Picture
Not having a job doesn't necessarily mean not having a job to do. One project for the last week has been some landscaping round the house to minimise the effects of the sea of mud which has surrounded us. Fifty quid and a couple of visits to Wickes with a trailer for slabs and chuckies, plus some elbow grease saw the quagmire reduced in size somewhat. Now we have a nice new paved path to the wheelie bins (out of site to the left) and a parking area for the car which is gravel on two sides (held in place by treated pine poles). The new bike shed is in place on the far wall with our front door visible to the right. Much more importantly we now have a dry route to the garage (see photo below). It might not seem that important, but this is where the freezer is - so now no more muddy trudges to get the ice cream out...

Picture
Ice cream alley in all its glory
 
Picture
Preparing the ground for gravel.
Now that the snow and ice have gone, we've been left with mud. It's strangely oppressive. I don't even mind getting muddy feet, and insist on throwing the children outside to play in their welly boots. The problem is in the transition from outdoors to indoors, especially when the children and dog are involved. The mud here is different from in China. Sometimes the wheels of our bikes got so caked with thick, red mud on off-road trips that the wheels would no longer turn and footwear turned from flat soles to wedges. Back to our front doorstep - it's not quite the mud of The Piano [remember that film?] but it's bad enough to have driven us to some landscaping work. Ali and I took the trailer (previous reversing practice now coming in handy) into town to buy some gravel and work gloves. "Gloves for men", it said on the label, which I pointed out to the cashier was somewhat sexist for 2011. The 20-something year old boy, sorry, young man, looked at me blankly. Anyway, all will be revealed when the work is complete.

What's your local mud like?

 
Picture
Lesley brandishes the power drill.
I now know why these tools are called power drills. It's not because of the force with which they make holes in wood. It is, in fact, due to the feeling of power one gets from using such a nifty, effective and dangerous device. The last time I put up a shelf I used my grandad's old hand drill, which always wobbled in tiresome effort, leaving a heap of sawdust on the floor. This tool, on the other hand, produces a fine scattering of almost imperceptible dust in its split-second penetration of the wood. What was I doing? Briefly helping Ali construct our new bike shed - as we have no car we are going to rely on our recently serviced bicycles to get around. Given that the nearest town is 7 miles away, this should keep us fit. As soon as I had to relinquish the drill I got bored, went inside and left Ali to it.

Picture
Ali screws the hinges on, without a power screwdriver - too bad.
 
Picture
Poised to post, Dingwall PO
Ali's spent the last month blowing his own trumpet onto paper and seven lucky employers are about to receive an offer of his services. The first seven are all oil companies, as he explores the possibility of off-shore mud-logging. His dislike for the job twenty years ago was mainly due to the excessive smoking in all corners of the oil platform. He's hoping that things will be different now, and the off-shore-on-shore routine will allow him time to complete the book he's currently writing.

 
Picture
Play time after school
These days I am filled with delight at finding pleasure in what may be considered mundane tasks - walking the girls to the school bus in the snow, meeting the girls as they come back from the bus in the snow, watching BB-the-dog meet the girls with yelps and bounds as they come back from the bus in the snow, returning from dropping the girls at the bus to do 15 minutes of tai qi (in the snow) followed by a large, strong cappuccino.....not in the snow. Honestly, it's hard to put into words the mixture of emotions I have experienced these days as Edie and Freda begin school life at our local Primary - a mixture of excitement, trepidation, relief, gratitude and wonder. I haven't felt this way for a long time, given that the last 5 years have had a particular high dose of stress and responsibility in terms of childcare, not only for day-to-day care in extraneous circumstances, but for their entire education - even their attendance at local schools required a huge amount of parental supervision and support. They are now thoroughly enjoying school life, already building positive relationships with their classmates and teachers, finding the academic tasks a breeze. They return home with hilarious tales of playground antics, the content of other children's packed lunches and the mischief they have partaken in. Freda, for instance, was persuaded to teach some Chinese to her classmates. She taught her friend Ewan to say: "I'm a bit of an idiot", which they all found very amusing.

An up-and-coming project for Freda is to prepare a talk on a famous Victorian. She's currenlty researching George Forrest, a Scot who lived and died in Yunnan after making a name for himself as a prolific botanist and plant-finder. As you can see, China still features in our daily lives.

 
Picture
Although a few bottles of booze were consumed, we're not quite heading for Alcoholics Anonymous. Katie and Lesley did, however, find time to create some Artistic Aliens. The dotty gents [left and right] both vye for the attention of Katie's glamorous, and somewhat coy, specimin. Cecil [right] is a cyclops and enjoys yoga, as well as people-watching. The aliens, which have expressive faces and carefully-crafted limbs, are set to be the latest communicative toy.

 
Picture
Logging horse wood sled
When we headed into the local forest today to gather some firewood our aims weren't quite as lofty as in this photo. We did, however, adopt a traditional method of extracting the logs - horse power. Lucy was harnessed up to drag the logs from the rough ground to the track, where we loaded them onto a trolley. Lucy then pulled the trolley back to the house. She seems to enjoy the outings, mainly because she gets to roam freely to graze while we are finding, stripping and preparing the logs for extraction. Great team work.
[See more videos for some clips of Lucy in action.]

 
Picture
Ali and Lesley found themselves with some spare time on their hands yesterday, waiting for the rest of the wood-logging team to arrive at the forest - that is Freda, Edie, Granny, Grandad and the pony, Lucy (more on that later). We took the opportunity to practise turning the trailer. Driving with a trailer is easy enough, if one remembers to turn corners a little bit wider and longer. Getting it to go backwards, however, is significantly harder. A tweek of the wheel in the wrong direction can lead to a frustraing jackknife. Our practice session soon turned into a competition, to see who could reverse the trailer round a gravel heap and into a small side road, with the car and trailer ending up in a straight line. Any guesses who won?