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Here are the heroes - support team and all. Go give.

And they managed to come for our first day of summer. Superb!

The last

and they sat and they stared at the floor, and where many sheep had gone before, now there were few, and fewer, and as they stared at the floor they saw their graves opening before them, for they are the last and they are old. Where once in youthfulness they could gad over hills and shepherd many sheep, now in their twilight they keep the sheep close. And the young turn away and look to quick reward and warm homes and long idle evenings, not for them the unending duties of animal husbandry.

I was there to offer them help, hope, to offer them eternity. Let us find some young buck and teach them all you know of sheep. Let's find a community shepherd, a crofters apprentice, an orra loon. But their long teeth couldn't be drawn from the habitual scratching of the earth, preparing.

But I will not give up. Just yet.

The builders are here - who's counting the days?

Prologue

OK - so read this with care and then make sure you read the footnote and above all come away with the impression that the builder is good and that The Geezer What Drew The Plans isn't.




A few quick snaps to keep you abreast of the exciting developments - there's more too - but on grimey days its hard to get out with the camera - so you'll have to wait until (a few days after) its been sunny.

The build is going well. The build is going well. The build is going well.

Convinced?

I'll try again.

The build is going well. The build is going well. The build is going well.

The build is going well, despite the architectural drawings. We had a lot of problems with the drawings when we were trying to get quotes for the work - a lot of trades complained that the drawings were too complicated, and crowded. But we've found a builder who is happy to work with them, or in spite of them perhaps. And he's doing a fantastic job. We like our builder! He thinks about the plans, he sees inside the plans, anticipates issues and discusses them with us. He is a good builder.

"See that wall there" says Big Chief Builder as he spreads his plans over our morning coffee. "Well it's not there. Don't know what the architect was doing putting it there. Anyway because that wall isn't there and we've put this wall there there is no wall there where it should be really, but not according to the plans. That means that this wall doesn't support the roof so we've had to re-inforce a couple of floor joists."

"ah" we say.

A few days later, having looked at this and that wall on our own we wonder if holding roofs up on floor joists is a good plan, and we remember that building control insisted on an engineers report and that the engineer insisted on a new wall - at precisely the place that the architect (and the man really deserves inverted commas) hadn't drawn it and the builders, naturally enough, hadn't built it. So we worry. We call the builder.

"Are you sure its ok?"

"Oech Aye!"

"Will we get the building warrant signed off? Should we get another engineers report?"

"Good idea".

So there you have it. Another best part of £1000 to go to an engineer who has to drive up from Inverness and, god willing oh allah be praised hey Buddh!, write out a piece of paper that says that even though there's a wall there that was meant its not doing the job it was meant cos it was never really meant to be there. It's safe. Sleep well. Tis fine.

...and all because we used a cheap non-architect because really it's not a difficult build is it?

The build is going well. The build is going well. The build is going well.

Footnote - the saga of the wall

With great gusto and much aplomb the builders tore into the job. They turned up, they cleared out the downstairs, they dug out the floor, relaid it with insulation and then put in the internal walls, two of which were, according to the plans, supporting walls. They put the wall which is the subject of this post where the plans said it should be.

Then they set about upstairs, they got the frames for the roof made according to the specs on the plans, they took delivery and they fitted them. But the Geezer What Drew The Plans hadn't measured upstairs properly. What appears in the plans upstairs is a good metre out of synch with what appears on the plans downstairs, so the wall in question is no longer a supporting wall cos it's no where near under the load of the roof. So the builders have had to try to make this work - and they have kept us informed about their attempts, and they are fully supportive of the need to bring in an engineer for advice, and hopefully sign off the builders attempts to make good a mess made by the Geezer What Drew The Plans.

The worst commute ever?

Takes me about an hour to drive to work - and it is stunningly glorious. I wanted to share it. But If I stopped and took a piccy every time I thought - OOOOOH - I would never get to work. So I only took a piccy when the ipod changed track, or when I had to stop for on-coming traffic, or cows. The road is quite bendy and its tricky handling the camera whilst driving so some piccies are a bit squint. Maybe that adds to the charm?

Living beyond our means

A couple of snippets here from new economics foundation (nef). The question that isn't addressed is: what can we do about it? The answer of course is very simple - consume less and perhaps more particularly in our society - stop consuming things you don't need. Things will eventually crash - and suddenly there'll be a backlash against scientist - "Why didn't they tell us?" they will yell over the clamour of the food riots. Well, we are being told, repeatedly, but no-one is listening. How do we make people listen? The day that marks when humanity starts living beyond its ecologically means fell earlier than ever this year, on 21 August 2010. The fact that we're blowing our annual ecological budget in less than nine months is not based on need, but on overconsumption. As in previous years, nef has found examples of ecologically wasteful 'boomerang' trade: the UK currently exports 131,000 tonnes of chewing gum to Spain, only to import 125,000 tonnes back again. We send 3,300 tonnes of cuddly toys to New Zealand, only to bring another 2,400 tonnes back again.
	An increasingly worrisome aspect of ecological debt is the depletion of the world's fisheries. Now, new research from nef and OCEAN2012 allows us to mark the day when the UK blows its budget for fish consumption: 4 August 2010. The UK does fare better its European neighbours, however. France entered fish debt on 20 June, Spain on 10 May and Germany on 5 May. The EU as a whole would only be able to supply itself with fish from its own waters until 8 July.

Revenge of the coffee gods

So there I was driving to Lairg for the launch of the Sutherland Partnership Action Plan and I was perturbed by a rather unpleasant rumbling in the car. Now the car has only just been serviced - new suspension and all sorts of wongles and stuff - so I was rather upset.

But the best thing to do in such situations is to keep driving cos it's bound to be nothing and it'll go away and if you turn up the music REALLY loud you can hardly hear it, and anyway - what can you do? Look at it? What the f*** good will that do?

But eventually - I mean that noise is getting worse. So I found an unusually large passing place and pulled in determined to stare the noise down into submission.

From some dark recess I decided that I should grab one of the wheels and shake it. Obviously you can't move wheels - they're like bolted on. But for some reason I thought it was a good idea.

And do you know what? It moved. A lot. It rattled. Aaargh. It was almost falling off!

So I found the jack. Took the wheel off. Put the wheel back on again and all was fine and dandy.

The man at the garage apologised in a really not very apologetic way "We all make mistakes" he said. That doesn't convince me too much.

Anyway I got to Lairg. Lord Thurso, my MP, gave the keynote address. He was very impressed by the Sutherland Partnership Action Plan because, he said, it included the word 'action' in the title. He made much of this word action and what a pleasing development it was to see it.

I do wonder sometimes.

Caffeine

So up here in my little office in Durness I have a kettle, instant coffee, but no water. (It's in another part of the building and I don't have keys).

And I'm thirsty.

At lunch time I bought a bottle of fizzy water - thirst quenching stuff.

But now, I have a long drive in front of me and I feel the need for a pick-me-up. ( I just know you're ahead of me on this one).

The solution?

Boil fizzy water for fizzy black instant coffee.

The outcome?

Wholly not recommended - kinda half fizzy acid tasting coffee is a most unpleasant thing. Still it should get me to Lairg.