and it was going so well

The new year really was going well.

I got the last ferry off the islands on Christmas Eve and drove through bits of such outstanding picturesqueness hat I quite forgot myself and started driving to Inverness instead of Fort William. The Christmas bit itself passed pleasantly enough given that there was no water (I'd brought 5 litres of drinking water with me and - together with a bathful of water for flushing the toilet - I just managed to eke it out 'til defrost on the 27th without having to do a run to the burn) dodgy electrics (the dipstick had been left out of the diesel genny, spraying oil everywhere and leaving it in danger of seizing which is a bit of a problem since the batteries are fucked so the genny's coming on every 5 minutes and we're running through fuel like it was going out of fashion - and it so isn't oh and the water turbine controls have failed as shown above) and a fridge and freezer that had both been switched off and left closed for a month (the freezer was truly disgusting and my car still smells of a mixture of offal and blackcurrants from transporting the rubbish over the track to Drimnin). I didn't get the second potato bed dug (frozen ground) or all the fruit trees pruned (too many trees) and I nearly missed the ferry on the way back (I think the ferryman recognises me from the last time: as I bombed down the hill into Uig in my exhausted wee panda I did consider crying to see if that would get me on but apparently folk try that all the time and the ferrymen are hardened, it's a funeral or nothing) ... but ... but I spent a lovely time breathing the air at Drumbuidhe and arrived on the islands smiling in the winter sunshine. A gentle start to work, a run along Culla Bay and a bracing walk in the south Uist and it's all looking good.

Alas the madness of Campbell is still there in the background and the kraken has started to stir. He's been in Glasgow since November (with Christmas in Devon) and his social life seems to be slipping into negative figures - he's rejecting everyone (friends, lovers...) and I think I'm the only person he sees in Glasgow (and since I'm based in Benbecula that's not good). He must be aware that he can't go up to Drumbuidhe by himself (I tried to be gentle about it but his memory is too bad to be in charge of the electrics we have up there - if the genny had seized it would have cost thousands to repair and we're losing probably £100 a month through excess diesel use with the crap batteries not to mention the cost of spoiled food from the freezer) so his cunning solution is to get a series of random families that we don't know to come and stay in Drumbuidhe for free and look after him for a week at a time. Oh and Emma Wright (who lives in Yorkshire) would organise the bookings for this.

Campbell is trying to recreate a period in the past that he sees now through very rose-tinted glasses since he finds the present so unbearable. I think that's also why he doesn't want to see people he knows - they would see him as he is and he would have to acknowledge that he is a confused old man. On the plus side he's getting closer to the power of attorney stage but it's not really much of a plus side.