farewell to summer

I'm lying in bed (2pm!) with the remains of my second cup of coffee and three banana, orange and chocolate muffins contemplating some relaxed exercise, long overdue unpacking (I'm beginning to think that I may never actually unpack - I could live my life here in a slowly increasing sea of discarded newspaper and mismatched envelopes) and another week of seafood-based meals. Yesterday I tracked down Kallin seafood's shop and got 2 scallops, 3 langoustines and a smoked mackerel - I'm going to make a saffron and pea risotto to go with the scallops; cobble together ingredients for a kind-of-Thai soup for the prawns and either go for kedgeree or pate for the mackerel. Last week was filled with seafood brought back from Drumbuidhe (razor clams and mussels - in the end I couldn't face the mussels - a mollusc too far) and salmon from the Hedridean smokehouse. It's all terribly healthy but a teensy bit repetitive, hence the muffins. These extremely high fat thanks to some out-of-date greek yoghurt from Maclennans. The basic recipe (adapted from Joy of Cooking) was:

1 orange (rind grated and juice squeezed)

1 cup orange juice and yoghurt

2oz (very approx) melted butter

2/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 cups self-raising flour

3 mashed bananas

1 bar maya gold chocolate cut into basic chips

mix it together, divide between 12 paper cases and bake at 200C for 15 minutes

very nice results if I say so myself and I'm now using my sugar and caffeine combo to order Christmas presents on-line. Strangely I always seem to end up spending more on myself than on others. Despite spending Saturday exploring the deserted Aird a' Mhorain on Saturday (giving a farewell to the sun - it's been glorious but that's the last we'll see of it in the morning and evenings 'til April) which counts as pretty hardcore Scottish rural, there's a large part of me that thinks I should be a groovy wisecracking jewish new yorker and buys books accordingly (Sloane Crosley, David Sedaris, Thesaurus of Flavour). I got a couple of nice sketches out of the walk and one of my current resolutions is to start a series of drawings of the Balivanich water tower to enter into the Glasgow drawings competition.

I spent last weekend at Drumbuidhe (yay for flexitime!) basking in gobsmacking weather and getting a stack of stuff done: boat pulled up and turned over for winter; last of the autumn planting (fennel and spinach) done; pea trenches prepared (and vandalised by pine marten); edges strimmed. The grass cutter is completely broken now (the history of its breakdowns would take too long but it's just 3 years old and was doomed the minute Campbell took ownership of it) and so I'm saying "to hell with machinery" and buying a sycthe. Women (well my mum and I) have struggled from time immemorial to work out how to protect machines from Campbell but it just can't be done so - since a fancy-dancy scythe will cost only £100 compared with £3,000 for a new grass cutter - I'm giving up the fight. The cutting of the grass will have to be done if the meadow and orchard is to be saved: since the grass cutter has never worked properly the poor meadow has had weeds and couch grass running rampant for the past 5 years. It will be a winter job alongside: pruning, rescuing and rebuilding my kiln and rewiring (dementia, alcohol, electricity and water are one of the alltime terrible combinations) the shower Capmbell installed in the fank. This last task is part of a campaign to get the fank set-up so that Campbell can live there rather than the main house. The stairs are treacherous in the main house and the rubbish that Campbell generates is hard to live alongside.

My next trip to Drumbuidhe is planned for 5th November but I'm still desperately searching for alternative routes. I got held up on the way back last time (road resurfacing at the head of Loch Sunart) which meant I had to do 180 miles to Uig on Skye like a bat out of hell (0vertaking anything and everything) in my fiat panda with the last 10 miles particularly nail-biting (taking every corner at 80, watching the clock tick on and then having a car pull out in front as I entered Uig). I made it with 5 minutes to spare but the cost in stress and petrol is too high.