snow, sunshine, springtime

We've had it all here in the past month: equinox! solar eclipse! midnight blizzards in Glencoe! and finally the sun has come out and Glasgow is frolicking in t-shirts.  I'm spending Easter in the big city having left Drumbuidhe to my sister and her family.  I had to drive down through the Glencoe blizzard late on Tuesday last week having fitted in a rather odd village hall AGM (there was a power cut so we all sat huddled in woolly jumpers, examining the financial statement by torchlight) and then a physio session in Glasgow.  I'm still suffering from the fall I had last summer and I'm aiming to strengthen my knee prior to examination and possible surgery for a torn cartilidge.

I'm also indulging in all the others joys of big city life including an excellent production of David Hare's The Absence of War at the Citizens.  I'm not sure what it says about me that I'm moved to tears by political drama.  I've also been catching up on my accidental vocation for looking after and/or listening to elderly chaps.  Just before Christmas I went through to Fife to try and track down my friend N whom I hadn't heard from in quite a while.  Turned out he'd had a slow breakdown and was stuck in his bed being very poorly.  The police broke his door down (nowhere near as dramatic as it sounds) and he was well enough to come back to Glasgow with me for Christmas and New Year.  Most of N's immediate crises have been avoided: he's solvent; he's stopped wheezing; the electricity isn't going to be cut off and his garden has been cleared to allow the post to be delivered but there's a way to go before he gets a lifestyle that will work long term.  However one of the great bits about having him up and functioning is that he was able to get a stack of tickets for the Edinburgh Festival when the box office opened last week.  The broadband at Drumbuidhe isn't up to high-level cultural organisation.  Now I have to get hold of N to check what is owed to whom and ensure he hasn't disappeared back to bed.

One of my other elderly gents is P who was a friend of my mother and is a retired lawyer with increasing mobility problems.  We went together to The Absence of War and over a picnic tea afterwards we talked about his possible move into sheltered accommodation.  He mentioned that a probable cause of his balance problems was his alcoholism.  When I looked surprised at this (P is currently teetotal) he told me that he'd been very miserable during the 1980s and had been drinking heavily at the time.  Although this happened thirty years ago, the neurological damage is permanent and is now manifesting itself in his problems with walking and balance.  We talked 'til late about, oh crikey, the alcoholics we knew: it was a key factor in my mother's death from breast cancer; destroyed any possibility of a relationship with D and is slowly rotting my father's mind up on the west coast.  I'm not sure how useful the talking was for P but I drove home (through a standard drink-sodden Saturday night in Glasgow) feeling lighter and calmer.

Nearly New

The grey clouds have settled in at the end of the year.  This year's Christmas miracle was present and correct but adjusted for reality: just over a week ago I travelled through to Fife to check on my friend N that I hadn't heard from for a while.  After a damp bit of dithering the police broke down his door and he was found alive but poorly.  N came back to Glasgow with me and we had a quiet Christmas followed by a (planned) quiet New Year up here in Drumbuidhe.  N has lost quite a bit of weight so there's been a lot of cooking, eating and gentle exercise.  He's also got a long list (and growing) of difficult stuff he has to sort out so there's been a fair bit of tears and trickiness.

Looking after N (and Christmas) has meant a pause in job-hunting but there were some decent interviews at the end of the year including an atmospheric trip to Dunoon and emergency trouser purchases for an interview in Glasgow's old BBC building.  Alas none of them resulted in the offer of a lucrative full-time position but I have strong hopes for a possible job in Fort William in the New Year.

In parallel with N's sorting out of stuff I also have my own issues of clearing (bank accounts, mooring permission, room rental, carer's benefit) that these last days of the year are made for.  First of all however there's still the track to be filled and a mark I landrover to get going.

My standard technique for weight building is bread, sausages and lots of vegetables but I've thrown some cookies into the mix for this winter.

white chocolate & cardamon cookies

250g butter
340g sugar (white & brown)
1 egg
500g flour
16 cardamon pods (seeds removed and ground)
pinch salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
200g chopped white chocolate

cream the butter and sugar; add the egg, flour, cardamon, salt & baking powder (I put these all in at once but an electric beater definitely helps); mix white chocolate chunks in; divide dough into two, roll into log shapes, wrap in clingfilm and store in the fridge; to cook heat oven to gas 4, cut slices from the log and place on tray lined with parchment paper; bake for 15 minutes.

Here's to a good new year.

hardcore

Although we've had some bursts of sunshine, the damn rain just keeps falling.

I was off to Oban on Thursday for the Rural Parliament and was saved from enduring a damp wait at Craignure by a neighbour who provided a lift for me and my bicycle via the Corran ferry.  The day in Oban was unmitigated rain and, after a couple of strolls up and down the Esplanade I was soaked front and back which meant I was pretty grumpy for the fringe events that day.  Even without the grumpiness some of Thursday's events were a bit daft.  A discussion billed as "making uplands more productive" turned out to be about reforestation and the leaders were bemused when I asked if there were any other ways of making uplands productive.  Back at Drumbuidhe I'm even more grumpy about this presumption: we sit in the middle of a woodland regeneration area which was established 20 years ago and has surrounded us in trees but the land seems a lot less productive than the days when it was used for stock.  In the 1970s and 80s we used to have the whole shearing circus over here in the summer and no matter how nice the trees are it's now a lot less busy.

Friday saw some more pragmatic discussions and although the 'Open Space' session definitely verged into new age territory, Alasdair Boulton of Morvern Community Woodlands introduced a decent talk about fair use of rural land.  This was brought into sharp focus by a phonecall from our estate owner.  Although my family owns Drumbuidhe and the surrounding land, we sit in the middle of a larger estate and there are frequent tensions regarding our presence here and the fragility of the track we use to access our property.  The estate owner (the Mrs of the couple who own the estate) called, from Suffolk, to say that there had been a landslip on the track and it was impassable.  Well, actually, she didn't say that, she has a rather anxious air and she started by asking where I was ("Oban") and when I was going to Drumbuidhe ("tomorrow") and then saying I might want to rethink that.  This defined the conversation as her checking my movements and advising me rather than just passing on information.  I figured, rightly as it turned out, that she was exaggerating a third party report which had the effect of emphasising her control over me.

Since I am both independent and experienced when it comes to the track her warning had little effect although I did make sure I got over the track in daylight.  It turned out that there wasn't a landslip but that the gravel had been washed off about 100m of the track turning it into a mini boulder field that was kind of interesting to negotiate in a fiat panda.  I did make it over the track but, since I'll be going uphill on the way out, I'm a bit worried about getting both me and the fiat panda out in one piece tomorrow.  So today was spent with shovelling.  Lots of shovelling.  I shovelled a load of pebbles from the beach into the back of the mark 1 Landrover whilst watched by a diving boat anchored in the loch.  I then drove up to the washed-out section and shovelled all the pebbles out into the more serious holes.  I also did a bit of drain digging and levelled out the track where I could.  Crikey but shovelling is hard work.  The landrover fuel guage is showing as completely empty (I think the gauge might be bust ... the landrover is definitely a bit poorly at the minute) so I walked back for lunch which had to be quick, substantial and tasty.  Hurrah for pasta!

Herb and Roast Tomato Pasta

* three handfuls dry pasta
* three handfuls ripe cherry tomatoes
* parsley
* garlic
* olive oil
* soft cheese (1/4 pack of Boursin)
* salt & pepper

set the pasta onto cook; half the cherry tomatoes and place in a roasting tin, add salt, pepper & olive oil and set under a hot grill 'til they start to blacken; chop the parsley and garlic as fine as you can be bothered; when the pasta is cooked, drain and return to the pan; add roasted tomatoes, chopped parsley and garlic and soft cheese; stir and serve.

Fed and watered I trekked back up with a can of petrol and renewed vigour.  Mending the track is like painting the Forth Road Bridge but there is at least enough of a flat surface to be able to squeeze me and the panda out tomorrow.

Dam!

The dam burst.  The one that supplies our electricity (via a water turbine) and our domestic water.  It's still a bit of a mess up there but with a concerted bit of cobbling I've now got both domestic water and electricity working.  In fact the electricity is working better then before.  This is mainly due to the strong steady rain we've had for the past 3 days but a wee bit of it is because the water intake has improved.  The dam was too big for requirements (part of why it eventually collapsed) and the water inlet was 1m under the surface of the water.  The inlet is constructed from 4" pipe (the pipe down to the turbine is 6").  In an attempt to allow a filter to be placed in the inlet it was constructed using a t-junction with the inlet pointing vertically up (the horizontal portion was blocked off).  A motley collection of pipes and netting was then placed in the inlet to try and stop leaves, twigs and frogs getting into the turbine.  The effect of all this was a reduction in water flow and continual blocking of the inlet.  Any benefit produced by the extra-large dam was lost in the convoluted inlet.

I've now unblocked the horizontal inlet which is still below the reduced level of the dam and tried out a couple of filters.  My first attempt used an old scallop net and it kept out the leaves but, since the flow rate at the inlet is so high, the net was sucked tight against the inlet and the small surface area was blocked by the leaves it was filtering within 48 hours.  The next attempt was a 1m tall dunce's cap fashioned out of a rusty but just-about-pliable metal grill.  This fits over the inlet and stands proud providing a much greater surface area for filtering.  It seems to be working and we've been getting a steady 3A for the past 24 hours.  There are no photographs of the new filter because it was installed in the middle of the strong steady rain and everything was just too damn wet.

grumpy gluten

It had to happen eventually but, after two summers of volunteers, C finally got so grumpy that he scared a couple off after just 48 hours.  It was the result of our policy of accepting any volunteers who are organised enough to get to our far-flung rural corner: I could see that an American couple interested in "authentic experiences" and "permaculture" were always going to be an awkward fit.  I hate to agree with Frankie Boyle but he does have a point when he says the ironic thing about people with emotional intelligence is that they don't realise everyone hates them.  In this case the couple didn't realise that C's grumpiness was an inevitable and authentic reaction to their book-learning preachiness.  It was the young lady's description of her aversion to wheat that finally did it.  Gosh they were dim.

Because our cottage is dead lovely, they were replaced pronto with a sweet young German lady who turned out to be volunteering nearby on Lismore and was able to come a wee bit early.  She's done a grand job with all sorts of stuff, cooked cakes and kept C company.

The authentic volunteers did at least provide a baseline measure for people who aren't suited to west coast life but the other who've visited this year have ranged from gently incompetent Americans to stern cheese-loving Germans including the Catalonian couple who provided the picture above.  They've all provided an opportunity for C and I to practise our referendum rants.  We've got a copy of the SNP's manifesto/white paper on the mantelpiece and we did a decent double-act of reasons why independence would be a rubbish idea.

After a civilised bit of voting (free sweets and a nice chat with the polling clerks) and excellent lunch in the White House I woke up spontaneously at 3am as the votes came in and stayed up 'til Glasgow at 5am when the writing was on the wall.  I was driving south the next day and I'd been prepared for scenes of devastation akin to 'The Road' but I felt the waves of relief rising as the day went on.  Until I got to Glasgow where the old enemies were rioting in George Square.  And so it continues.

a good set

This was a good year for the Edinburgh Festival.  The flat I rented stayed pretty empty (a couple of jolly lunches with schoolfriends and west-coast neighbours filled the space and made inroads into the enormous quantity of potatoes I'd brought with me) but the shows were good and the rain held off.  The rise of rubbish multi-media events in the international festival's drama programme means that I went to very few plays although I should be mentioned in dispatches for sitting through two and a half hours of pointless Russian drama that was The War.  After that marathon, honorable mentions go to John Byrne's portraits at the National Portrait Gallery; Sister Marie Keyrouz in Greyfriars Kirk and Daniel Kitson in a suitably dingy basement.  Last year I sang in The Events at the Traverse and Daniel helped continue my run of sold-out shows by casting me as the (pivotal) 'person C' in his wee drama.  Every one of my lines was dead filthy but I delivered them with both volume and conviction.

I packed up my bags after Sweet Mambo, added some clean underwear and a gold maxi-dress and set off south with high hopes of drunken parties and further uses for my potatoes.  I ended up in the Cotswolds with fine chat (apparently Castro isn't really a 'people person') and wicked caipirinhas.  Thankfully the party was in A's cottage and she's a thoughtful and generous host.  Left alone in the cottage to sweat out the remains of south american liquor I've been able to critique A's refurbishment (very classy although she'll have to get her gutters checked ... we west coast architects have a keen eye for rain-based issues) and work my way through the party leftovers.  I've almost reached my limit for smoked-salmon bagels but I've also made a stack of blueberry jam which is looking damn fine.  I'm not quite sure why jam-making has such mystique applied to it but maybe I'm just more slapdash than others.  My Glasgow Cookery Book goes into exhaustive detail about testing pectin levels (they assume that every kitchen has methylated spirits to hand ... maybe it's a Glasgow thing) but it seems to me that as long as you include fruit skins in the jam and boil it with extreme prejudice you'll be fine.  A decent set can be elusive but it is at least easy to see when you get it: pour a bit of the jam onto a saucer, blow on it to cool and push with your finger, if the surface wrinkles you're done.

blueberry jam

about 1.5kg blueberries (couldn't find the scales)
dash of lemon juice
1kg sugar

boil the blueberries and lemon juice 'til most of the berries have broken down
add the sugar and stir 'til dissolved
boil hard for about 5 minutes - test for a set
pour into jars

I had a little sit down after the first boiling (the south american liquor was unexpectedly potent) and I've still got to wipe down the kitchen (as well as being tastefully decorated it's also much cleaner than anything I normally operate in) but the whole operation took about 15 minutes.  I bought the sugar from the local shop where jam retails for £2.99 so I've got about fifteen quid's worth ready to go.

a bit of blight

The fruit and vegetables are coming in thick and fast now with more blackcurrants and chicory than we know what to do with.  On the foraging side there's been a fair crop of blaeberries from the surrounding countryside and a couple of handfuls of wild cherries which have gone into a wild cherry gin (overenthusiastic splitting of the stones to get at the almond-flavoured kernels broke my mortar).  C is trying two different recipes for cassis but we're still wading through stacks of the wee black things so there'll be a massive jam session this coming weekend with a couple of jellies thrown in to polish off the last of the redcurrants and gooseberries.  Consistent feeding of the garden has seen outstanding growth for broccoli and beans but not as many flowers and beans as I'd have liked - still they make the garden look fabulously lush.

The vegetable garden does have planning behind it but there's a really long lead time before you can work out if a given plant has been a success: first you have to come across the seed (my local deli in Glasgow started selling Franchi seeds about 7 years ago which is where I came across Cavolo Nero and Latuga Romana which have done excellently both in the garden and on the plate); next you have to get the seeds to germinate which is a thankless task when it comes to parsley and, in our case, is frequently foiled by dramatic frosts and damn mice who push off the propagator lids to get at the baby seedlings; next they plants have to survive and thrive in the garden itself where they are subject to yet more mice (we now plant peas and beans out in tin-can-collars), frosts, droughts, too much sunshine, too little sunshine, deer and weeding by folk who should know better; the plants then have to be harvested at the right time before delicate wee courgettes have turned into bloated comedy marrows or mangetout peas have turned into rock-hard bullets; finally the produce has to both cook well and store well.  Experience has taught us that onions are very prone to neck-rot in our climate and it's depressing to realise that the crop you planted six months ago, looking forward to the "award-winning flavour" is now mush.  The chicory we planted this year is growing very well all over the garden but I thought it was going to be a decent base for salads and it's far too bitter for that.  Since we've got lots of the stuff I'm experimenting with sauteing mixed greens made up of chicory and broccoli leaves.  That's a full year from 'thinking about new plants' to either 'eating delicious freshly-picked veg' or 'admitting they weren't worth the bother'.  I often think that I don't really have the patience for this gardening malarkey, not in a world where greengrocers exist.

Despite all this trendy Italian veg, the solid backbone of the garden is potatoes and this year I planted a large selection.  Such is my effete metropolitan nature that they are all waxy potatoes but I wanted to experiment beyond the standard Charlotte and pink-fir types that we use.  The blight has now struck, wilting the potatoes' leaves and stopping them thriving (I plant potatoes under plastic so the air-borne blight fungus doesn't drip off the leaves into the soil and affect the tubers but it does make the plants looks rubbish).  The striking difference is between the potato types.  Last year's Anya potatoes have been badly affected but Maxine is still doing well and Picasso and even Harlequin showed some resistance.  The Kestrel potatoes were the first ones we harvested, tasted fine and showed no signs of blight.  Next year I'm going to try Charlotte and Maxine as the two potato crops.

In celebration of harvest - and using the Anya potatoes (on the left of the photo) that I've started harvesting - I'm making a couple of potato dauphinoise: one to eat today and one to freeze for reheating later with some cheese on top.  As well as the pink-fir taste Anya potatoes also have a fair bit of their knobbliness so I've gone for a brief parboiling of the whole potatoes so that I can peel them without sacrificing half the tuber.  The proportions of the recipe come from Felicity Cloake's excellent series in the Guardian in search of the perfect version of classic dishes.

750g Anya potatoes
250ml double cream and 100ml milk
crushed garlic cloves, salt, pepper, nutmeg50g Gruyere cheese or similar

Pop the whole potatoes in a pan of cold water, bring to the boil and boil for 3 to 5 minutes.  Drain the potatoes, leave to cool then peel and slice as thinly as possible.  Grease a dish with butter and add the potato slices in rough layers, adding salt, pepper, garlic and nutmeg between the layers as you go.  Pour in the milk and cream.  Cover the dish with foil or a lid and pop into the oven (160C / gas mark 3) and start testing the potatoes for doneness after 30 minutes.  Once they're done, remove the lid, sprinkle with cheese and give it a final 10 minutes 'til nicely browned.