Raw easterly

Since Friday 25 March

In contrast to the sun’s warmth through glass, the day outside felt raw, with a chill easterly chasing clouds towards us, across the loch. I collected a warm hens egg from the neighbour’s chickens and reflected that it was’t a good day for outdoor working after all. The four hens between them lay two brown, a white and a blue egg – tasty with vivid yellow yolks.

At the fishmonger’s in Lochgilphead I bought two squid and at home, cleaning the largest felt a large lump in the body cavity. Opening the squid revealed a juvenile sole over five inches long. How does a squid with a small beak consume prey this size in one piece?

On Sunday, the day of rest I made our first serious picking of ramsons, the tender garlicky, spearhead leaves already carpeting a sheltered damp spot on the edge of the wood. A few flower buds were pushing up between and, nearby, a generous scattering of lesser celandine’s yellow flowers, the odd dandelion and the first nettles

A break in the wet weather let me set up outside to cut slips of slate to make up-stands for the scullery sink work top. I dismantled Tash’s second hand clothes horse, a recent purchase from our favourite secondhand shop in Ardrishaig. The whole thing was loose and wonky so I drilled out the dowels and reassembled it with new dowels and glue. It’s still slightly wonky but it ain’t loose. In the evening I collected David from Tarbert, on his way home to Islay and in the morning we looked out at snow on the hill, east across our loch. Scottish spring.

With the slate up-stand cemented in place and grouted I could apply a food safe wax to the entire work surface. This leaves a fiddly bit of painting to do where slate meets wall.

My manufacture of doors continued and I fitted the long doors I’d made for the coat cupboard by the front door. Other doors needed filling and sanding and already fitted doors needed magnetic catches fitting.

Because of their size I decided to make them with a full frame of softwood, rebated to hold a panel of twelve millimetre ply. In retrospect this was a mistake and I should have used the softwood to stiffen only the hinge edge. Two and a half weeks later both have steadily warped – I think the softwood is to blame. This is not catastrophic but is mildly annoying. On each door the hinge edge is straight, held firmly by the three hinges attaching it to the cupboard, whilst the free side has bent. David and I discussed ways to straighten the doors and finally settled on a tensile wire down the back, with a little wooden pylon or prop in the middle to create a bending moment. Great idea of course, and as we wound it up to get the desired effect it became entertainingly musical. The note rose as we wound it tighter, then it snapped. Enough wasted time; a remedy can be found when there’s nothing else to do…

I still had boxes sitting in the magic room and a couple in the living room but the replacement sofa-bed was due so I spent time emptying, organising and discarding. I also spent time buying coach and train tickets to attend the funeral and wake of a friend in London whose stoic seven year battle against cancer had just ended.

I collected Tash from Tarbert, her return ending two weeks of absence in Edinburgh and London. In celebration I took the next day off and Tash, David and I walked locally.

The following day we dropped David at Kennacraig for the Islay ferry and drove on, in sunshine across Kintyre to Skipness, in search of choice driftwood for more cupboard door handles. Though abundant the driftwood was disappointing in quality, though we did find excellent ramsons. The pleasant spring-like weather had lured a couple of peacock butterflies from hibernation and we spotted a recently arrived wheatear, but were not expecting to see the pipistrelle bat that at eleven in the morning was hawking over the beach in broad daylight. That evening at six o’clock at home I was treated to another daylight bat, flitting round the south gable of our house and finally landing, high under the larch barge board, and crawling in. We have a new(?) tenant!

The next day fragments of willow warbler song surrounded us, the tiny migrants, back to nest in our Argyll birch scrub.

Most of the scullery cupboard doors made…

The raw ply is begging us not to paint it. Perhaps we’ll give it a coat of mat varnish and then live with it for a while.

More Rose of Jericho paint has arrived, this time for the guest bedroom. The blue emulsion we used on the walls makes the pale grey/blue (Borrowed Light) eggshell on the woodwork look muddy, so we’re going for another red earth tone. Watch this space!

Back on the water at last! Having been thwarted by unexpectedly high winds earlier in the week we jumped at the opportunity of a calm day and kayaked four miles there and four miles back in search of the white tailed eagles’ nest; the one they stole from the ospreys last year. Despite thinking we knew where it must be we saw nothing, other than the usual divers, common seals, cormorants and gulls, but it was a good start to the season. Enquiries must be made…