Salty tracts

What aspect of the weather have I taken for granted? What haven't I been full of praise for all the while whingeing and bemoaning the frost and the thaw and the freeze and the snow?

...

Of course Jussi getting out yesterday was less than half the battle - the real miracle was to be if she returned. And she did. With tales of farmyard ice rinks and blizzards she returned laden with provisions for all. Reports of our impending scurvy were grossly exaggerated.

Having unloaded the car of our food we had a couple of hundred weight of oats to get up to the croft - and with track freshly salted I jumped into the car and whizzed up no problem. In fact it was fun. Once unloaded, and with the car parked perfectly in front of the van, we thought we'd jump start the van while the car was up there and then drive the car and the van down the drive so we'd be in a better position to get out again when the time came.

The wind of course! By the time we'd found the jump leads, opening the bonnets of the vehicles was getting very tricky and just a bit dangerous as the wind flapped and tugged, and underfoot was still pure ice - so the effort of hanging on to the open bonnet sent yer feet splaying in all directions..... So we abandoned the attempt until the wind died down.

The wind picked up as the night wore on, though this morning it is calming down again. I've just been out with the anemometer and the maximum gust, down here around the sheltered cottage, was 23.7 m/s - about 53mph and 85kph. The wind is carrying with it little pellets of snow. Brings tears to yer eyes so it does.

Musical notes

It's sort of thawing today - with lots and lots of snow forecast - but sort of thawing. The snow plough trundled very cautiously down our lane and gritted liberally*. With the forecast for lots more snow and hard frosts later this week, Jussi decided she had to grab the chance to get out to the big wide world and get some oats for the goats. But only oats - our drive is pure ice - impassable - we can't get the van out - so the trip is for oats and not hay.

But the gritter man was very kind - he turned at the turning circle by the cottage and stopped. And he got out and fiddled at the back of the lorry and then slowly ambled back and climbed into his cab and drove away. A more productive fiddle is hard to imagine for he managed to leave a good pile of grit. Quick as a flash - maybe - I was out there with a shovel and wheel barrow - and managed to fill it with salty grit which I spread on our drive. Once more I confess to theft.

It was snowing heavily by now so I though it would be a good idea to get the van started and drive it up and down the drive a bit to grind the grit in and thus open the great passage. So I returned to the cottage and put the kettle on.

A few minutes later I battled through the snow clutching a hot water bottle wrapped in a carrier bag and I wedged this next to the van battery while I did the mid morning hay and water duties with the goats.

About an hour later I hopped into the van and turned the ignition.

Niet. De nada. Zilch. Bollocks.

So the van battery - despite Chris's magnificent efforts - is flat. Having got used to Chris's magnificent effort we've stopped parking the van at the top of a hill. So now we'll have to wait until we can get the car up the drive to jump start the van before we can contemplate getting our own hay. So a-cap in hand to neighbours we'll a-gander again shortly.

Now then... speaking of fiddling - cellist, harpist, guitarist, fiddlist?

* Even though it's an SNP council - haha -geddit?

Happy new year!

Indeed.

Where was I? Oh yes - complaining about the weather. Ah now - well - the cycle of a bit of rain, a bit of snow, a lot of freeze continues. It does seem to be getting gradually warmer - so the rain is now more frequent than snow - and although this pleases us on account of it heralding the possibility of the merest chance of an end... An End.

But only a hint of course. And as it warms it gets more slippery.

I tried to take the car up to the house and got considerably less than half way up the drive, and made two superb ice tracks in the process. But it was good fun!

Thrawst is not photogenic. So the piccy is from a few days ago.

Hogmanay got us out and into the pub - just for a couple like. It was getting going nicely when we left, and the most notable event is unblogworthy.

But we need the ice and snow to clear.** Not only is the dwindling level of animal feed becoming an issue, but so is the dwindling level of human food. I mean there's no need to call the helicopter just yet, and we are still a fair way from curried goat, but the list of ingredients for meals is diminishing and monotony beckons. And anyway there's always the village shops - always good if you prefer to wring onions rather than chop them.

But here's wishing you a heartfelt happy new year - and thanks for continuing to read this blog, and commenting occasionally. I predict that things will happen in 2010. No really. Oh yes.

**And as I type this "set the controls for the heart of the sun" begins on the ipod. Oh yes please!

Which reminds me to mention that the first toon randomly selected by the ipod in 2010 was Tommy Smith - Seal. Somehow strangely appropriate and certainly a delicious start to the year.

Thrawst

I was lying in bed this morning listening to the sheets of snow sliding off the roof. Ah the thaw at last. Then it started to rain - oh yuk - still it should speed up the thaw. Then the rain started to sound hard - I mean hard, not heavy. Ah. More snow. No thaw. And now it's freezing again so I've decided to invent a new word for a frozen thaw. Oh and the wind has picked up too - so even if it is warmer - which I doubt - it feels a lot colder.

Due to the kindness of neighbours we got our hay yesterday. It was more adventuresome than we had anticipated on account of the hay being in a barn whose doors were frozen shut and whose hay was hidden behind a clatter of clutter (can you give a collective noun to a noun of collection I wonder?).

We even had a snow plough yesterday. And this morning a local JCB has been out trying to clear the roads a bit more - though I still don't think we'll be venturing out for a few days yet - the compacted re-frozen ice turns it's nose up at a smattering of salt 'n' grit unless there's a decent amount of traffic to drive it in.

In another world...

Yesterday I ventured to the shops and as a special winter treat bought myself a Guardian. This is a treat we don't allow ourselves very often and I think it is over a year since I sat and read this rag. We get the Sunday Herald - it has a mildly intelligent and leftist leaning opinion section - and a TV section that is usually correct.*

Anyway - reading the Guardian was such a joy.**

So here are some random facts I gleaned from yesterday's paper:

On December 14th, worldwide, the on-line store Amazon sold 110 items per second.

And British internet start-up company onenewspage is supposed to taking on Google in the arena of free on-line news services. Maybe. But ha! - you try finding onenewspage by googling it - you wont get very far cos google have stopped tracking it.

And the networking site Facebook now has over 350 million users and expects this to be over 500 million by the end of 2010.

And there I was going to launch into a tirade about the power these seemingly innocent companies are being handed as we lemmings throw ourselves at their mercy. Myself included. But tirade is off cos Jussi wants to talk doors. Is this a metaphor?

*One really irritating aspect of life in Scotland is how BBC Scotland screw up the TV schedules, randomly and thoroughly illogically and .... rant rant rant

**I mean don't get me wrong - I love Scotland and a' - I've been here nigh on 25 years - but Scotland is too small a market to be able to produce anything of the standard of the English broadsheets

's no hay

Surrounded by farms and crofts as we are, there's very little hay to be had. Well there's hay - but it's moving it that's the problem - and there seems to be only one person with a tractor good enough to cope with the snow - and he's obviously in demand. Where are we in the pecking order I wonder?

Anyway - we can have the hay if we can move it. That is progress.... and we have wheelbarrows ...........

Meanwhile the snow looks pretty - our road is impassable to posties, snow ploughs (apparently anyway), and bin men*. We never fill our bins - except at Christmas, and indeed in the run up to Christmas when we decide to have a clear out in advance of visitors. The bins over-floweth... and the sea steams.

*but I'm sure wheelbarrows will be fine.

Hay snow...

... and other Beatles puns.

How lovely that the snow should fall and the ground freeze and the rain come and the ground freeze and thaw and freeze and snow and freeze....

I'm not sure who it is lovely for. With the outside pipes frozen Jussi's feeding and milking goats is a slip slide show carry heavy pails of water. Ice rink. Yesterday I spent a while chipping away at the ice - it's about 3 or 4 inches thick of solid ice - chipping away at it so at least the surface is rough, but last night it thawed a bit, rained, and then froze again this morning - so it's all nice and smooth again. And now it is snowing - masses of snow lying over the top of ice rink. It'll make it easier to walk on for a while at least.

For many days now, Jussi has been saying - she just wants it to warm up, for the snow and ice to go away.

And now we are getting low on hay. This isn't bad planning on our part - there's only so much hay we can handle at once. We stocked up in advance of the holiday but have been unable to get out to replenish supplies. So there's an anxious daily watch of weather websites - it's due to thaw tomorrow and then freeze again. I'll try to spent today clearing the drive of ice - so if it looks as though the roads will be clear we can get out. But we cant get out today - and the snow is falling heavily - making it less likely for the roads to be clear tomorrow, and hindering my attempts to clear the drive.

So we've started cutting whins to eek out the hay, but it's no replacement really.

Yule tide

Many of you wont have received an Xmas card from us yet sorry. Ahem.

So there I was, yesterday, slaving away in the kitchen, up to my ears in turkey and cranberries and all sorts of other delights when Jussi came in from having been up at the croft. There's a flood. I need your help. Everybody.

Thus we all slipped and skidded* our way up to the croft to see what was to be done. It was clear to me that the best thing I could do was show people where the stop cock was and then return to the kitchen - cos the food was at a bit of a crucial stage. I felt guilty about this, but really there was little to be done. It was pitch black, chuffin freezin, and really what was there to do? Watering goats and washing milking machines would have to be done by bringing water up from the cottage in the morning - sight that would make Buster Keaton proud for its comedy values, but there was nothing else to be done.

An hour or so later. Christian returned and modestly announced that it was fixed. Eh? How did you do that?!?!?!

Well - he found a bit of redundant piping with a value attached, took the valve off and attached it in front of the leaking pipe. I mean obviously I could have done that, and indeed I was about to until I remembered the turkey was blackening in the oven ... ...

Christian the heroic.

But with temperatures due to drop below minus 12 again soon (and that is on the coast) - we're worried about a repeat performance - and Christian has returned home and I'm not due to cook a turkey for months so no excuse for me next time.

* We've had freezes and thaws and freezes of thaws and the whole place is a friggin lumpy ice rink.

Christmas fear

Yo ho ho. Bored with filling the house with smoke every time we lit a fire we decided to call the chimney sweep. He was really nice and helpful and friendly and always had a reason why he couldn't make it this week and that and eventually stopped answering his phone. The other sweep, based in Wick, never returned our calls.

So we embraced the soot and bought the kit. Reading around the subject it seems that all sensible people sweep from the top, having sealed the fireplace. Here is Jussi executing this technique.

I wasn't allowed to try this - honestly I did try, but Jussi wouldn't let me - I'm not so good with heights you see. So Jussi did it. She's good with heights - but this terrified her. It's a whole lot higher than it looks, and fully extended ladders bounce a lot and the angles are all wrong and the sun was shining in her eyes and... ... ... Jussi the heroic.

Next time we'll brush up and deal with the mess.

dot dot dot

Our nearest met office weather station recorded -9C at 8am this morning. Fortunately it's now (11am) warmed up to minus 8C. But of course it is warmer here cos we're nearer the coast - but still cold. The water hasn't frozen in the house yet - but the outside tap has frozen - so the morning and evening goat chores are very hard. Buckets of water meant for the goats are snatched by jack frost of you're not nimble enough.

The school has been closed by the weather for two days and we are getting very low on wood and food. A power cut now would leave us very cold and hungry. We had a power cut on Saturday which meant writing christmas cards by candlelight - which was quaint but things is getting serious now.

Earth's rotation

Eeeh it got cold this week. Proper frosts like, with real frozen pipes up at croft. Only for a day or so - now it's settled to just being cold rather than eeeh cold!

The cold was briefly interrupted by warm winds from the north west but then the cold southerlies came in to chill us once again. Sic. Up-side-down eh?

Meanwhile The Girl is insisting that we call the full moon a dragon moon. So here is the dragon moon peeking through the trees up at the croft.

Back at the ranch we are making a concerted effort at making a concerted effort to get the house tender out. Nothing will stand in our way.

Much.

Bad parenting

The Girl has been off school for a couple of days - eventually we kept her at home after she returned from school with tales of being told she should be at home by her teacher. I always think though - it's far warmer in school than at home and she's better off in the warmth.

Sunday was the first Sunday of advent. Not an occasion that has ever meant anything to me, but Jussi's family celebrate it - lighting a candle and such. To add to that Christmassy feel we had our first snow which I rushed out to capture on camera. But I needed a subject, and a snotty girl was the nearest to hand. Not a bad piccy - in that it shows you what it was like. It's called "Dicing with pneumonia".

Weather

What with all the flooding everywhere it seems incredibly churlish to complain about the amount of water we've had falling from the sky of late. Everything is getting very wet and it's not nice. The old stable has a slightly leaky roof - we've patched in places and this keeps the water in check most of the time - until the day when we replace the whole roof - but all this rain is beating our repairs. And everything is all rather sodden.

It has been quite windy too. Not madly, just irritatingly. But the thrill is it gave me a chance last week for the first serious use of the anannanonomometer Jussi bought me for my birthday. So, on Wednesday, I measured 20.8 m/s (46 mph, 75 kph, or just gale force 9). And I didn't try particularly hard - just stepped out into the garden which, relatively speaking, is quite sheltered, and compared to many days we've had, it didn't seem all that windy.

My sentences seem to be getting longer. Perhaps the rural isolation is turning me into a rambling bumpkin.

Hmmmm.

A home for Hugo

There are all kinds of reasons why sometimes I don't manage to blog. Sometimes it's because I want to say something but can't quite figure out how to say it, sometimes it's cos I don't feel like it, sometimes it's cos there's nothing to say, sometimes there's too much to say...etc. Anyway I've been off-line recently for all the above. Of all the things I've omitted to blog of late there are two spectacularly significant events.

Firstly the completion of the lean-to - started with such urgency way back when. Here it is - labouring by yours truly, block work by Malc, magnificent holes by Christian, frame design and build and doors by Jussi. It's big, it's warm its glorious and we built it ourselves. Those who have known Jussi long enough might recognise Warrender-Park-Road-Bathroom-Blue. Funny how those old tins of paint get used up eventually.

It's first job is to house Hugo - an old timer we've borrowed to 'cover' the goatlings, and a couple of last years first time mums who aren't milking as well as we hoped (and it also puts them out of synch with the others so that we don't get overwhelmed with kids like we did last year). Anyway - as you can see Hugo is a bit of a toothless old sod. A character through and through. But pure Anglo Nubian and hopefully soon to be father to a handsome clutch of kids.

And hopefully soon to be returned to his adoring owner - cos MAN he stinks, and everyone who comes into contact with him stinks, and the house stinks ..... and Rebecca is coming to see us this weekend. Unfortunately I think we omitted to warn her...

Competence competence competence

So I drives all the way the Aberdeen - and it takes a long time mainly as a result of of all the road works on the A96 - due to the last serious bout of flooding - and I goes to the job interview at 4pm - a rotten time for an interview - and it's a dead simple interview really - asking questions the likes of which I've asked hunnerds of candidates in my time - but somehow not the questions I was expecting and somehow flapped and gulped like a drowning fish and totally fluffed that one thank you very much. And I drives home again. And I gets home to be slaughtered by a cold-like virus.

Bleugh.

My thoughts today are with the wet ones. Cumbria and Dumfriesshire. We seem to be in the eye of the storm here - beautifully calm and sunny - but down there looks grim. In 2004 a report by Sir David King, then the UK Govt Chief scientific adviser, predicted that, by the end of this century, what were once considered to be events that will only happen every 150 years, would be happening every 10 years. So the "1000 year" floods we had yesterday will have become events that can be expected to happen every 66 years.

As usual there was the TV footage of the besodden bemoaning the lack of action - "they should do more - build more flood defences" etc etc. You matey-pie, should get out of yer 4X4, and scream for higher taxes so Govt has the funding. Roughly, the UK Govt needs an extra £1bn per year to spend on flood defences if construction is to keep up with the worsening climate.

Climate change is real, we are seeing it in our own lives, the predictions are getting worse and politicians need mandate to do something about stopping it, and for finding the cash to adapt to it. And that it down to you.

Social services

Sorry - not blogged in almost a week. After the last post social services came and arrested me and took me to Guantanamo Bay. Hopefully I'll be able to post next week - when I'm going to Aberdeen for a job interview. Big City Lights.

Pollock Saratoga

Fish - three good sized ones and a wee for good measure - gutted and cleaned

Garlic - crushed

Parsley - chopped

Tomato - sliced

Green Pepper - sliced

Wine Wine - glug glug glug - splash

Olive Oil - glug glug

Plenty of Salt and Pepper

Stuff the fish - add the wet, season, bake in sealed container/foil.

Bingo.

Why this recipe should be Saratoga - the site of one of the worlds most important battles ever - no really it sez so on Saratoga.org - I've no idea. I found it on the web, but refined it through the addition of green pepper. Naturally the freshest fish - caught by yer own fair hands, is imperative - and I'd suggest serving it with rice cos the sauce turns out to be one of the deliciousist ever and needs a bland carrier.

I'd recommend fishing on one of those beautifully crisp and still winter days, and take your camera with new batteries, following the advice of an esteemed blog reader.

We fished with two new spinners - I caught three fish on five casts with the first - then The Girl tried and the spinner was snagged......and then lost. Then I cast once with the other new spinner, caught a fish - then The Girl tried and the spinner was snagged.....and then lost.

Good sized fish, so even with the cost of the spinners it was a reasonably cheap meal, but The Girl was a bit despondent.

Check the tide tables, this tide was only about 3m - any higher and I think The Girl might get washed away.

Tasty recipe of the day

Hold me back hold me back hold me back.

Bug yer minister

Follow this link to write to Alistair Darling (or equivalent if you're not a UK voter) and ask him to discuss climate change at tomorrows G20 finance ministers meeting in St Andews. You need to do it today or tomorrow (November 6 & 7th).

G20 managed to find £600bn to stimulate the economy after the financial crash last year. Groups like Avaaz are only asking for £150bn climate change package. Well it would be start.

Add your voice:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/climate_finance_emergency/98.php?CLICK_TF_TRACK

(when I wrote this they had got just over 5000 signatures, they are aiming for 25000 - how many have they got now?)

Saturday night

Yay! We went to the pub!

Totally spontaneously we got the opportunity to spend nigh on three hours in the pub on a Saturday night. FAB-U-LOUS. And not only was it an excellent little birthday treat but it was Halloween and therefore an excuse to lay on a dance in the village hall and for the locals to get dressed up for it. The pub was rockin'. Lots of young uns, not too many inebriates and plenty of high spirits. We had babysitting duties so couldn't get to the dance - one day we will, for better or for worse.

Our Saturday night excursions were fueled by a black forest gateau that I'd asked Jussi to bake for me. A fantastic treat - I think only the second bfg I've had in my life, the first being on my 19th birthday when I was too pissed to notice.

And it was all washed down by an unfeasibly large mug of tea from those nice people in Bonaly. This is a 1.5 pint mug - over 800ml - two tea bag sized. Phenomenal.