Category: frustration

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Taking it easy

Taking it easy isn’t easy for someone like me. I get bored quickly, and convince myself that as long as I do things slowly or gently that they’re no effort. How wrong I’ve been.

Harvested onions

Junior Gardener has returned to Manchester now, so I’m on my own. Husband is busy with the house build and I don’t like to bother him with small things that distract him from his main priority, finishing the house!

I was told not to, but I pulled the flowering onions from the croft beds a few days ago. There were only a few dozen of them, and they came out of the soil easily. I didn’t feel that I had strained myself or exerted any real effort. I carried them through to the polycrub to dry and thought no more of it. I felt a bit tired afterwards, but that was it.

However, I was wrong. It did cause problems, and I’m now sitting with my legs up wishing that I wasn’t so stupid. I’m only two weeks into my recuperation, and the effort was too much too soon for my still traumatised body. Stupid, stupid.

I’ve learned my lesson, and won’t be doing any more gardening for a while yet.

I only hope that I haven’t caused complications with my recovery. What I should do is use the wonderful aromatherapy gift that a good friend sent to try and calm my thoughts and stop building “to-do lists” in my mind, and instead focus on relaxing and healing. She knows me better than I know myself.

I will also have to content myself with nothing more than gentle walks and wearing outrageous leggings for amusement. It’s about the level of what’s possible for me right now, and what passes for entertainment in these parts.

Flowery hedgehog leggings

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Choices, Choices

In a world where there are a million variations on every theme, buying fittings for a house from scratch is not the fun job that you might imagine. It’s an endlessly exhausting task.

For those of you that have followed this journey from the beginning, you’ll know that we’re running a few years behind the original build schedule. Many of the design decisions and selections that we made in 2019 are either no longer available, now too expensive, or our thoughts have changed.

Things viewed in London don’t look the same here in the cool northern light of Skye.

I’ve been struggling with the kitchen design of our new build for years. The kitchen is the most important room in the house for me, cooking as much as I do. Part of the challenge I suspect is that these days every kitchen has an island. Ours doesn’t. So the photos that I see daily of kitchen designs and finishes just don’t look anything like the space we’ve got.

The second challenge that I have is that I don’t like “shiny”. Shiny, or gloss kitchens, can be wonderful in the right setting, but I’ve always preferred matt, natural, textured surfaces. It’s just the way I am. These types of kitchen have gradually started to come more into vogue in the last eighteen months, so it’s not as difficult as it once was to find selections, but every kitchen professional that I’ve spoken to has started from this point, and I simply get exhausted explaining preferences and correcting assumptions over and over again.

The third challenge is that I want a work surface that is as bulletproof and as maintenance-free as I can get it. I cook a lot and I know that at some point I’m going to cut on these surfaces, splash something on them that will stain, or put a red-hot pan down as I rush to run a burnt hand under a tap. What can I say, I’m a messy cook.

All of these things are possible to protect against in some of the modern materials available today, like Silestone or Dekton, but they come with a steep price tag.

The last challenge is that no matter what your budget, large or small, in this Inflationary, Brexit, Pandemic Britain, costs have gone through the roof in the last eighteen months. Which means in very real terms what you want now becomes increasingly expensive. Compromises become the norm.

Choices are, however, slowly being made. The poor Postie hefts box after box of flooring and tile samples over the caravan threshold with a pitying smile.

I vacillate between tasteful, subtle Scandi grey/blue/moss colours and a need for bright, warm tones. I’ll end up with a weirdly eclectic mix, I’m sure of it. Which is absolutely fine. This is home.

Husband is keen to have good, strong kitchen carcasses. I’m keen to have good worktops, plain slab cabinet doors painted in a matt finish, and well designed lighting.

I’m already thinking of my rapidly approaching dotage with dimming eyesight and shaky grip.

We will get to an end of the choices. Soon.

Watch this space.

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Autumn cladding progress


Pictures taken on a blustery, rainy autumn day last week on the island. The first frosts were a few nights ago, so autumn is definitely well underway.

The larch cladding is nearly complete now. There seem to be a few bits left around the rear dormer bathroom window that have yet to be finished, but the scaffolding is down and we’re hoping that these remaining areas won’t take long.


We’re also still waiting for the water to be connected.

What’s needed before we can get approval to connect is a small value, simple return valve, but it seems that obtaining one and getting a plumber to fit it is holding everything up. It’s frustrating at this stage with just weeks to go until we will be living on site. We can’t live for long without piped water to the caravan, and with no date in hand for this to be done it’s a worry on a very long list of things to think about. It will happen.


I can’t wait for the larch to weather. It looks strangely stark in the landscape at the moment in its raw colour, and I much prefer the muted grey tones of weathered wood.

We have neighbours in a nearby  village on the island who have also just built a larch clad home and who are a few months ahead of us in terms of build progress. Theirs is silvering already, so I’m hoping ours will soften too very soon.



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It stops, and it starts again…

We’ve had a delay in progress on the build for the last few weeks because the roof light window flashings didn’t arrived as planned.

They’re coming from Poland, apparently, where our Fakro windows are manufactured, and they were delayed. As such, the slate laying had to stop, and from the looks of it nothing else could be done on site. The builder tried to start the exterior wall larch cladding to make up time but his man went sick and so progress stalled here too.

The good news is that we heard this week that the flashings have turned up at last, and work has restarted.

I shouldn’t be frustrated by this, but everything was moving so smoothly and so fast that even though I knew that there’d be bumps in the road, I’d sort of got used to the exceptional progress as normal. It wasn’t normal, of course. Problems and delays are the normal state of affairs in any project of this size.

We’re close enough to our actual site visit next month now for this to feel real and for excitement to build at the prospect of seeing our home in the flesh, so to speak. Pictures and videos are great, and have been so welcome, but this will be the first time that we will have been able to see and touch the house. I simply can’t wait.

Even the slightly daunting prospect of the flight to Inverness in these Covid-19 times isn’t enough to stop the anticipation building….

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Curbing instincts

Knowing that we’ll soon be moving into the static, which has a tiny kitchen with very little storage space, means that I’m having to curb my tendency to stash food for emergencies such as the next zombie invasion or pandemic.

The current Covid-19 situation has only reinforced what I recognise is deep-set behaviour to store for bad times.

Every time I see a 10kg sack of basmati rice or puy lentils on sale I have to physically restrain myself from buying them. The instinct to stock up is strong, but there’s no logic in more dried goods sitting in storage with the furniture for six months whilst we complete the build.

There simply isn’t anywhere to put them.

I grit my teeth and tell myself that there will be the chance to fully stack that pantry once it’s built and ready to take supplies. And not a moment sooner.

I think I’m on the spectrum somewhere (aren’t we all in some way, I guess?) but it gives me great satisfaction to list what the pantry will eventually hold. I haven’t confessed to husband yet, but I’ve got LISTS of proposed purchases.

I’ve been looking at labelling systems, storage jars and boxes, and what shelving we’ll need…😂

It maybe the smallest room in the house, but I’m planning to make every inch of the storage work, and I can’t wait to add homemade jams, pickles and cordials to the stash next summer to see us through those long, dark, wet Scottish winters.

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Week four of lockdown

We are just going into week four of lockdown. We are all well, for which I remain eternally thankful.

Our small London townhouse houses us all plus Bertie the ancient spaniel, who seems perpetually confused by the presence of his tribe around him.

We are managing, despite the absence of outdoor space which is the biggest hardship. Evenings are Cards for Humanity games doing our absolute best to gross each other out. I bake bread when we run out. The kids are starting to go stir-crazy. There’s only so much Xbox a body can play.

Sleep patterns are totally screwed and new routines need to be forged before peace can return. All are trying their best, but grumpiness and flare-ups are happening, which is normal, I guess. The Easter eggs that I ordered didn’t make it in time.

I learned to make Waterford Blaa rolls, which seemed to go down well. I’ll be making another batch of these today as they’re relatively quick and easy to turn out.

The blossom is out. We have sunshine during our days and we are all well. In these times of extremity, there are a lot of people doing a lot worse. We have food. We have each other. I am grateful.

Once lockdown is over, our Skye life beckons, and seems tangibly close. Despite the news that no work could start and is delayed until people can move freely again, Francis emailed a photo of the house sign that he’s been able to carve whilst the island is in lockdown. It was a wonderful and unexpected boost to our spirits.

We will get through this.

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Growling Woman

Things have been very quiet on the house build front recently.

Too quiet.

Once we’d hit two months post the receipt of planning approval and still hadn’t seen the building warrant drawings, I couldn’t contain my impatience and frustration any longer.

Even with the inevitable summer vacation delays, it simply seemed too long.

It seems that our architect is leaving the company. This week.

He has apparently been in the process of handing over our build plans to a new architect in the practice who will need to pick everything up, and who has promised that she will finalise the building warrant drawings next week.

It’s not the change of staff that frustrates me. It’s the lack of communication. What does it cost to phone your clients and tell them the news? Surely that’s much more reassuring than them discovering that they’re losing their key person after weeks of hassling for a response?

We make contact with Lara who we discover has not been given everything necessary in the transfer – of course – and will need our help to ensure that everything we had agreed with her predecessor is made known.

Poor husband now has a growling woman in the house who is not looking forward to losing a precious Saturday re-marking up plans with changes that should already have been incorporated.

We’re on Skye next week though. I don’t care if it rains and we get midged to death all week. It will just be so good to be back on our little plot of land on the island for a bit.

Deep breaths. Breathe…