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.
