Busy doing nothing

For people who don't actually have jobs we never seem to have a spare moment!

Since we arrived back home on Friday out feet have barely touched the ground. We spent the weekend trying to cram as much of sharing our island with Lynda and Stuart into daylight hours as possible, within constraints of weather. They stayed at Kinloch Castle and joined us at the croft for evening meals, took breakfast at the castle and we took lunch to them. As an arrangement it worked fairly well although I know they are looking forward to trying out the new B&B on Rum next time they visit and hoping to maybe even stay with us the time after that.

I remember walking across the bridge from the village towards the castle, past the turn off to the Kilmory road which takes you to our croft on our very first visit to Rum and trying to imagine this being our home, a road I walked daily. I remember getting a tiny fizzle of excitement at the thought that one day it might not just be our home, it might also be a place we could share with family and friends - show them round, talk to them about, see if they could feel the magic we feel here and understand that compelling feeling we had to make this our home. We've now shared it with most of the important people in our lives - family and several sets of friends (although I am still fixing my brother with a stare and hoping he'll make it here, his own rather busy life taken into account of course!).

It was great to share Rum with Lynda and Stuart who have been such a source of support to us over the last couple of years. We have stayed with them several times while living in Willow last year and they came to our rescue on more than one occasion. They have listened to our late night pouring out of hopes and dreams from our plans to go off in the first place to our notion to apply for a croft on Rum and have encouraged, believed in us and championed us every step of the way. You might not get to choose your family but somewhere along the line Lynda and Stuart have definitely become part of ours!

We waved them off on the boat on Monday while waving in Ady's brother and family, most of whom came to visit earlier this year so are back for round 2. This time it's a brief stay of just 4 nights and Ady and I are otherwise engaged for a lot of the daytime while they are here but we're looking forward to a whole afternoon and evening tomorrrow with them, all day on Thursday and most of Friday too before we wave them off again.

Meanwhile Ady and I are doing venison butchery training. More on that when we finish the course tomorrow but suffice to say we are really enjoying it, learning loads and tonight we dined on sausages from a deer that we skinned, butchered and processed into sausages ourselves. Delicious :)