new camera!

A new camera! with fancy shutter delay! the only minor issues with this wonderous new toy are that A) I haven't got a tripod thus requiring slightly odd compositions such as "trailer by starlight" and B) social convention mean that since the new camera was a present to D then with him it must, generally, remain.

It has been two months since I wrote anything here but a fair amount of stuff has been squeezed into those two months (not including the wonderous new camera).  I've been and gone to Marseille; C has changed his will so that I am no longer disinherited; I've been for two interviews for a perfect job down in Newcastle that had, alas, one person who was just that teeny bit more perfect than me and, strangely and sadly, I've had a miscarriage.

These events are all related and, in being related, distracting enough that coping with things has superseded writing.  Coping with things also means that it's been over a month since I've been up to Drumbuidhe and autumn planting has gone to the dogs (hopefully the gate over the burn has held) but not yet the deer.  I'm currently heading back down to Newcastle for another job interview so it'll be a few days yet before I head north to do battle with rodents and switch the heating system from C's rather extravagant option.  With all the stuff I've had there's been the minor background hassle of my sister's attempt to find help for C.  She's placed an advert in the job centre in Fort William for a "live-in estate manager" and has been interviewing people by phone.  She's missed out the information that A) She's based 600 miles away from the job location B) It's a holiday home, not an estate and C) C has dementia; been detained by the police for violence; is resident for only half the year at most and - crucially - doesn't have the money to employ someone for more than 1/2 a day a week .... So far there's been a motley collection of people replying to the advert (bloke 1 lasted for an hour and a half before retreating declaring that "I've never been shouted at like that"; bloke 2 lasted a day in which time he cut up the roof ridge reserved for the genny shed to ineffectually repair the garden shed and bloke 3 lasted three days because he had no independent transport but, given his time spent inside and alcohol issues, is probably not the best to spend time with a fragile, volatile alcoholic C in a remote cottage ....).  One month ago I was phone up by a lady asking for further details about the advert since my sister had told her: it could provide full-time employment for a couple; help was needed to take holiday bookings for "the lodge" (I have no idea what this referred to) and it would be suitable for the lady to move to with her 10 year old daughter.  My strongest hope is that this call was actually from the Fort William job centre and they're going to stop running the advert.

All the stuff mentioned means that there's been precious little cooking in either Glasgow or Drumbuidhe but, with thanks to savour fare, and in honour of autumn, France (yes, yes, I know that pain quotidien is a Belgian chain)  and excessive calories, here is a recipe for a praline spread.

* 2 cups hazelnuts
* 1 cup sugar (with a dash of water)
* scant teaspoon salt
* 1 to 2 tblsp rape seed oil

Toast hazelnuts and rub to remove skins; heat sugar with the water 'til it caramelises then tip in the skinned hazlenuts; put praline and salt into blender, whizz 'til broken then add oil 'til you have a spreadable paste.

basics

Tesco helpfully labels its gin as "everyday value" and, whilst I'm not sure if it's a good idea to have gin as one of your daily basics, it's good to find straight up alcohol in the sea of infused gins on the market.

I picked a second lot of sloes on the way out of Drumbuidhe last week (the first lot was picked after cycling for an hour to post a job application and went into sloe jelly along with the slightly grotty fallen apples) for one of the easiest recipes known to woman: put sloes in bottle, add sugar, add gin.

After too much travelling around (Drumbuidhe / Glasgow / Durham / London / Oxford) I was suffering from run-down stores and too many fancy sandwiches so today was also a day for basic breadmaking.  When people find out I make my own bread they often ask if I have a breadmaker.  C bought one for Drumbuidhe but it just seems way too complicated for me: the wee kneading thing keeps getting thrown out into the compost heap; it only seems to work with expensive pre-mixed bread packets; it's another electrical thing in a house with erratic electricity and it takes an age.  The last time C used it we had eight people coming for lunch and quite limited food so the bread was really needed.  The display showed the bread as being ready at just after noon but C had a rush of blood to the head, opened the machine up at eleven, declared it a failure and transferred the whole lot to the oven.  The loaf ended up a bit misshapen but cooked in the end but it's a disturbing pattern of C misinterpreting stuff when he's under a bit of stress.  I've just returned a new £50 heating programmer after the existing one was deemed to be "broken" but now seems to be unbroken.  There's also the £1000 spent on a visit from phone engineers to "fix" the length of time the phone rings before it goes to voicemail (yes, it's set by the network rather than the physical phone).  Since I'm now sceptical about any electrical goods reported broken I don't, personally, buy anything that can't be returned but it does get hard to stay calm as I watch C scattering his funds to the winds.

I've had a week in Glasgow (see reference to travel above) and C was hoping to have his cronies up to play with the wind turbine.  This doesn't seem to have worked but, when I travel up on Monday, I'll have no excuse to delay talking to C about transferring his share of Drumbuidhe over to me.  We've talked about this before and it's an excellent idea but, unfortunately mentioning it will bring up the topic of C disinheriting me.  Since this was a shitty and stupid thing for him to do he gets very, very defensive about it.  When C's up at Drumbuidhe with just me he's quite calm but the addition of extra stress (like a wind turbine that doesn't work) and grievances egged on by cronies can be enough to trigger violence.  So, I've been trying to get the timing right to talk about Drumbuidhe's ownership: just before C heads down to Glasgow and with minimal possibility of turbine-crony-stress.

A big part of me thinks that walking away from Drumbuidhe would be great (cheaper, easier and with much less shouting) but being the daughter of mad parents is a lifetime comitment even if I didn't get much choice about it.

Anyway this week in Glasgow was supposed to involve a concerted effort at getting a job.  It hasn't.  I do at least have a nice couple of loaves, the dead easy method for which is:

12oz strong white flour
12oz strong wholemeal flour
2 tsp salt
1 packet fast-acting yeast
15 fl oz warm water

Mix all ingredients together (I use a large measuring jug to limit the washing up required since bread dough does get very messy), knead, divide into two rough loaf shapes, diagonally slash and place into two oiled loaf tins, leave the loaf tins in the oven (switched off and door closed) for a couple of hours or overnight, when the loaves have roughly doubled in size (or when you wake up) switch on the oven to 220C / gas 7 for 45 minutes (tip one of the loaves out of the tin and tap the bottom, if it sounds hollow the loaves are done, if not return them to the oven for another 15 minutes or so).  Remove from the tins to cool.

Cunning bakers will notice that there's none of that proving stuff here.  Modern dried yeasts mix very easily with the flour so I don't think a second kneading is necessary but the longer overnight rising does give a more complex taste.

dirty diesel

As any fool on the west coast knows, this picturesque part of the world runs on rosy-tinted hydrocarbons.  Since C is a key part of the picturesqueness (renowned from Corpach to Ullapool as a character) he goes through red diesel with gay abandon.  The bits and pieces associated with his wind turbine (tv monitors, sound systems, compressed air controls, starter motor ...) use stacks of electricity and the turbine doesn't produce anything useful so when he's up here showing off his turbine to impressionable yachties, the diesel generator comes on most days ... often twice.

So Wednesday was a day for picking up the trailer with the bowser filled with diesel and hauling it across six miles of track.  That went reasonably well but then it all got complicated: C took two pumps to bits in an attempt to get them working and finally succumbed to my suggestions that we just siphon the diesel out.  While I was having a coffee he decided that this process was much too slow and that he hadn't broken anything for a while so he reversed the car and trailer away from the tank.  The bowser was still a third full of diesel and he burnt the clutch on his car out doing it.

Twelve plastic jerry cans of diesel later and the bowser's still not empty but the trailer has now been moved, again, so that it's blocking the track.  Every stitch that I'm wearing stinks of the foul stuff and first thing tomorrow I'm going to have to spend hauling the trailer sideways to get it clear of the posts C erected to prevent unspecified 'people' from driving over the non-functioning internet connection he's rigged up for the wind turbine.  Oh, and I don't think he's going to make it over the track, let alone back to Glasgow with that clutch.

I don't think I'm being that patient, I think I'm just too tired to get angry.  I do, however, go to bed every night hoping that I will wake up to discover that C has decided to take up watercolour painting.

After a ridiculous amount of aerobic exercise, dinner was a very well-deserved roast chicken with chilli-fried cabbage and mashed potato followed by creme caramel.  I made the cremes yesterday but the only disadvantage to that was that I'd already eaten two to keep my strength up through the day.  I tried flavouring the milk with meadowsweet but, apart from making me feel all bucolic, I didn't notice any extra flavour.

Creme Caramel

7oz sugar
400ml cream and milk
4 eggs
3 oz sugar
vanilla

* caramelise the 7oz sugar and pour into six wee dishes
* beat the eggs and 3oz sugar together
* heat the cream and milk mixture to boiling point then pour into the eggs and sugar and mix well
* divide the custard betwenn the six wee (caramelised) dishes
* place in a large dish in the oven then fill (the large dish) with boiling (or as hot as you can) water
* set the oven to gas mk 3 and start testing the custards after 30 minutes - they're ready when set but wobbly

death and taxes

The freakish sunny weather has broken but the cloud and showers here in Glasgow are more fitting to the grim situation I'm in which has no happy solution in sight.

The first strand is, as ever, C's volatility (actually both strands involve C).  He had Brian Cooper (who gets his full name mentioned for being a nasty wee tit) up last weekend to Drumbuidhe to try and commission the new control system for the wind turbine.  The system is sophisticated, expensive, potentially dangerous and uninsured.  Setting it up is far, far beyond C's capabilities and Brian is also working well beyond his knowledge and experience.  Had I known Brian was visiting I would have delayed my travel up to Drumbuidhe but, apart from saying he was looking forward to me coming, C didn't mention this.  I arrived to find a fair bit of mess (three days of dirty dishes and half-eaten meals and, as he always does, Brian had slept in his bed without putting any sheets on ...).  On Sunday morning I was lying down inside waiting for my midge bites to die down (I'd been tying up the peas in the garden) when Brian decided to come in and demand to know if I had a problem with him because I hadn't said I was pleased to see him.  I decided not to mention his casual racism and sexism but did say that no, I didn't like him, because he never made up his bed, gave no help with food or washing up and was taking money from a vulnerable old man to help install an illegal and dangerous electrical system (the plans for the current system is that it will allow the wind turbine to be switched on, from Glasgow, over the internet ... since 19 previous turbines have collapsed and it stands, unprotected, next to a public footpath, the danger is obvious).  Brian responded that Drumbuidhe was a "rough and ready" place where you didn't need sheets and that it would "kill" C if he wasn't able to install this new system.  Hey ho.

Brian left a couple of hours later having failed to set up the system and, I suspect, having told C that I was being rude and obstructive.  I went off to the village hall committee meeting and when I returned C was in bed.  The next morning C had started hard drinking again and, on the back of a couple of strong whiskies, he lost his temper when I said I was going to make up the beds in the fank for guests arriving next week.  I'd suspected this might happen and, for my own safety, I had my bags packed in the car, so I said would head back to Glasgow.  C responded that I should "fuck off" because I had "ruined his life".

So I'm back in Glasgow waiting for C to calm down and, please God, stop drinking so much.

The second strand is that, two weeks ago, I was checking my dad's papers in his flat in Glasgow (we have a problem with our broadband supply and he'd told me to look there) when I found his will which he'd changed in 2010, just after he was detained by the police for assaulting me.  He had disinherited me.  K was to inherit his Glasgow flat and his 1/3 share of Drumbuidhe was left to his (six and four year old) grandsons, to be managed by K 'til they reach majority.  Although he has a generous pension C has no other assets (all my mum's savings have disappeared into the wind turbine) and he's currently paying K about £1,000 a month since she's got money problems at the minute.  If this will stands, K will sell Drumbuidhe in the blink of an eye.

I asked C about the will and we are making slow steps to have him change it again but he is furious at having been found out doing something both stupid and nasty.  His fury is currently directed towards me and the "betrayal of trust" I've shown by going through his personal papers.  All friends and neighbours are appalled by C's action but powerless in the face of his raging pride and crappy judgement.

My current diet is mixture of chips, cigarettes and stress so recipes will have to wait for future blogs.

bowing out gracefully

My political career ended with a fabulous bit of weather on the west coast as I toured the picturesque letterboxes of the west coast (there are no letterboxes on the small isles but the situation was equally picturesque).  Alas I was unable to get a listing on the ballot paper as the Labour party candidate (there was nothing sinister about this: it was an error on my part and the returning officer would not allow it to be corrected) and I scored only a tiny number of votes.  hey ho.  The three sitting candidates for Caol & Mallaig were returned and Labour had gained two seats on Highland Council overall so I'm counting it an interesting experience and a further lesson in the importance of correct form-filling.

I'm back in Glasgow at the minute avoiding the painting of my spare room which has to be done before I can rent it out (to cover all those pesky election expenses), revelling in fancy coffee, catching up on gossip and looking for a new job.

Drumbuidhe was a bit of a mess when I left on Friday since C had been alone for three days and he can't really cope with either cooking or washing up.  I'll be back on Wednesday when I'll have to cope with the depressed, unemployed farm labourer from Lockerbie that my sister has arranged to visit to see about possibly working with C.  I could really do without another depressed bloke in Drumbuidhe but my sister ignored all my objections to her employment advertisement (I'm the sole resident and bill-payer at Drumbuidhe but my sister didn't mention me in the advert for a "live-in estate handyman" she also didn't mention that my father is in the care of a psychiatrist, has a serious alcohol problem and has been detained by the police for domestic violence, Drumbuidhe has very limited liability insurance as well as a stack of uninsured dangerous stuff).  Anyone who lives in the Highlands and Islands knows that there are lots of dissatisfied people around who will respond to vague adverts promising a new life.  They also know that a lot of resources are needed to help these people who arrive thinking that mountains will solve their problems (just ask any mental health professional).  I can't contact the depressed Lockerbie man and tell him that the advert was a misrepresentation since my sister is defensive as hell and would see this as my lack of "understanding" and C is being protective of her well-meaning attempts at care.  Also C is still having violent temper tantrums so contradicting him is dangerous.  I'm seeing C's doctor in Glasgow on Wednesday just to talk through the problems and then I'll head up north to pick through the mess.

C's lack of mobility as well as his slow acknowledgement of his limits mean that he hasn't weeded any of this year's crops (he destroyed all last year's carrots and lettuces) although the plum trees are still suffering from his application of pathclear.  The garden looks great after the first grass-cuting of the year; the early charlotte potatoes have come through their protective plastic and we'll finish off the cavolo nero just as the salad can be harvested.  There was a wee bit of sawfly but I'm keeping vigilant.

The Campaign starts here

Despite my incorrect form-filling (arguing with Electoral registration officers is the definition of 'futile') I am now registered as a Labour party candidate (ward 12 - Caol & Mallaig) for the Highland Council elections on 3rd May.  Basic difficulties range from: taking a photograph for the leaflet whilst 6 miles from the nearest house (I used the self-timer in the end rather than waiting for passing walkers like a cargo cult); preparing a leaflet on the fancy-dancy web-driven designer (slowed down by the fact that our broadband is steam-driven and it continually insists we're in Germany) and raw terror at the thought of promoting myself.

Tucked away here at Drumbuidhe at least I can disguise the chaos that my campaign is coming from.  I'm currently sitting here in my dressing gown having lit the fire, washed yesterday's dishes (the dishwasher is currently in bits although this is better than it was when I arrived and it was in bits all over the living room floor ... the mess is now confined to under the kitchen counter) made the coffee (I was hoping to find a moment to talk to C about how difficult his drinking is but since it took him less than two minutes to get his first drink of the day in - whisky in his coffee - I missed the elusive 'sober' moment) and put the bread onto bake.  Give me five minutes and I'll get round to some respectable clothes so I can tackle the Labour Party's 'print creator' again.

Today we have a handyman from Lochaline turning up with his wife and kids to help C on what will hopefully be a regular basis.  It's fair to say that C is struggling with everything.  He's making his way through at least a bottle of wine and a quarter bottle of whisky a day which doesn't help his memory, balance and temper.  The list of things that C can't do is extensive, for example he couldn't come up the dam when I cleared it out to get the water turbine working (it was a sunny day and it's a nice spot about 50m from the garden but C's too unsteady) he tried to defrost the freezer and broke it (since it's a large chest freezer this is a very big deal) by leaving a fan heater inside it and he's forgetting how to prepare food (when I'm not around he lives on booze and fray bentos).  What he does enjoy is getting involved in the solving of basic problems (once I'd cleared the dam the two of us worked our way along the garden water supply, unscrewing the junctions to clear them out).

Right, enough of the dressing gown and the blogging: it's time for proper clothes and a proper leaflet.

Spring sunshine

After months of dithering everything came together: the sun was out; the correct TEK screws were ready and I was actually up in Drumbuidhe. In a flurry of construction activity I got the fank chimney back up (a great view but metal roofs are killers on your knees) and the most crucial gable flashing back up. The sunshine makes even the grim tasks more pleasant and I wandered happily round the garden picking up all the prunings left from January which I'd been hoping the garden pixies would magic away.

Although the sun is out we're still in the broken down machinery phase of the year so the water turbine will have to get cleared out again (twigs, leaves and frogspawn) and the series 1 landrover LHS 94 is still fairly poorly. It was stuck about a mile away on the track since November: it has a recurring fault where it stops after 45 minutes and won't start again for an hour. The fitting of a fuel filter by an eager landrover enthusiast last year seems to have made it worse. Having fitted the filter the landrover enthusiast developed pneumonia and died unexpectedly so I can't really grumble about his intervention. Last week I jumpstarted LHS 94 on my way out of Drumbuidhe but it conked out again just when the track comes down to the shore, completely blocking the track. I didn't have an hour spare so I left it and ran away to Glasgow. Thankfully when I got back it started again (a wee bit of accelerator cable fondling was required) so I could get it off the track. I've still got to get it the 300m back here to the house but it will give C a project over Easter. He's coming back up to Drumbuidhe this week and my heart sinks a little at the "improvements" he'll start, especially since the gaps in his memory are now really obvious. Hopefully he will spend his time working out what all the bits of his wind turbine control system do: it took ages over winter but I finally managed to switch off all the gadgets which he has hard-wired into the battery system and electricity consumption fell dramatically as a result.

I'm really pleased with the etching I produced (my first!) over the New Year when the generator wasn't working and I was ekeing out every last drip of electricity and I'm now the proud owner of a faded sepia print of Balivanich's concrete water tower: definitely not the chocolate box market.

Turning the corner

Drumbuidhe does sometimes feel like a burden and this New Year has been quite bad: various bits of roof blown off; a neglected garden; my sister K stomping in with her size 7s to "sort things out"; mice everywhere; electrical system not working; the continual creep of broken electrical equipment across every space not to mention my lack of regular income. Now, as daylight gets to 10 hours a day. everything is starting to seem more manageable: I've tidied up the worst electrical equipment offenders and switched off the wind turbine controls; I've ordered next year's seeds and filled up the propagators; I've pruned the fruit trees and sorted out the compost heap. There's still a fallen tree on top of the garden shed but it's looking a bit more manageable.

Since we've now entered the post-it note phase of C's life I still have to work out ways of stopping him killing my carefully nurtured plants. C doesn't always do the killing personally, sometimes passing acolytes ask if they can do "something to help" and C will get them to pull up my salad (thinking they are weeds) or harvest my mooli (and then leave them to rot because he doesn't know what they are) or hoe the planted seed bed or harvest the onions a month too early or plant the carrots/onions/anything too close together or in the bed containing something else (this requires me to dig up and replant everything) or spray Pathclear (the clue is in the name) round the fruit trees... This is why I think my sister's idea of a live-in handyman to help C up here is a completely rubbish idea. Drumbuidhe is surrounded by evidence of what happens when my dad gets an acolyte with stars in their eyes (the bust grass cutter; rain that pours through the south gable; cables draped across courtyards and enough expensive gadgets to give a socialist luddite palpitations). Hey ho.

But enough of my whingeing. I've been writing this as displacement activity from today's task which is the editing of SAP calculations for my studio project and also for Uist. I'm trying to wrestle the complex calculations for energy use into a format which can be used to pragmatically assess the value of interventions for traditional housing on the islands. The algorithms aren't going to wrestle themselves so here goes.

New Year

Finally! we have daylight. It's universally acknowledged that the Christmas and New Year weather has been completely rubbish, this followed on from the early December rubbish weather to produce a series of perfect storms.

In parallel with the weather there has been a series of mechanical breakdowns so that my trusty fiat panda fell very poorly on the road down south for Christmas so after some seasonal wheel-removal I had to limp back to a Glasgow garage. I borrowed C's car to come up to Drumbuidhe for New Year but was hit by a lorry in Glencoe damaging most of the driver's side (terrifying at the time but my heart now sinks at the paperwork that will be involved). Now up here the storms have ripped off all attempts at protecting the generator which is sulking so I'm running on just PV and water power. Thankfully I've worked out how to turn off C's wind monitoring station (wired directly into the batteries, draining all those precious watts I've gathered) and, with a wee touch of sun today, I'm hopeful I'll get to watch the TV tonight. Hurrah!