Author: Lesley

It’s raining again. A heavy rain, beating remorselessly against the windows. The sky is a leaden grey with cloud, the hills lost in layers of wetness.

Freya has just come in soaked to the skin. I reach for the towel that’s left by the door to dry her, but she’s having none of it, wriggling free impatiently.

The smell of venison cottage pie warming in the oven starts to waft through the house, rich and savoury. Tonight we’ll eat this with spiced roast carrots from the croft, and the sweet smell of ground coriander, cumin and sesame will mingle with it.

That and the faint smell of woodsmoke from the woodburner make up the scent of comfort, and of home.

Soon it will be time to light the candles and settle down by the fire with an armful or two of cat – hopefully dry by then else the smell of wet fur will be added to the mix! – and maybe a glass of red wine to keep the weather at bay.

Stay safe and dry everyone.

We attended a charity Christmas light switch-on at a local hotel yesterday evening.

It was a chilly, but thankfully dry evening, and the light switch-on was timed for dusk. Just as the sky darkened the building suddenly blazed with light.

Well, suddenly wasn’t perhaps an accurate description. It blazed with light on the third countdown attempt, much to the amusement of the massed local Sleat residents.

The spirit of Blackpool is alive and well at the Duisdale House Hotel, where every inch of the building had been draped with wattage, and just in case that’s not festive enough, a few majestic deer and snowmen have been added to the front lawn for good measure.

Mulled wine, hot chocolate with marshmalllows, a choir (sadly a little drowned out by a stiff easterly wind) and a piper that no wind could diminish – a seriously festive, cheery time was had by all.

The season has officially started!

And I haven’t made a mince pie or cut a piece of holly yet.

There was a strong Aurora last night.

It’s usually cloudy when we get the alert from Aurora Watch, which obscures the effect completely, but the night sky was relatively cloudless.

It was late and we were getting ready for bed, so rather than get dressed again and go outside into the cold (we have zero commitment, such lightweights!) Hugh managed to capture it from the open window in the upstairs bathroom with his phone camera.

We just get a glow in the sky from here as the hills at the back of the croft tend to obscure a part of the northern sky, but it doesn’t stop it feeling very otherworldly.

It rained last night, but dawned cold and clear this morning, with a low winter sun breaking through scattered clouds.

A large mug of hot coffee and homemade bread for breakfast and we slowly start to feel able to greet the day on this cold November Sunday.

In the eighties I had a fondue set and delighted in the whole preparation ritual of the thing.

The fondue bowl was a large, smooth ceramic one with a handle which had to be rubbed around with a cut clove of garlic. The little burner was supported on a small metal scaffold affair that held the flame under the bowl and kept the cheese bubbling. There was something delightful in the slow melting of the cheese and wine, the cubing of the crusty bread for dipping, and the little dishes of cornichons.

All very satisfying.

Sadly the set disappeared in one of my many house moves years ago. I suspect that this was because it spent more time in its box at the back of a cupboard than actually in use, and so it was probably disposed of.

For some reason recently though my thoughts turned back to fondues and how nice it would be to have one again. Food for cheese-loving friends to share on cold wintery evenings.

I started looking on eBay, Etsy and Vinted, sure that I’d find a second-hand set in the spirit of reuse, recycle, but they all looked a bit rickety and overly ornate, all twirly metal and crenellated bowls for the skewers. I’d forgotten how spindly the metal rig holding the oil burner of the past looked, and wasn’t sure that a decades-old lighting mechanism would be very safe.

Besides, curiously enough the fondue sets that I remembered were now classed as vintage and commanded prices far in excess of brand new ones! I was astonished.

In the end I found a reassuringly simple, solid looking new set with a robust cast iron scaffold holding the oil burner and a generous ceramic bowl.

I rather fancied a cheery red one, but after checking for suitable capacity (I wanted a generous 2 litres) settled for one with the dimensions I wanted in black.

It may lack the vintage charm of the seventies but at least I won’t fear for our lives using it.

And so we are prepared.

We’ve always planned to have an orchard and this week our first apple trees arrived ready for planting.

They were grown locally by Drumfearn Trees, a croft just a few miles away, so they’re local, acclimatised stock and varieties that are known to grow well here.

This is an exposed, challenging site so we need to grasp every advantage that we can to give them the best chance to grow.

We’ve started with just a dozen trees which Hugh brought back in the car late in the afternoon. We’ve got a couple of each variety, and a mixture of cookers and eaters.

We have Discovery, Hereford Russet, Greensleeves, Saturn, Katy and Bountiful varieties.

We spent the afternoon digging them into the grassy, rush-strewn slope behind the polycrub. The last one was firmed-in with wellies just as the sun set over the hills to the west, and we strolled back to the house with cats in procession happy that we’d made a start at last.

We’ll cut cardboard to place around the base of each tree and pile mulch on top to try and keep the weeds from encroaching whilst they’re establishing themselves.

There are more to come in the spring along with plums, pears and damsons if we can source them. A happy evening with our books was spent last night researching pears, which we’re very hopeful will do well here.

The cats were fascinated by the process, “helping” by sitting in the holes and playing with the plant tags. It was so nice to see them out on the croft playing in the grass, chasing and play-fighting each other at high speed. They’re fast, agile wee things and in the best place.

Backs aching but happy, there’s always an enormous sense of satisfaction planting trees.

One of the disadvantages of living on an island is that the one dental practice here, itself fifty miles away, is heavily oversubscribed. It’s virtually impossible to get an appointment. Our next nearest dentist and all the specialistsp are in Inverness, 130 miles away.

So when an accident several years ago recently flared up and started to cause tooth problems at the trauma site it has meant a number of trips to Inverness for X-rays, investigation, and now treatment. I’ve had to have a tooth extracted, a bone graft in my jaw and a temporary crown put in waiting for it to heal sufficiently for an implant.

Feeling very tender, I’ve been cooking soft foods for the last week so that I don’t need to chew heavily. Slow cooked stews, soups, soft noodles, yoghurt, that sort of thing. Luckily autumnal foods lend themselves to this type of cooking so it’s not too restrictive. But this must be what age feels like – being scared to bite into a hard apple. Oh dear.

I’ve made something that I haven’t made for years for husbands supper tonight, as it’s his birthday. A cassoulet. It’s an instant reminder of my 14 years in France and the endless debates about the proper way to make it. Needless to say the version in this house probably breaks most of the rules, but there you go. I did manage to source some good tins of confit duck just for this from a French online supermarket so it will taste deliciously and duckily French.

Instead of taking a day off, husband is installing wall speakers, amp and something called a sub woofer in the lounge so that we can enjoy good audio in this cavernous space. Six metres up to the ceiling tends to swallow sound.

I know nothing of electronics. The speakers seem impossibly small, the amp and sub woofer unfeasibly large. At the moment there is much muttering about shielded cables and modern electronics from my electronics engineer husband, but it’s sounding good already despite having to send off to Mr Amazon for extra parts or some such.

Progress. Projection system in next, I’m hoping.

October marks the beginning of the autumnal storms.

Storm Babet has passed through with miraculously little damage here on Skye, unlike the East coast of Scotland which seems to has taken the brunt of it, with mass flooding and evacuations.

My thoughts are with those who have lost family or friends in the flooding, or had their lives severely upended.

The winds got up to about 60mph at times and roared around the outside of the house, but being at the top of a hill meant that flooding was never really going to be an issue.

The cats either stayed indoors crying bitterly that they wanted to go out in it, or when we let them out during any lull in the wind, crying to be let back in. Rinse and repeat several times.

They managed somehow not to fly off to Finland.

To be honest, we’ve had worse whilst we were living in the caravan. I’ll always remember arriving on the island in the autumn about three years ago in the teeth of a storm with 70mph winds, and that was brutal.

Now we have the calm after the storm and some fabulous sunsets.

I know that some will find the idea of starting preparations for Christmas in October quite ludicrous. But I’m actually late this year – I normally start in September!

This is the month that homemade things that need time to mature in the jar are often made. Like Christmas pickle, red pepper relish, and jars of cranberry mincemeat for festive pastries.

I’m trying to use as much as possible from the croft this year, so I’ve been incorporating our homegrown herbs, chillies, celery, carrots and tomatoes into some of my concoctions. The tomato kasundi (spicy tomato chutney) that I made some weeks ago is already maturing nicely on the pantry shelves.

A stray thought occured to me as I wrote about cranberry mincemeat – could we grow cranberries this far north?

Apparently, we could, according to the Scottish Wildlife Trust. I must see if we can source some cranberry bushes next spring and get them planted up on the croft. They’re bog plants originally, and acid-soil loving, so I have great hope that they’ll thrive in our conditions here. Perhaps in a few years we’ll be using our own berries in our cranberry mincemeat and I’ll feel really self-sufficient!

We’ve decided not to make a Christmas cake this year. We hardly eat it these days, and I hate waste. I’ll make a stollen in December instead so that we can get our marzipan hit, which husband much prefers. That, a few cranberry pastries and a regular supply of home-baked Swedish cinnamon cardamon buns and we’ll be happy.

We’re just Europeans at heart, really.

We attended a local Apple Day event on the island a week or so ago. Juice pressing, apple cakes (I donated one) and the option to taste some of the locally grown heritage variety apples. We’re looking forward to the first small batch of apple trees going in around November.

We can’t wait.

This has been such a stormy few weeks. There are flood warnings all over the country as rain falls in sheets day after day. It’s been a deluge.

The cats go out and then race back indoors, soaked to the skin. They’re so wet that they even submit to being towelled dry by husband as they drip onto the floor.

Here’s Fergus the Magnificent on one of the deer fenceposts taken during a rare dry spell by our sons girlfriend, Flavia.

In the few breaks in the rain we’ve had gloriously dramatic skies and amazing light.

The skies seem particularly clear and intense after rain, as if the water has washed the air clean of all dust and left it shining and luminous.

When we peeked outdoors yesterday evening we realised that the house was completely surrounded by standing water, like a moat. This morning thankfully most of it had drained away onto the croft.

These are days for wood fires and pots of tea, for books and wool and gratitude for being safe, warm and dry with those that you love.

We’ve been looking after a friends cat in the house for the last week, and we’ve just raised the chaos bar still further when our son and his cat arrived yesterday for a week too, making four cats in the house.

Four cats in the house. MADNESS.

What could possibly go wrong?

The players.

Truffle

Queen of Everything. Grumpy at being abandoned by her owners and brought to a Place of Incarceration. Has no time for these scruffy youngsters that she’s been forced to share a space with. Does a fine line in growling when hissing and swiping doesn’t do the trick. She remains aloof and magnificent.

Fergus

One of the Young Pretenders. Cute in a boyish cat kind of way. Fascinated by Truffle and follows her around like a moonstruck youth. Steals her cat carrier and sleeps in it whenever he can just to be close to her. Often found gazing lovingly at her. She’s having none of it.

Freya

The second of the Young Pretenders, smart and sassy and a bit put out that she’s now got competition in her own home. She looks sweet but she’s a demon, and a diva in the making. She and Truffle are definitely at the “handbags at dawn” stage although they’re also cultivating a “I’m pretending you don’t exist” culture to preserve the greater good.

Paddy

Our sons cat. An indoor cat who is sweet and permanently perplexed with his completely new environment, as well as being dismayed at being forced to share with three hissing furballs. All he wants is Dreamies and a quiet life. He’s just decided that he rather likes Freya, but being a solitary cat doesn’t quite know what to do about it. He and Fergus may form a tentative alliance as we’ve had some evidence of occasional nose bumping.

The next few days will be interesting!