guess I was just too much of a Jessie to inflate the inner enough to really test the repair. I found it kinda scary inflating the inner outside the protection of its tyre.

So so far I've patched the puncture, and then over-patched the repair with a bigger patch. But those pesky little ribs in the inner tube are doing a superb job.

7 So next I rip off the repairs to date and try again. 6 (3) This time I use a super new-fangled glueless plastic patch.

1(4), 2(4), 3(4). PHEW!

4(4). Shite.

5(4), 7(2), 6(4) returning to the good old rubber patches. 8 - give the whole area a really good sand down so that this patch will really stick man.

1(5), 2(5), 3(5)............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................wait for it

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................seems OK huh?

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................

............................................

Yay! I won. Hah! Take that ya F****** W** C***!!

So then, at last, it was a simple matter of fixing the wheel back onto the wheelbarrow, tidy up and put away all the tools and get on with the things to be done. The whole small matter of fitting a new tyre to the wheelbarrow had taken over 2 and 1/2 hours. First job was to use the newly serviceable wheel barrow to

4 (5)

F****** W** C*** !!!!!!!

Edinburgh vision

Phew err eh? Never mind all that trams nonsense* - what Edinburgh really needs is this, running up the Mound beside the Waverley Steps.

Thanks to Town Mouse for the link.

* Eeek - more footnotes. Oh well - according to people I know in Edinburgh there are very few who have any patience left for the tram project. Which is a pity really, although I've always wondered why so much money is being spent developing and connecting riverside Edinburgh to anything - it'll be underwater in a few decades.

Sunrise 0717, Sunset 1642

No idea how these times relate to the changing of the clocks.

That Fall Back thing used to be quite welcome in city life, I seem to remember that 'extra hour' was a great thing of almost mythological importance - stoking up the batteries for the winter to come, or maybe partying like hell the night before and seriously needing several more hours in bed for the rest of the week.

Up here though it's just an excuse to get confused and to be forced to change routine - all of which to my grumpy little mind is totally unnecessary and a complete waste of energy. It's far worse in the spring of course - but still a pain in autumn. We've adjusted to it this time by changing the time of our evening meal - it now being after the goats have been done, rather than before as it was in the summer. This change is designed to minimise the disruption to the goats, and maximise the use of available light.

Meanwhile, The Girl and I went fishing yesterday. We got very wet. I mean very, like really. We lost our spinner (I think that's what it's called), got really really wet, and cold and caught nothing (except, as the girl brightly remarked, "We nearly caught our deaths!"). Spirits were restored through the application of hot cocoa and tomato cuppa soup* when we got home, swiftly followed by watching Merlin on BBC iPlayer. And all was well.

* I knew someone once whose main income was cleaning caravans in a caravan park. She used to delight us with tales of the things holiday makers used to leave behind - "I haven't bought soap or toilet paper in weeks". The cuppa soup has a similar history - not something we would buy, but visitors bring all sorts of exotic things and they are always a delight**

** Though I must confess- we've had a couple of Heinz sponge puddings in the cupboard for over 12 months. We've eaten a couple of them - and when I was a kid I loved 'em - but somehow they are no match for my own sponge puds (which I always bake cos steaming is too much faff and they're nicer baked anyway), and I find making my own sponge puds to be less faff than boiling the tinned stuff, then fighting the hot tin with tin opener etc. So there they sit (until the donors return, when they shall be fed them).***

***Sorry about the footnoting of footnotes. I remember being told off at school for an overuse of parentheses - "Most immature Lee" - but surely the footnoting of footnotes is far worse.

The return

Jussi and The Girl are back. This means I can start to see the funny side of things again.

Phew.

Pink letter day

By registered post. From the Crofters Commission.

Here it is, almost verbatum (perhaps not the right word?)

Case Number: Blah blah blah

The application blah blah blah for the Commission's consent to transfer the tenancy of the grazings shares blah blah blah, to you has been approved.

Blah Blah Blah.

The transfer of the tenancy of shares cannot take effect for at least 2 clear months after the date of our decision. You will therefore become tenant of the grazings shares with effect from 16 December 2009 unless, before that date, both parties jointly give notice to us in writing that the assignation is not to proceed. Please note if our decision is appealed to the Scottish Land Court the assignation cannot be recorded until the outcome of the appeal is known.

Blah blah blah

Blah blah blah

Yours sincerely

Blah blah blah.

Wow.

So we are THAT close. We put an offer in to buy the croft in October 2007, conditional upon being awarded shares to the grazings. In those days we were blissfully ignorant of the joys the various laws and procedures surrounding crofting. But hey. ALMOST there.

Hopefully, come December 2009, we'll get another Registered letter telling us it's all gone through. That will be a red letter day. This letter though is only an insipid shade of red.

ALMOST there.

Some days

If you've ever kept goats, I think you'll know how good and obedient and cooperative and wonderful they can be. I guess you'll also know how bloody obstinate they can be too. And how collectively they choose days when they are just not going to do anything you want them to do. And you can feel them laughing at you. And pointing. It's such a laugh. Bloody ha ha ha.

So the other morning I'd decided to get a job done. It was going to be tough, - it was one of those jobs that once started had to be finished - and with just me, in just a day between goat milkings - ooh now that is going to be tricky.

Of course this is the morning that the goats decide to be funny buggas. So I started the job nigh on an hour later than I'd planned - but because the goats had given me hell I'd retreated for a second breakfast around 9:30 and reckoned I could work through without lunch and so could make up the time the goats had cost me.

The job needed the wheelbarrow. The old wheel barrow would be the best. Where is it? Oh yes - full of oats. Empty the oats into the feed bins first. While doing this I noticed the tyre on the wheelbarrow was completely flat - so once emptied I went to reflate the tyre - which promptly exploded.

Oh well - I guess I'll use the new wheelbarrow. Where is it? Oh yes it's down at the cottage - waiting to be used to clean out the guinea pigs. Ach I might as well do that anyway - it'll only take me half an hour - they seriously need cleaning out.

So right here goes. Mix cement in cement mixer. Pour cement into wheelbarrow. Tshht! The new wheelbarrow is bigger than the old one and you can't tip the cement into it. Oh well, I guess I just need to swap wheels and then I'll be able to use the old wheelbarrow with the new wheel.

Can't seem to find a spanner that fits this nut. Best go down to the cottage and get the tool box with all the spanners in it. Good that's it. But the nut on this old wheelbarrow is seriously seized. Need the WD 40. Where is it? Oh yes - it'll be down at the cottage. Oh well off we go.

Right. Good. Sorted. Lets go.

The day continued like this. I worked solid through to about 4:30 - interrupted about once an hour when the chain came off the cement mixer. I stopped about 4:30 cos I'd run out of cement. Job not finished as I'd promised myself. Bollox.

I rushed down to the cottage, hastily threw myself together a toad in the hole with boiled cabbage and onion gravy and was back at the goats by 6.

They played up very merry hell. They knew I was tired and boy did they have fun.

Once doesn't really realise how angry one is until one hears ones echo resounding through the bonnie bonnie glens. Och Aye.

You f*cking little b*stard f*cking b*stards get the f*cking b*stard in there you f*cking b*stards.

I was finshed about 9. 15 hours working - or so - with very little break, very little achieved, in fact main job was probably ruined cos I ran out of cement at a crucial time.

F*cked.

Mystery

I've been shopping in Thurso today. Strangely, it seems to cost the same to buy me a weeks worth of food as it does to buy the family a weeks worth of food. I think the equation looks something like this:

[Feeding] Simon + Jussi + The Girl = [Feeding] Simon + chocolate bars + wee treats + chocolate bars + ooh look I've not had those in ages + chocolate bars.

Mmmm

I don't really know what to make of this - I mean agree with having fun - most definitely - but do we really need to go this far? Will we have to make pianos out of all the streets in the world to stop people jumping into cars?

Thanks to No Impact Man for the link. But VW? Oh shit.

Local Food

Foward Scotland would like to know your views on local food. Click here.

Can you hear that?

Absolutely nothing. Well Ok there's the tick of a clock in here, with the tick of the clock in the kitchen as counterpoint, and there was a blackbird singing a minute ago. But nothing.

Jussi and The Girl have left the building. They'll return a week on Friday.

What shall I do now?

Beginnings

9:04 am. A monday morning. I guess you office types are just arriving - still trying to wake up - still feeling a bit niffed over that pillock who cut you up/had a snotty nose on the train/farted next to you on the bus. You've probably remembered how to switch yer PC on and are wondering if you should make yourself a coffee now, or wait until colleague arrives and hope they make one for you.

Good morning one and all. Here are a few piccies from Tom again to brighten up your morning. I've been up since about six, fed and milked the goats (well I helped Jussi do it anyway), lit the fire, just finished breakfast and washed the pots. Time now to relax a wee while before deciding what to do next. No meetings to prepare for, no deadlines to rush at, no morons to work my way around. Good Life.

Banished

The Girl is having her birthday party. I've been banished. Surely this wasn't supposed to happen for another 5 or 6 years?

Ach well. Tom's photies have interesting titles like "40398.jpg". On this blogger thang, when I get to upload a piccy I don't see a preview of it - until it's too late. And I'm too lazy to wade through picking my favourite. So here, in a rare use of the word 'random', is a random selection.

Winter medical lexicon

Hoggawoggabogga thumb.

Them there cold winds has got The Girl demanding her hot water bottle. Jussi has a phobia of hot water bottles - it's always my job. I seem to over-tighten the top - and then strain my thumb trying to open it. Pathetic of course but quite painful and debilitating. It's a recurrence of an old injury first mentioned way back.

But I soldier on.

More importantly - Tom has sent through his piccies. Here's one to get started. More to follow.

A VERY IMPORTANT PRIVATE MEETING OF CROFTERS AT THE LAIRDS LODGE

The invite arrived some weeks ago. In capitals. Capitals are funny - and those I use below are those used in the briefing document sent prior to the meeting.

Capitals or no, the turn-out was poor - 15 out of 52 eligible to attend. Surprising, in that the meeting was about money. It was also about solidarity and common purpose and standing up for our rights and making sure we get a good fair deal. The aim of the meeting was to reach consensus so that we could encourage the Scottish Land Court to overturn precedents they had set in the past.

It was about the proposed Wind Farm and how to share a fund to be set up by the developer. As the law currently stands (according to precedent) the funds would be shared amongst Crofters by Reduced Souming rather than Shareholding, a system that discriminates against those who have taken their Shareholding as Apportionment and therefore have a reduced Souming.

In other words, under this system, those who have an Apportionment (and who, generally, have invested (Government grants) heavily in improving it), would lose out on a share of the pot of gold the Wind Farm is hoped to generate. Those who have no Apportionment would get a bigger share. The meeting was an attempt to get all Crofters to agree to division of the funds by Shareholding (and therefore those with Apportionment would get more than the reduced amount they would get if the division was by reduced Souming).

Mmmm - maybe the 15 was dominated by those with Apportionments, and the absent 37 don't? I don't know the answer - the individual driving the proposition last night has Apportionments but claims that under the system proposed he would lose out. There was a strong sense in the meeting that this was about being fair to all, honouring the spirit of a Four Party Agreement made in 2003 (before the troublesome Scottish Land Court Rulings). But I honestly can't say.

Ok - I know you are following me so far. It all gets a bit more complicated because apart from the Original Common Grazing, there was an Enlargement to the Common Grazing (in 1819 apparently), and then a further addition followed the disbanding of a local sheep club in the 1960s. So therefore a complication arises because of the different Shareholdings people have in the different Grazings. Indeed some Crofters have shares in some parts of the Grazing but not in others, and the Soumings attached to the Shareholdings differ in each Grazing. Furthermore, the location of the boundaries between these Grazings are uncertain. There is a map, but it was made a long time ago and no-one trusts it. There is a ditch and peat dyke that someones grandad showed him many years ago and has now disappeared, and there is the remains of a stone dyke which runs up from Ally's Pool but which is also now largely gone.

The Original Grazing has 252 and 7/8th shares. "The traditional registered area is 1196 hectares" (2,955 acres) - all local Crofters have a share. Each share has a Souming of 8 sheep.

The Enlargement carries 85 shares ("according to the current register"), and "traditionally" has an area of 635 hectares. Each share carries a Souming of 9 sheep. Some Crofters have shares in this area.

The 1960s extension carries 31 shares with each share carrying a Souming of "20 sheep plus 4 cows (ie 36 sheep). Does anyone know how big this is? Only some Crofters have shares in this extension.

A further complication arises because of mathematical anomolies exist on how the Scottish Land Court has ruled over Apportionments. At its simplest the Shareholding is Apportioned by Shareholding as a proportion of total shares and total land area. The anomoly is, if each Crofter had an equal Shareholding, each successive Crofter seeking Apportionment is entitled to Apportion a % reduction over what the previous Crofter was entitled to. For example, if there were 10 Crofters each having one share in a total Grazing of 1000 hectares, the first Crofter would get 100 hectares - ie 10% of the total. The second Crofter would only get 810 hectares though - this is because, after Apportionment, there are still considered to be ten Crofters sharing the Grazing, but the total area of the Grazing is considered to be 900 hectares. The last Crofter to Apportion in this scenario gets 38 hectares. Under this methodology, in some ways the Apportionment is considered Common Grazing, but in other ways it is not - in the same breath.

Apparently, our Grazings have not been Apportioned in this way, but equivalent (and more complicated) mathematical anomolies are present. In addition, in the case of Apportionments in our Common Grazings, irrespective of which Common Grazings on which an Apportionment was located; Souming reductions were applied to both Original and Extension Grazings. These Souming reductions did not folloow a mathematic formula although apparently this is reasonable as sheep are not mathematicians and "do not respect which grazing they heft on".

And all that is before you start to try to factor in the relative quality of the land Apportioned.

Fortunately, the Clerk of the Grazing Committee to whom responsibility for making sense of all this has been delegated (by the Grazing Committee of the 1960s Grazing extension) has particular 'expertise in the uncertainty of measurement', an expertise that extends to the 'complex mathematics of the Allocation of commingled hydrocarbons in shared Pipelines'. As you would expect he has lots of letters after his name, and quite a few in front to boot.

He would like to see an Allocation based entirely upon the size of Shareholding (ie number of shares) as any deviation would breach the ""Fair & Equitable" principle."

As stated in his briefing document: "The core issue is just what constitutes a Common Grazing." Are Apportionments technically a part of the Common Grazing? He goes on to argue that even though Apportionment extinguishes the Souming, it should not extinguish the Shareholding. The reasoning behind this strikes me as sound and basically boils down to the fact that even though a Crofter may have extinguished his Souming he is still responsible for his share of the costs of maintaining the rest of the Grazing, such as fencing etc.

I know you've followed this. But there is a flaw which appears to be being ignored and which stands up and shouts way before you start worrying about Apportionments. The Crofters are assuming that they should be sole beneficiaries of the Community Fund, that is because they have sole rights over the use of the Grazings and they will lose out over the Resumption of the Grazings. But in every other wind farm community fund I know about it is the whole community that benefits, not just the directly affected landowners and tenants.

And lordy me - that is going to be a much bigger fight. Oh yessirree.

Ooops - I forgot to describe the meeting - and the odd sounding remarks made about other people who weren't named and that I didn't understand but that sent ripples of quiet derision across the floor, and the somewhat indelicate remarks made by the legal representative about incomers, the northern divers question and oh so much more. And you may be interested in these but I don't believe you are still awake. And anyway I am not.

Ketchup

I mean catch-up - apologies to all those surfers who found me whilst searching for the perfect ketchup recipe.

Last weekend we had unexpected visitors - stayed for two nights. Real Life! I've sort of not blogged cos Tom is an ace photographer and I was hoping to post some of his piccies but he's not sent them to me yet.

It's was a busy time - I had some consultancy work to finish off, a committee meeting to go to where I was volunteered for the Tattie Splatter (it was a choice between that and the Belgian Waitress and the grins when I was offered the Belgian Waitress were very frightening indeed - so Tattie Splatter it is). Like you, I don't understand any of this.

And then on Monday we (nearly) finished the floor in the new stable but ran out of cement. Tuesday I was Nacked as a result of all the hard work the day before, and there was a parents evening at which we learnt that The Girl was suddenly blowing all the teachers away with her creative writing skills. Then on Wednesday - on a bit of a spur of the moment, I had a job application to write in between attending a 'sale of works' (aka jumble sale) at the school.

Yesterday was a frantic shop for oats and hay and shreds and sheep crunch and wood and roof for the stable and birthday presents for The Girl and we forgot to get antifreeze and cement. Then there was a VERY IMPORTANT PRIVATE MEETING AT THE LAIRDS HOUSE - which I'll try to fashion into a separate post.

And next week we have The Girls birthday and then I get left alone with thousands of goats to feed and milk in the freezing October darkness all on me own for almost two weeks. Oh shit.

Anticipation

Yesterday, probably about the time that Town Mouse was out taking these superb piccies, I was out in Thurso getting thoroughly soaked. It rained proper bouncing off the pavement rain, making little miserable me mope twixt shop and emergency crap coffee in a cafe.

But this morning was glorious. Still, sunny and just a wee bit cold. If I'd had my camera when I went up to get the girls carrot* I could have captured some wonderful rising sun glinting off hills type piccies. Well I could have tried anyway.

After morning coffee, with freshly charged batteries camera and I went for a walk.

Look a cat.

Some of you may remember this. Yesterday, before I got soaked in Thurso, I wandered around with flat batteries and counted 14 thriving young willows

- pretty good I reckon - and I found nothing like 46 dead willow sticks so there may be other living willows, but I've forgotten where I planted them. Maybe.

I forget to take piccies of the Scots Pine.

But a couple of them are limping on, a couple are distinctly dead-looking. The limping ones are

in soaked soil in an exposed place

(but we've had a dry summer) and the dead ones in a shaded spot in dry soil (but close to a rhodie - I didn't have the heart to dig it out - I mean it flowered in Spring and was such a delight of colour - it's possible the young and tender Scots Pines found the soil a bit toxic).

We have lots of fennel, but despite lots of good foliage, the bulb - the bit I was growing it for - is disappointing. Maybe I should have put more effort into earthing up.

They all have good carrot-like roots but I suspect this part isn't considered edible and trying to find an answer to whether or not the root is edible is confounded in google by lots of people referring to the bulb as roots. Silly people.

Meanwhile - we await in great anticipation for the apple harvest.

This single apple - Stirling Castle - is the only fruit we'll get from the 'orchard' this year - but still infinitely more than we expected. It's a cooker - and I worry how I can cook a apple for three and ensure the taste of the apple wins against anything else I put in to make the dish big enough for three.

But when should I harvest it? It is still firmly attached to tree but I'm starting to feel greedy by leaving it on the tree. I check it daily. It's time is soon.

Maybe tonight.

The other great point of anticipation is the weather - forecast 60 mph+ gusts tonight. Not quite as bad as 96 kph but still scary enough.

And we'll be eating fennel tonight - cos apparently it's good for wind.

* I go up to the garden to get a carrot for her pack lunch most mornings

Sunrise 0720, Sunset 1851

The plan this morning was to post a few piccies - but the camera is out of batteries, so while they are recharging here's a word on routines. And a random goat piccy from the archives to brighten up your day.

Jussi gets up at 5:30, breakfasts, brings me a cuppa around 6 and goes off to do the goats. Generally I doze until around 7:30 when I get up and start rousing Ailsa for school.

At 5:30 in the morning it is dark.

Our evening meal is around 6pm. Jussi and Ailsa go up to do the goats at 6:30, Ailsa returns about 7:45, and Jussi about 8:30pm. At 8:30 in the evening it is dark.

This morning was a little unusual. I woke up around 5, and so I got up soon after Jussi and made myself a cuppa and came back to bed to ....... wait for it ...... work!

Work at the moment means contributing to a report discussing aspects of a couple of projects funded by the Ashden Awards. It's interesting work and I quite like the fact that people associated with Ashden are occasional readers of this blog - and I still get the odd hit from the mention they've made of me in their blog. Which is nice.

A little after 7:30 went to wake Ailsa. I opened her bedroom door and ...... the bed was empty. There was a heap of bedclothes on the floor and no Ailsa. Momentary Panic. I mean in this house you always know where people are. You hear them moving around. I'd been awake since 5 and not heard a sound from Ailsa. How was it she was not in her bed?

Racing brain quickly reviewed the options: Had she got up early and gone to do the goats? - No, I would have heard. Had she sneaked downstairs to watch tv? No surely I would have heard. Was she on the loo? No. Aaaargh!

Then I noticed a small foot poking out from under the bedclothes. Ahhh. She had fallen out of the bed during the night, somehow managed to stay asleep in a jumbled heap beside the bed. How cute is that?

Routines will change shortly. After much heart-searching Jussi and Ailsa are soon to go off to Hamburg for about 10 months - I mean days. I reckon it'll feel like months. This means that I will have to do all the goat work. Omagod.