Dancing of course referring the quote at the end of my last blogpost.
Oilskins referring to today which has mostly been spent outside in the rain.
Another early up this morning for picking winkles. Dragon and Star are keen to come and join in with this activity but ever mindful of not using our children for cheap labour and not doubling the volume of wet clothes we need to get dry we left them at home today as it was raining and pouring. This suited them just fine and they were very busy indeed with activities including thumbing through various catalogues we've been gathering to create Christmas lists - beautifully written Christmas lists I might add complete with prices, which catalogues they are to be found in, item codes, page numbers and a very complicated star rating system to show which are most wanted. There are also illustrations and festive doodles. They have also been grooming Bonnie who is getting more soft and soppy and less Working Dog as days go by. She is at least being taught lots of tricks and demonstrating her intelligence. Star has been poring over a big animal encyclopedia to find the ten animals David Attenborough would take in his ark which we watched at the weekend. Pangolins, Marvellous Spatutail hummingbirds, black lion tamarinds and other such weird and wonderful creatures. Dragon has been writing and illustrating a lego minifigure story in a book he made. Really we are utterly superfluous to this educating lark, far better we get ourselves winkle picking to earn cold hard cash to fund the purchases of said Christmas list!
They are very keen to come with us on the next fine day though, try their hand themselves, test their theories about how many thousands of winkles make up a bag (I had a bleak moment this morning when I started mentally working out a price per winkle and stopped before I depressed myself with fractions of coppers and started ranting to myself about how I used to be someone and wear a suit to work! I shared this thought with Ady and he reassured me that 'we're still *someone* just a someone on their hands and knees in the rain' and I guess an oilskin dungarees and jacket combo is still a suit of sorts!), see for themselves the rich biodiversity down on the shores of Loch Scresort and get some outside time. Maybe tomorrow.
The boat came in and brought with it most of the things we'd been waiting for; a replacement power pack to run our dvd player, a pair of bargain salopettes for me (won on ebay second hand), a new headtorch for me (mine had been shut in a cupboard that it was hanging on the handle of and the elastic had stretched so much that it kept falling down when I wore it and illuminating my cleavage rather than where I was going in the dark), some more thermal socks for all of us (we bought a couple of pairs to test and I told Dragon and Star that 'these socks are the business' which is a phrase my Mum uses. The socks have now been christened 'business socks' which tickles me every time someone asks 'have you seen my business socks?') and our animal feed and some udder cream as recommended for Ady's poor sore outdoor hands.
Lunch was a very delicious carrot and ginger soup I'd made last night in readiness for a cold mornings work along with some home baked bread. This afternoon I walked into the village to sort out some paperwork and this evening Ranger Mike came up and stayed for dinner. After a bit of a surprise at the initial news from the planning department representatives yesterday it has been really lovely to have support and general back up from so many fellow islanders. I'm sure I'll be blogging more about all that as it happens but in the meantime we have a whole lot of getting on with life to be doing.
Illuminated cleavage *teehee* thanks for the giggle, made me think of the Good Life :)
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