………”Snap out of it”

This is the foundation post of my blog.
The first post of a blog has a great responsibility to set the tone for the rest of the blogging future on this tiny area of the marvelous internet. Getting it right is of absolute importance.
It is the sacred text that the future civilisation of this region of the blogging community will revert to, will base itself around, that will attract future generations of followers. It has it’s own energy, own gravity.
The subject is vital, the delivery of it’s message more so………..(Jesus, what a worry).

(is this what it felt like to be Jesus? Do you think he realised how much weight his words would carry? I’m not certain he did, but probably those who rewrote him definitely did, and look how that all turned out – crusades, and crusafictions, and a couple of millenia later we’re all still hating each other to death. No pressure…..).

That paragraph above ^ that’s me all over – overthinking. I can’t even get into a cheery “hey how’s it going? Thanks for joining me here!” without taking on a bucket load of anxiety and a God Complex. I analyse and re-analyse until I have paralysis of analysis. I get stuck in the details inside my head running what I affectionately call “The Hamster Wheel of Thought” until my mind is moving so fast that my body has to stay still. I get bogged down, literally, on the sofa, and while I carefully play chess with all of my decisions for the day, the week, the month, and the next 5 – 20 years, I actually get NOTHING physically done that day. Not all days are like this, just a lot. It’s got worse since back injuries made movement painful, and since finances restricted options. It’s also got worse since I discovered Facebook and Pinterest, and I’ll probably write a whole post on that later.

So this blog has been started because this is my way of running through the Hamster Wheel of Thought in one clean revolution. As I jog along the thoughts, I can type them out onto here (I’m a very fast typer) and then (hopefully) let them go.They will no longer require storage on the inside of my head as they are now stored externally on the internet.
Every day I run through my internal mind storage and reorganise it all perfectly (sometimes I do a lot of this instead of sleeping at night), meanwhile my house, croft, car, life, get messier and messier. I know the cure, and the way to feeling calm is action, but the anxiety of not paying attention to what’s coming next in life by thinking it all through carefully creates almost complete inaction – to the observer.

To the observer I appear to be lazy, or unmotivated, and there seems to be no really good reason why I just can’t go and get on with stuff. Little do they know, those in my world, that it only keeps turning because I am powering it with the Hamster Wheel of Thought. The temptation for those around me to shout “Get on with it! Pull your socks up! Snap out of it!” must be barely bearable. In my mind, however, the only reason we are not all dead or utterly destitute, is because I’m on that wheel.

Who’s right?

I think all of us.

My experiences have taught me that taking your time, and rushing into things are BOTH bad ideas. Careful consideration of facts, and making a decision, and then getting the fuck on with it are the best way to do things.
I don’t take long to consider, and I take even less time in getting on with it. This is also why I am addicted to writing lists – what I need, what order I need them, time frames, people to consult or involve, are all detailed in about 15 different notebooks strewn around the house. I personally get very frustrated by people who do not organise or commit quickly to those two aspects – consideration, and action.

However, I am insanely jealous of people who can make confident decisions. I can not make decisions easily. My anxiety makes me really worry that I have not considered all options. I ask opinions, make plans; many plans, all the possible plans, every single tiny variation seen out to the nth degree, and then can’t decide on which one. To the other people in my world this appears to be changing plans, but they seem to have a different definition of the word “plan” than I do. In fact I think their definition of “plan” is closer to the definition of “decision”.

“To decide is to cut off from ALL other options”
That’s the definition of “Decide”.

To me, “Plan” is defined as “a fluid approach to completing a task” where it is ever changing, like traffic in a traffic jam switching lanes, weaving around, sometimes going the right way, sometimes holding itself up, but eventually always getting to its destination. I don’t change plans, but my plans change. The plan is always the same – to get there, to Happiness, by whatever sensible means, as cheaply as possible, with as little stress or upset and as much savvy as I can muster. I also know that every step of the journey gives me more savvy,and I genuinely feel that if there’s a purpose for life it is that – to gain Savvy. By that I mean it is the nature of energy, which can not be created or destroyed, to go around the universe changing state and frequency and gaining as much change and experience (savvy) as it can. It seems pretty obvious to me universally and historically that when energy (including in human form) or experience are limited, held down, locked up or pushed through narrow channels that this is when real problems begin. Life or energy just wants to flow everywhere, and as much as possible return to a state of balance once it touches the extreme ends of the spectrum.

Look at the definition of “Decide” again – “to cut off” that’s the part I struggle with. I hate the idea of burning a bridge……
Perhaps it’s because in the Highlands there are so few bridges you are BOUND to have to recross one at some point in the not too distant future. I mean that literally and figuratively. How do you get back to the center point from the edges of the world if you’ve burnt all your bridges?
But until I cut off I can’t reach balance, because I am stuck on the wheel, and not taking action, and if I have learnt a few things about coping with being a bit mental, one of them is DEFINITELY that you have to get a balance between action and thought in your life. So decision making is what I am concentrating on at the moment.

I’m concentrating on it because I have an idea that I can defeat my mentalness without use of drugs if I follow one simple step, and that is the step, everyday, towards never ending self improvement. I want to end each day a 1% better version of myself than I started it – then maybe I can sleep. (FYI, I often fail, and even have been known to finish the day 10% worse than I started. It’s simple, but it’s not easy).
In reality what that means is that I DO have to “snap out of it”. One of the least helpful things you can tell a depressed person is also the best advice. It took me a long time to get with this part of the program, I can tell you. On some subatomic level I knew it was right – it always resonated as right. My moral compass pointed right at it. As old fashioned an attitude towards depression it was, I knew that the the only way you can get out of the torture of depression was to just get off the wheel and take action – getting off the wheel is the same as snapping out of it. It took a long time to get the courage, the motivation, and the belief that it was right. It was really only once I had been at rock bottom (and for quite some time) that I had strong words with myself – why could I just not let myself be happy? Why couldn’t I have what other people had? Why could I not feel satisfied instead of frustrated? When would I believe I was enough? What’s REALLY stopping me?
The answer was simple and inescapable – me.
I was the reason – yes I’d had a seriously screwed up view of normal from an upbringing I just don’t need to detail here. But at some point you become the grown up, the choices become your own.Work, education, environment, family, past deeds – all of these become bad excuses for refusing to live a positive, healthy, happy lifestyle.

Happiness is NOT an emotion. Happiness is a DECISION.

I’ve come to realise however, that good advice can only be heard when the person is ready . They have to to do the work – not drugs, not health professionals, not society, not family (these are only supportive tools for your tool box, but they are not the answer). Only the individual can get on the path to never ending self improvement. Just the same as only an addict can make the changes necessary for quitting. Until they are ready there’s nothing can be done, until a depressed or anxious person is ready, telling them to “snap out of it” can make them worse in fact because it reiterates the feeling of being rubbish, and a failure.

Real change is the hardest and the easiest thing to do. By nature of the illness committing to something so all encompassing and never ending sounds like it’s destined to fail, which starts negative thoughts, but the truth is it’s harder staying blocked in a rut. Living the liberated life of change is easy, and EXACTLY what a depressed person needs.

Change is hard for those with anxiety and depression. Utterly necessary, but the it’s the forbidden lover of “What if’s”, “Buts” and “Maybe’s”. All of which will throw you on the Hamster Wheel and away you go again, inactive and unhappily a step backwards.

We all know that diet and exercise can really help keep you balanced, don’t we? If the answer there was “no?!” then GTF (Google the Fucker) and you’ll get PLENTY of information out there on that. It’s the first step. If you are not trying to exercise, and make positive diet changes, you are not really trying to get better, or taking any steps towards never ending self improvement. This is because you fall into a couple of mindsets – the “I don’t deserve to feel happy” which may or may not be true, or the “I don’t want to do any work because I’m selfish and lazy”. In which case two thirds of the options above are equal to not reading this any further. By that I mean it’s not for you. If you deserve to be unhappy then you must’ve done something truly sinister and have zero remorse and I shouldn’t be trying to include you in my version of reality. I can’t tell you, you aren’t alone and this community is with you, because, whilst you sadly aren’t alone, this community isn’t with you.
If you think you don’t deserve to be happy but haven’t done anything sinister, or at the very least are really genuinely remorseful, then my advice is GET OVER IT and read on. I do not believe in revisiting the past, going back over things to learn about your negative behaviours, or thought patterns. I don’t think it’s helpful. I think it’s much better to give yourself a break, say “well I fucked that up” understand you aren’t going to do it again (are you?) and move on. It’s that or risk feeling like an undeserving failure all your life – how many truly successful individuals look like they think they’re an undeserving failure? I’ve never seen Olympians, or Lewis Hamilton, or Lord Sugar, or the regular happy person you meet in life looking like they suffer with self loathing.
The problem is not what you were thinking when you fucked up, the problem is what you WEREN’T thinking. Reasonable people will fuck up on monumental levels because they have no good example of the right way to think about things or conduct their behaviour. A reasonable person will easily identify the right way to behave through their moral compass when given an example to follow. It will scream out to them “this is the way! This is RIGHT, and doesn’t it feel GOOD?! And SAFE even!” so I’m all about showing people the way, not about forcing them to regret. It’s all about positivity attracting more positivity. It’s just science.

If you are a lazy, selfish person, then again – this blog will hold nothing for you. In my world there’s two types of mental person. So often society bungs us all together under the umbrella of Mental Illness and then splits us down into our various personality quirks, personality disorders, etc.
Society has a lot of labels for people, and to my mind this allows the selfish and lazy type to get chances they probably don’t deserve. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “you can’t be angry at an ill person. They don’t know any better. They can’t help it. You wouldn’t be mad if his leg was broken, its the same”.

No it’s not.

If he broke his leg doing something selfish I would be mad. And excuse me, I am mad as a fish, but I still know “better”, and lots of people expect me to know better. To my mind you are either trying hard to make a better person of yourself and be a useful asset to society through good community work, good parenting, good social functioning, valuable input through your work etc (all for the reward of feeling happy at the end of it) or you are trying hard to bend all those sections of society to your will and make them an asset to you. You are either getting with the program or trying to rewrite the program. You are either out there flowing and experiencing, or you are trying to narrow and control, life.

I’m flowing. I’m experiencing. If you are too then it’s a lot more fun in good company so come with me!

Our un(SU-N)g heroes : the explosive truth about the formation of the Scottish Parliament

We have no idea how hard the fight has been, and I pray it’s almost over.

A wee Sovereign Scot

“The debating chamber of our Scottish Parliament”

Introduction

In Scotland we have a Scottish Government sitting in a Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood, Edinburgh. Why did we end up with that? What are the events that led to the formation or “re-opening” of such a thing?

If you listen to people from Labour discussing it, they claim the glory for it and the late Donald Dewar is held in almost saintly awe over his work to see the project come to fruition. Now let’s get down to the truth of the situation.

Labour were forced to form both the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly by threats to remove the UK from the CoE (Council of Europe) if they did not comply. A country cannot be a member of the EU without adhering to the democratic security principles and policy laid down by the CoE and can be ejected if…

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Iquitos and the Travel curse

Looking forward to the follow up parts of Mikes trip in the Amazon.

Mike Webster - Adventure Filmmaker

My trip has been delayed. Stupid travel curse.

 Sunrise over the east of scotland.

I’ve had alot of bad luck over the years with travel. Delays, cancellations, storms, strikes and broken limbs have all affected travel plans, so naturally I was terrified that there was going to be a flight delay on one of the four flights from Inverness to Iquitos. My layovers in Amsterdam, Panama and Lima were between four and five hours long each, so I used that to put my mind at ease, despite hurricane Irma looking to interrupt my flight plans. My only minor panic I had was wether my bag would arrive in Lima as promised after 3 flights from Inverness. All was fine.

The plan is to shoot an art film for 3 weeks on the amazon river, canoeing for two weeks and working with local communities, before a week back on another boat…

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………geek out on Highland Weather.

The Highlands – notorious for changeability making it a photographers dream. You don’t like the weather now? Wait 10 mins!
The ever changing light makes the same hill look like a whole new landscape multiple times in a day. It means that everyone’s experience is incredibly unique and incomparable, and that’s what keeps everyone coming back for more.

There’s another phenomenal thing about the Highlands; micro-climates. You might only need to drive over a hill to find a completely different day taking place so even if the weather is awful it’s not likely to the theme of your tour.

But what if this is your first trip? How do you plan to get what you want in such a fluid environment?
Below is a description of what the NC500 weather year is like here in the Kyle of Sutherland on the East Coast of the NC500.

Make sure you read my TOP TIPS on what to keep in the car for touring emergencies with bad weather in mind.

January
Awful, really bad, just nasty. Ice definitely, snow maybe – but it will most likely be that it snows and melts three times a day, high winds daily – that means anything from a “put the washing out” 35mph gust to an actual 149mph hurricane that blows the windometer away (true story). Daylight about 9am to 4pm.
Best you can expect? For photography, that ever changing light, and the dusting of snow on hill tops, means January is an awesome month. For sight seeing it really isn’t the best. Temps vary madly, but it’s not likely to even get as high as 6c. Rogart recorded the lowest ever temp one year at -32C, back in the 90’s. The coldest that I have recorded it on the actual coast in the last 10yrs was -18C. The Kyle of Sutherland froze over and looked INCREDIBLE….buuuut…..at that temp so will your diesel start to freeze and you definitely can’t use your skooshers to clean your windscreen and the engine heat may never thaw it. You might be lucky enough to experience something called Snow Thunder – an electric storm whilst it’s snowing.

February
See January, except there can be about four days of good weather ranging with temps from 2C to 20C around about the 19^th. I remember about 5 years ago chatting to a friend whilst it snowed on us in Feb. Both of us had sun burnt noses because the day before it had been 22C; so when I say changeable, I mean extremely so. If you get the good weather it’s an excellent opportunity to see the Northern Lights.

March
Some improvement, but now you are going to get lambing snows. Again it’s almost 10yrs since we had a 3ft+ dump (that gives you 5ft drifts on the A9) which means it’s overdue or never happening again. It’s most likely going to be 3-6 repeatedly melting snow showers a day on bad days, but towards the end of the month you can get Summer for a week or so.  Best part is that you’re about 6 weeks away from any leaves appearing on trees so the views from the car are fab and you don’t need to get out a lot!
Daylight extends to 6.30pm after which it will be Baltic. Sunrises on the East are magnificent. The earliest of the oil seed rape is flowering with intense yellow all over the Black Isle and up the A9. It’s the most uplifting thing to see after long dark nights for the past 6 months. Some patches won’t have seen sun since October so could still be icy on the roads.

April
See March, but you are more likely to encounter the Highland Summer. It will have more dry and sunny days towards the end of the month, but will still have a nip in the wind, yet the wind is less likely to be over 30mph. Not impossible, but less likely. There is still not a lot of leaves on the trees so views are great, but there’s some obvious signs that the frozen North is thawing back to life. Great month for spotting wildlife as everything goes looking for a mate, and lambs are bouncing round the fields.

May
This is the only month I would happily guarantee you will see Summer! Day light is stretching incredibly, the leaves are coming out, there’s no midgies yet (well only a couple and they’re not very well practiced, a squirt of smidge should do the trick), and those stormy winds have died down. This is when you can get 28C weather and very sunburnt.  It is still possible to get snow and Summer in the same day. I’ve regularly had snow here in late May and you can still expect morning frosts and icy patches. If it is very warm and dry we have huge risks of wild fire. This year May and June saw 4 wild fires in the Highlands that went on for multiple days and would have been devastating to wildlife as this is when everything is having a baby.

June
Is all about the midnight sun. At 11pm you will have enough daylight to see the place like it’s daytime, sit outside and read a book, or go for a long hike. The sun will really only go low for a few hours and you can’t really consider it pitch dark at any point. It will be warmer at roughly mid to high teens. It will be changeable and very probably wet, but not likely to last all day. The Scottish schools go on holiday for the summer at the end of this month, and this is the month that we start heading back into Winter. Everything is very green and lush and we are finally free of frosty mornings.

July
Early July is when we have the driest spells this month. It can be so changeable temp wise it’s nuts – I’ve had it snow here in July, I’ve also had it 28C here in July. July is a real pot luck month, but over the past 2 years it’s been the best I’ve known. You may encounter amazing electric storms, small tornado’s (very rare – only one that I have encountered on the NC500 was about 13 years ago near Elphin and it tipped my car on a 45 degree angle and made a water spout as it went over the burn next to me. Terrifyingly amazing. I have encountered worse ones elsewhere in the Highlands), flash floods and diversions which could potentially be hours long, but you still have that night time daylight so going off piste for a bit is just part of the adventure. The barley for the Whisky is starting to ripen, but it’s almost 6 weeks away from being able to be harvested. Bring Smidge.

August
Early August is very often rubbish. It rains a lot and gets cold and windy– under 10C. I know this because I am a temperature nerd being a musher; I can’t work my sled dogs in harness at temps over 10C and I have had many years here where it was cold enough to run them in Aug, but not November. Fact.
This month you may encounter electric storms, flash floods, and diversions.
Mid Aug the kids will go back to school and you can guarantee as soon as their behinds hit a seat in the classroom the sun comes back out. The barley will begin to dry off, and if the weather holds dry long enough for the fields to drain the combines will get out and harvest everything in about 15mins before it rains again. You’ll see them working 24hrs round the clock, and it can cause the odd hold up on the A9 getting them to fields and the grain to the dryers at the plant and store at Tore. It is our biggest export so just try to enjoy your part in the process and seeing it going on around you. On the East Coast there are very many distilleries to enjoy.
The best bit of August is the evening. It’s getting dark about 10.30 now, but as the sun goes down the colour of the light across the stubble fields and the sea is exquisite. The heather is blooming and the North turns purple.

September
Normally this is my second month for good weather. We usually have a fab month in September, and again temps up in the late teens to early twenties are not uncommon. Everything is still pretty leafy, but the view is now what those leaves are doing. The colours of September are out of this world – russets, purples, greens, browns, and truly jaw dropping bursting orange sunsets at about 9.30pm. Harvest will still be over now in most places. The first morning frosts will appear and you might get the first of the “put the washing out” winds. The midgies are almost completely gone.

October
Now we’re approaching tattie harvest and the Tattie Holidays for kids, so named because they were traditionally given 2 weeks off school to help their families harvest this very important staple. It used to be when you could guarantee the first snows when I was a kid, but this is getting rarer. Again it would be flurries that quickly melt if it did, but it would be wise to expect a bit of ice afterwards, especially if it melts late in the day before 6.30pm sunsets. Towards the very end of the month (once the kids are back at school of course) you can get a few great days like Feb. It won’t be very warm with low teen temps, but it will be sunny and dry, and that light is exquisite for sight-seeing. The Hills go red as the sun sets on them.
You’ll start to get the first proper high winds too, but their exact arrival is unpredictable.

November
Is either a joy or a curse. It can be 17C in November, it can be dry, it can feel like a bonus month to get the hatches battened before midwinter; or it can be wet, cold, windy and generally very like January. It’s usually not quite as bad – if I had to choose between them it would be November every time. If you get good, hard, frost, it can be STUNNINGLY beautiful with too many photo ops to fit into a month. But it has to be consistently below zero for a few days to get that. Ice is likely, snow is possible, and camping or MCing will be pretty miserable. You may be forgiven for thinking the sun isn’t rising at all if it’s the bad kind of November.

December
see November, although if we are going to get proper snow it is usually just before Christmas. Three times I have gone to bed on Christmas eve with cold, wet, weather and woken to a white winter wonderland – magical stuff!
The snow increases the daylight substantially, and walks on snow rather than mud are far preferable, but please dress properly. It is possible to get hypothermia very quickly even in the centre of town when it’s cold – I found this out to my detriment once when I went out for a “quick run” with my dogs in jeans instead of a snow suit. If you have room for lined waterproof trousers bring them. If you don’t, then make room. If you don’t use them you can ebay them afterwards. Wellies are not footwear for snow – you’ll lose toes and probably slip. Wellie’s are not footwear for hill walking either whilst we’re on the subject.
Shortest day without snow lying will be 9am to about 3.30pm of daylight, and the day after that, Summer begins!

So to recap:

Good weather months = a few days of Feb(if you’re lucky), end of march, end of April, May, beginning of June, beginning of July, end of August, most of September, end of October, a few days of Nov (if you’re lucky), a few days of Dec (if you’re lucky).

Snowable months = Jan, Feb, March, April, May, June, July – yes July, Oct, Nov, Dec.

Flash Flood months = end of July, beginning of Aug.

Icy and Windy months = Oct – April.

Midnight sun = May , June and July.

Northern Lights = September – April, but go for those times when you are most likely to get a clear sky. Ideally you want those 4 amazing days in November and February.

WINTER TOURING KIT:
Firstly get all terrain tyres on your car, and get a spare wheel and tyre because a repair kit isn’t going to be a lot of use up here. Make sure you know how to use your jack and where you can put it on your car. Make sure you know where your towing points are. Replace all your coolant with antifreeze and make sure your skooshers for cleaning the windscreen contain a HEAVY dose of antifreeze too.  Take out roadside recovery. The two companies that operate up here on behalf of Green Flag, AA and RAC, are fabulous and if you do have a break down will take exceptional care of you.

5 gallon container with emergency fuel.
Flask of hot drinks/Jet boil and drink making stuff, and lighter.
Thick wool blankets.
Road Map.
Torch.
If you are worried about getting help after dark in the middle of nowhere with no phone signal check out GPS devices you can text message from.
Ice scraper.
Fold up snow shovel.
Small bag of rock salt – so if you find yourself spinning on snow you can melt it.
Strong string or twine – a good few meters. (For tying up bumpers and exhausts when you take them off avoiding traffic or skidding).
Small tool kit with sockets and screw drivers is never a bad idea – even if you think you would never know how to fix a problem a passer by very well may.

Things that freeze that you might not expect to;

Locks – both the bit the key goes in and the actual mechanism itself. Always double check the door is closed properly and the grease in the mechanism hasn’t started to solidify making it stick or doors will pop open round corners. Same goes for the boot. Always use defrost spray on keyholes, never hot water.

Skooshers – always run your engine for a while and heat it up if it’s been really cold to help it to thaw. Check it is thawed before you set off. If it is frozen and you use your wipers to get rid of salt and grit from cars in front, you can quickly scratch the windscreen permanently. I’ve had to replace windscreens after driving in conditions that caught me out.

Wiper Blades themselves – often freeze, not just to the bonnet, but the rubber freezes, and spray on anti freeze won’t do much about that. What happens is they don’t make proper contact with the screen and might affect your visibility, and lead to permanent damage of the screen, as above, or even tear off. When frozen to the bonnet don’t use the motor to move them, run your engine and fan and once the ice is off the screen they will usually move. To thaw the blade use warm, not hot, water just before you get on the road.

Radiator coolant – coming to the Highlands in January with a low amount of antifreeze in your radiator will kill your car. I never put water, only antifreeze, in my radiators.

Diesel – OK it’s been a lot of years since this has happened to me, and it’s only happened a few times, but just good to know it CAN happen I think. If you have a diesel vehicle and you are worried about it freezing you can put additive in the fuel tank to stop that. If you get caught out, you can heat the tank for a while with a blow torch, drive a bit until all that fuel is used, and repeat. Tedious in anything other than an emergency – then it’s still tedious (if not actually upsetting) but what else you gonna do?

Wing mirrors – in very cold weather they will keep freezing if not heated. Not difficult to sort and I recommend a heavy spray with defrosting spray.

If the Police start to recommend that you don’t drive – don’t drive. It’s probably because the council are not sending out gritters. On a Sunday only A roads are gritted. Tune into MFR, local radio, 97.5fm for road and weather updates. On the East there are lots of parts of the A9 and bridges that get closed in high winds and floods. Diversions are always in place.
If you hit a massive pothole and damage a wheel or tyre, make sure you can pull over safely and are not at risk in live traffic, get the depth of it measured and get a picture of it.  Send it to Highland Regional Council and they may give you the damages. Do not expect that to be a speedy process! At least a 6 month turn around.
I’m sure lots of other locals will have other information, some of it may contradict what I have written here, but remember this is for MY microclimate at the Kyle of Sutherland on the East Coast. I’ve spent many years of outdoor hobbies and businesses being a weather nerd so I am fairly confident in my predictions. If you find otherwise, or likewise comment and let me know, and if you are local and can think of anything else to share then also please add it in the comments.

FAIL to PLAN and you PLAN to FAIL ……and all that jazz 😉

…..fall for such a Pig?

Pig tales chapter one

When I was a kid I spent the first part of my childhood chasing peat bog faeries (real ones not musical ones) around my family’s hill sheep estate in Lochaber.

Wellies on, and my hair tied in “bunches”, I used to hang upside down from a 5 bar gate by my feet; spotting fairies was easier upside down because they live in a topsy turvy world.

I grew up before nursery school existed, and so when you went to school you just went to school. Ripped from the bosom of my tiny, isolated family, I left the cottage and was put into school with no acclimatisation. Me and my school friends had to just adapt and survive like the little animals we were.
There were only a few faeries in the school garden so I had to make friends with the kids. That’s when I made my oldest friend, and she told me that my hair was not tied in bunches they were actually called pig’s tails. At the time I thought it was a horrible name for my bouncy appendages, but now I have met pigs I would wear them like a crown.

In January 2017 I fulfilled a 13year old task on the “to do” list and got pigs. I wanted them to plough up the croft. We have a very impressive amount of peat here (it’s what attracted me to the place – all those faeries for my children to chase) so you can’t get machinery on much of our land.
Lots of people had told me how intelligent pigs are, and therefore tiresome to keep. One neighbour had found his had not just disconnected the electric fence from the battery, but then carried the battery off and buried it!

I had little experience of pigs, but my parents had some and all of it sounded scary – escaping and taking the back door of the house off its hinges, or attacking people and putting them in hospital.
I started with two weaners that we could raise to be boars. If they were that smart then they would surely build a good relationship with us if raised fairly?

Soon followed two sows, both called Peppa, and then we needed a boar to cover them, who was of course called George. I was a bit scared of George because I had been warned about boars tusks so often, but on my first dealings with him he seemed very clever, and listened to what you said. He was obviously a character – Peppa I didn’t like him so he locked her in her ark and moved in with Peppa II.
That worked well until the other night when I looked out to see him in the chicken pen and trying to get into Peppa I. I raced out to get him before something got injured, with a bucket of feed.
“GEORGE” I called in a friendly way. He looked up and ran at me with an expression that said nothing but “BUCKET!!“.
He’s a large pig, with that prehistoric boar shape, big upright ears, and the markings of a saddle back but in a beautiful red roan and white. He probably weighs about the same as my smallest horse. I’m not going to lie, as he charged over for the bucket, leaping up the steep slope into the garden, I was a bit intimidated.

I quickly sealed him into the garden and went inside. With no one to help me and Amelie to get ready for bed I decided to leave him there until Amelie was out of the shower and before it got dark so I could safely take chicken feed from the barn to the hen house without getting molested when I put Bob, Curly Sue and Jersey (chickens) to bed.

After a short heated discussion with Amelie about getting out of the bath I left her to put her PJ’s on grabbed a bucket and went to the barn. George heard me getting feed and was there in a shot.

Is that bucket for me?
Yes George, but don’t come in here.
Why?
There’s 10 dogs in this barn and they WILL try and bite you.
Not scared of dogs or bites.
You should be
I bite back.
Now I’m scared. Please don’t come in.
OK

And he sauntered off, but by the time I was at the gate to the car park where I intended to lure him back to his pen, he was beside me with a sense of urgency that unnerved me again.

Is that bucket for me?
Hi George, yes, your bucket and one for Peppa II too. Can you follow me nicely?
He looked up at me and I could hear him thinking “she’s still scared“. I was still scared.
Do I have to be scared of you
Do I have to be scared of you?
No
Then no.
I gave him a scratch to show that I’d rather be affectionate than scared and he politely followed me out to the gate to the field.

Can I have the bucket now?
He appeared very excited, and I felt scared I was going to get mugged.
Why are you scared?
Are you going to mug me?
Why would you say such a thing ? he whispered and sauntered off up the road.
George where are you going?
I don’t think I can stay here and put up with this sort of rudeness.
I’m sorry George, I didn’t mean it, come back. I said to his rear as it trotted off up the main road.
GEORGE!
LOOK I have a BUCKET
I know, but I have had enough.
What do you mean you have had enough – enough food?
No enough of this suspicion that I am going to hurt you. I know where I am not appreciated.
George you are wrong, I like you very much.
Too late, I’ve got the notion now.
Notion of WHAT?!
Adventure. You know sometimes a pig just needs to feel the wind in his ears.

I was distracted from the conversation by a wet haired Amelie on the decking, naked from the waist up, yelling at me that “George is leaving” as if I hadn’t noticed. I tried to run after him, but he just started to run too. I stopped and called him again, but he was acting on his adventurous senses. Now Amelie was having a very loud nervous break down about the fact I had left the pen open and Peppa II was going to escape. Cringingly I raced back to secure the pen knowing that the pod guests must be able to hear all of this. I suspected they were trying to enjoy an evening by the fire pit and we were ruining it.

I popped indoors to explain to Amelie that had she got dressed as I asked this would be less stressful, but as she wasn’t I’d have to leave her in the house whilst I took the car up the road to find George. For once in her tiny life she seemed to appreciate the severity of the situation. She definitely wanted George back.
I headed up the road and as I rounded the corner at the pod one of the guests was standing beside her car pointing up the hill with a look of confusion on her face. I tried to do sign language for “yes I know, it’s my loose pig, I’ll get him back, nothing to worry about”.
I quickly found him; he hadn’t been in any sort of a hurry. I stopped the car and jumped out with the bucket.

George come on darling; this isn’t a great plan.
No I think you’re right, I was thinking this too.
You can’t leave the sows unattended.
Never mind the sows I’m not fit to climb these hills.
He trotted back to me.

We made a pit stop at the pod for him to meet the guests who tentatively stroked his wiry back. He was very accommodating, but his sights were set on home. One of the guests said she’d come down to the house with me and get her phone that was charging, so the three of us set off and she asked “so is this a standard way to spend your Thursday night then?”
“What, casually walking my pig, you mean?”
“Yes I guess that’s what I mean”
“Would you believe me if I said this has never happened to me before?”
I could tell she didn’t.

I decided George would be best in the stable and put him in with a hurdle tied across the door so he couldn’t get out ( I hoped), but left the gate from the stables to the garden open just in case.
It was perhaps an hour later when the German Shepherd started shouting “Schwein! Schwein!” loudly and I realised George was out.
I decided I’d have to just keep him in the garden until morning, and closed him in – except I couldn’t find him.

“George?” I called into the darkness, and tip toed up to the panel fence at the end of the house.
“Geeeooorrrge” I called again as I rounded the corner to be confronted with his big prehistoric front quarters.
AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!
GRUUUUUNNNT!!!
Jesus George you made me S H I T myself!
Stace you scared me.
Sorry George.
You said you wouldn’t scare me.
I really didn’t mean to, it was an accident. OK you are going to have to stay in the garden tonight.
Can’t I come in there with you? He mounted the back door step sideways under the hand rail.
George you’ll get stuck! And no, you have to sleep in the garden.
Where?
Wherever you like pet.
But there’s no ark, and no Peppa to cuddle.
Well you should have thought of that before you left your ark and your favourite Peppa behind.
oooooohhhh this step fence is great for itching the top of my back.
George don’t break the hand rail they only got put on a week ago.
OK.
Now off you go.
You sure I can’t come in there with you?
Yes. Night George.
Night.

A short time later I heard the Great Dane come home from work and went to meet him; it would be a huge surprise for him to be met by George, but George was nowhere in sight. I was worried he had escaped again until the dogs went crazy;
“Schwein” shouted the GSD.
“Svin’ya” shouted the huskies.
“Filthy pig!” shouted the Pointer
“Get tae fuck” shouted the Jack Russell Terrier.

I opened the door and George was trying to get into the barn.

Smells good in there.
George don’t go in there. Please stay away from the dogs – the poor pod guests are probably trying to sleep.
OK. I’m just looking for a bed….whats up here? he said as he ran up the ramp onto the decking.
No George you can’t sleep there either.
He walked back towards me.
I have to be honest Stace your hospitality is not all I hoped for tonight.
Well you didn’t give me time to prepare, get the things necessary, or help to get you home. You can’t just turn up unannounced and think it’s all going to he OK, OK?
OK.
I gave him a big cuddle and scratched behind his ears. He smiled and relaxed and I left him to look for a place to sleep.

At 2 in the morning I was woken by crunching and crashing, and more swearing dogs.
As I opened the back door George ran at me.

Stace I really need to come in there with you.
No George you can’t it’s just not the place for pigs. The Great Dane would never allow me to have a boar stay in the house and to be honest I couldn’t face it.
Just one night! he insisted and leapt up the step, face palming my hand with his snout and pushing determinedly against it.
No George!
Just…..let me ……squeeeeeeeze…. in and you won’t even know I’m there. He said with his head wedged in the door.
No George, I’m really sorry, but no. We just can’t.

OK. He muttered from the other side of a closed door. I felt awful as I stood there staring at the closed door wondering if I’d hurt his feeling too badly? I guessed I could make it up to him with a special breakfast.
I heard him slowly back down the steps and step off into the night.

In the morning Bob the Cock awoke me at 6am. I hadn’t managed to close them in or feed them with George in the garden. If he’d known there was food in the hen house I had no doubt he’d have tried just as hard, and likely with greater success, to spend the night in there too.
I went outside to see if George was OK.

There was no George.
Bleary eyed I checked all the gates – still closed. The stable – empty and the hurdle still in place meaning he’d show jumped out of it; such a talented pig.
A sick feeling started in my stomach – where was he? Was he OK?  Would I find him before trouble did? What if he’d sunk in the bog or broken his legs in a cattle grid? Who else had pigs he might be impregnating?
Would he want to come home again?
It was eerily quiet, not a sign of a pig anywhere. I wondered if there’d been a midnight mutiny and they had all left…..
I started double checking where he could have got out – definitely not over the 7ft front gates – not without wings. All other fences and gates were as I’d left them. I double checked he was really gone, and he really was. He must’ve got a notion again, and now with the wind in his ears he could be anywhere on the hill between us and the village. I hoped no one was out for an early morning dog walk. That could get messy, and that kind of mess is always difficult to explain.

I grabbed the car keys and was about to get hiking over the hill from the car park on top, but the stillness and quiet unnerved me. Something wasn’t right. I wondered if he’d broken Peppa II out and they’d gone together? He might follow her following a bucket back home if so, otherwise I wasn’t sure how I was going to get him back. I decided to check she was in her ark. As I went into her field there was no obvious signs of her having escaped anywhere, so I was pretty sure I’d find her inside. I called to her, and heard a grunt, and as I peered inside, there, miraculously, was George!
Tucked up and cuddled in with his favourite Peppa, and with no obvious way he got out of the garden OR into the paddock, I figured he must’ve flown.

……would want to be a fast jet pilot?

When I was 19 I was almost successful in joining the RAF to become a fast jet pilot. Actually I wanted to be a navigator, but they wanted me to try out as a pilot. I think it was because there was only one other female pilot at the time, who flew Tornado F3s. Sadly my health held me back. I still can’t watch a jet pass without wondering what life I would have led if I had….

Walter “Jesse” James Hibbert is on the left in the picture above. My Grandfather. In his photo album he wrote the following caption under a picture of his own Father ;

“The cause of it all”.

February 2015.
Today is Monday, and the weather is a typical Highland February day. It is wet, and cold, and snowing, but it doesn’t lie, and the mud is coming up over your boots, and even stepping out to the bin brings back in enough of the croft to make the house floors look filthier than the barns. It’s the kind of day that really doesn’t help my mood, doesn’t motivate me or inspire me to adventure. It doesn’t inspire me to clean my over cluttered house, or go and cuddle my soggy horses. It doesn’t inspire me to smile at other parents on the school run, or make the important phone calls I need to. It doesn’t make me want to do much more that seek the comfort of clacking keys on the laptop as I write this. Writing is a very great comfort – spilling out my thoughts and emotions, my fingers moving quickly as my mind, but my body slouched still and quiet. I’m in a complete “funk” and have been since Saturday morning. I’m not even trying to pull myself out of it: I am all too aware that I can’t and only time will do that. This is the introverted side of my personality at play now – the part of me that is like a Highland Pony and wants to keep her feet still and move her mind. My mind is moving so far and fast. It’s racing through decades of memories and imaginings and has been since Friday.
Friday was not a typical February Highland day. The weather was all four seasons in one day, but just the best bits and all perfectly timed to provide perfect extra emphasis to the order of proceedings. Friday was not a typical day at all because it was the funeral of my Grandfather.

The day began with burning bright sunshine from dawn onwards. The sunrise at Rhinamain was more awesome and bright and full of energy than any other day so far this winter. It was as if the sun wasn’t just rising, but more rising to the occasion. It continued on so bright and beautiful all morning that it kept me focused and helped me to concentrate on getting my family organised and out the door in time.
As we came over the top of Tulloch Hill and looked over to the mountains to the south, they were perfectly sugar dusted with snow at the tops, and the sky was so pale blue, the sunlight so yellow that it was a picture postcard day and I found myself thinking “Poul should have taken his camera for this” and then realised that it was probably inappropriate to be taking pictures on the day of a funeral, wasn’t it?  We drove over the Struie which was still almost as icy as when Poul and I had skidded and spun off the road as we crossed it at 1am on the way back from work the night before. As I saw in daylight the spot we had finally come to rest at was but a couple of meters from a very steep and long drop into an old dry loch bed, I realised we had been extremely lucky. It also reminded me of the last car accident I had been in, on January 14th 1997, when I had spun and flipped my mothers car and crashed it spectacularly on it’s roof right next to a Loch and the church the funeral service would be held in at 1pm today.  Outside the temperature was just three degrees so was only one degree warmer than it had been when we hit the black ice last night, even though that sun had blazed down for several hours now. We drove carefully.

As we got closer to Cannich the sky grew darker. Heavy clouds burdened the sky over Strathglass and reminded me the solemnity that brought us together. As we entered the house snow began to fall.

My Grandfather had been a WWII Air Ace. The RAF had already put two Eurofighters over his house that morning before we arrived, and weather permitting they would put another over the church as he arrived at 12.50pm. We looked dismally up at the low dark grey sky knowing that even if they still sent the aircraft , we wouldn’t see it in this weather.
“It’s burning bright sunshine at home” I kept telling everyone, and they assured me that the day had started that way in Cannich too.
We gathered in my Grandmothers house with other close family members. It was bittersweet to see relatives from far flung places because of the reason we were together, but it was so very touching that they had made the journeys from Yorkshire, Surrey, and even Lake Geneva to be with us. There were many mutterings about the weather, and the fly past.
“Surely these fast jets are up to a bit of snow?!”
“But we won’t see it”
“We’ll hear it, we’ll know it was there”
“It could be completely different in an hours time, it might clear”
“Absolutely, who knows what it will be like by 12.50, this is the Highlands after all”
“Look it’s brightening, it’s looking good up there now” said my Uncle John pointing to a beautiful blue patch with just a few flakes falling away from it.

Mere minutes later the sky had completely cleared and the burning sunshine was back. Grandpa was taken from the house to the hearse in warm, crisp sunlight, and a very small icy breeze. I turned and pointed to the house sign for Poul to read “Thor House” it says and has a spitfire carved into it. Poul bought me a silver Thors Hammer when we first met. I wear it all the time, but today I and both my sisters (without conferring) were wearing the pearl necklaces we had been given by our Grandparents, so I had asked him to wear it and he hadn’t understood why perhaps until then. My grandfather had been one of two people, the other presumably being the Prime Minister, with a launch key to the Thor missiles, Britains first nukes.
I had heard funny tales of drunken dinner parties and invitations to see his “large erection” . He would take the guests to the air field and use his key to start the launch process. Without the other key it could never launch, but it would allow the hanger over the missile to slide back and for the missile to be moved into launch position, erect and pointing to the sky. The use of such deadly weapons as a dinner party trick was a perfect example of my Grandfathers sense of humour and also a wonderful reminder of the different times he served and lived in. Not a chance of any large erections being revealed in modern times with Health and Safety. The idea of a couple of men with keys being all that stood between normality and mass destruction is almost incredible by today’s standards, but then everything he and his peers did is incredible by today’s standards. These kind of men, in the forces of those times, will never be seen again. They were the real deal, actual heroes. No war will ever be fought in the same way as it was back then. Now launches require keyboards not keys, and no close proximity. Aircraft that drop devastation are unmanned drones. It’s unlikely there’s ever going to be any generation of pilot who has to do the kind of dog fighting that Grandpa and his peers did. Engaging the enemy in a far more gritty and personal way. Knowing  being shot down, escaping from behind enemy lines if you survived just as my Grandfather had, without GPS to give your team your location, no medicines to deal with wounds like today’s, no surgical techniques to repair or replace what you lost. Flippant erections of nuclear missiles may sound ridiculous or dangerous, or even a gross misappropriation of WMD, but when you think about the kind of war that these men were involved in then you can understand the dark humour that grew out from it. Grandpa was an exceptionally humorous man, it was inevitable it would have a darkened edge to it by the end of the war.

I took Poul, Chloe, one sister and two cousins and we followed directly behind the funeral cars. We had a little giggle that the initials of the undertaker on the car number plates were “WTF” but that soon gave over to emotion as the undertaker  walking in front of the cars, down the drive and onto the road stopped at the end, removed his top hat and bowed to the coffin before alighting. It was so terribly moving to see our little Grandfather given the respect he was due.
Throughout the past years and his recent decline we had worked hard to preserve his dignity and ensure he received the respect he was due as a man who had sacrificed a lot of himself for his country. The care he had received privately and from the NHS had been varied. It could be expected that over such a long time as Grandpa had kept going, we would experience both the best and the worst of all situations. 5 weeks previously he had been admitted to hospital with pneumonia and we had gathered, clan style, in the hospital to provide the show of support we hoped would keep the little man first and foremost in the minds of those around him. We also wanted to be there for my Grandmother who, after more than 67yrs of marriage to him, never left his side in the hospital. On more than one occasion she witnessed equipment failure of his oxygen supply or drip and was able to get the staff to come and fix it. For almost two weeks she never left his side, until finally they decided no more could be done, and they would send him home to die – the day before her 88th birthday. At this point he hadn’t eaten in roughly 3 weeks and was being kept alive by glucose. He had almost halved the infection in his lungs and was fighting hard for a man that my Mother had given CPR to and brought back to life after 4 dead minutes. They had said he wouldn’t last that first night, and perhaps it was a gross underestimation of his will power, or maybe it was just the way things worked out, but had they managed to get him feeding sooner I think we may have toasted him at his 95th birthday.
Perhaps if they had known this man, who had got Polio whilst serving in Malta and had been the only one on the ward not to die, they’d have got on board the fight with him. Perhaps if they’d known he had been paralysed completely by Polio with the exception of a single toe, and in “Kill Bill” style he worked that one toe until it became his whole body he could use again, and got right back to work leading squadrons of aircraft.
Perhaps if they had understood his mental fortitude then they would have given him more of a chance and a feeding tube.
Sadly, when the end finally came for him, at home in his bed,  his diligent and devoted wife had been admitted to hospital with suspected pneumonia herself and angina. Her heart was literally breaking, and she had completely wiped herself out making sure he got everything he needed. This, for me, is the saddest part of his passing that after all those nights by his bedside she wasn’t there when he finally left. After more than 67 years together, they weren’t together to say goodbye. He’d told me years previously when we thought he was on his way out “I’m not worried about dying, I am just worried about leaving my wife”.

The sun lasted all the way to Loch Miekle. Many were waiting to pay their respects and show support to the family. Outside was a Squadron Leader, highly decorated, that the RAF had sent to represent his other family. We gathered outside and my Grandmother spoke to him, he said to my Mother that the little (tiny) church was beautiful. She replied that one of her granddaughters had been christened here and another two had crashed a car here “so it was special to the family”. We had a little laugh at that, it lightened the tension that was building quietly as the mourners stood waiting to see if we would receive the Flypast.
Of course the RAF did not disappoint, and at 12.50 on the dot, the roar of that incredible engine could be heard swinging into the glen from the west. As it approached and was lining up perfectly over the church it roared louder; a symphony of highly tuned perfection. Finally it came into view and charged over the top of us all and into the distance of the east. I lost sight of it through the tears I could no longer control. It was such a beautiful tribute to him, and so good of the service and country he had devoted himself to, to repay some of the debt. In the stiff upper lip of British service life, there is still affection.  Anywhere I meet an RAF serviceman who speaks to me about Grandpa they talk of him and the Air Aces with huge respect and reverence. The contribution is not whittled away by time, and although there’s no one serving now who could have known my Grandfather, they will always see him as one of “theirs”. It was a great comfort to us, as well as very moving, to see such huge physical representation of what he meant to Queen and Country and the RAF. He had led the flypast for her coronation so it could be argued it was only fair she returned the favour.

It showed it wasn’t just us that thought he was special.

….make someone stay in a horse trailer?

The Pod Part III

Today is late April and the we are 1 month in to our first proper season. HMRC have been informed, I have registered self employed – now the croft has a chance of being a business not a hobby.

Typical of this time of year, by 9.45am we have already had a spring sunrise, summer dawn, autumnal school run, and now rather predictably the snow has just started to fall. The bed sheets with a picture of a galloping horse, and extra blankets are drying all over the house ready for the next guests. We have now added in a movable fire pit and BBQ; we are just keeping the extras free and the price at Hostel rate and flat across the year. It helps us work out different aspects of the market better if we know that choices haven’t been made around pricing.

So has it been successful?

Yes. Yes it has.

In fact I am blown away by how successful it is – not as much as The Great Dane, he’s genuinely impressed with me right now and I am basking in the “know it all glow” it allows me.

My target for bookings was to have it available from end of March until end of October. We had opened it at the end of last year for about 5 or 6 weeks and we had someone in it every weekend, even though we’d done zero marketing and it was completely out of season. We just bunged it on a couple of OTA’s and went for it.
This led me to believe that I should aim to have it let at least one night per weekend in our first season. Then I got cold feet and opted for 25 nights in our first season, 75 in our second as I hoped by then I would have the time to really push the marketing, and finally by the time we were in year 3 I hoped to top out and maintain with 100 nights a year.
I didn’t have a lot to base these targets on in terms of expectations or market research. Since I last worked in this sector there had been incredible changes, like the internet – that wasn’t a thing back then let alone Glamping. No one would pay you to stay in a horse trailer the last time I let out or dealt with self catering. The Great Dane had no conviction that anyone ever would.

It appears that I was probably way out with those targets. One month in and yesterday was the first time that we didn’t have someone staying in it, meaning we have blown the first years target out of the water in the first month. In fact we are not far off our second years target already, so I am confident we can meet our year 3 target in this season.

However the true mark of success is how people enjoy it, and so far it has been only 5 star reviews. The real proof being with guests reporting it’s the best place they have stayed, and saying they want to return next year. Long term stays are being enjoyed as much as one night “experience” stays. Hardcore campers are enjoying a shower bag under a sky roof, and absolutely everyone is getting a lot out of cutting up wood and having fun with the stove and the fire pit.

On a totally personal level it has done more than that though – it has given us hope.

I said in my other posts this was about finding a way to live where we love with enough time left over to love it. However since I last posted about the pod our personal situation changed a lot. In October I woke at 4.30am in agony in my hips, and from there progressed a winter of troubling symptoms, a loss of mobility, no real answers from the NHS so far, terrifyingly the loss of two jobs and finally becoming registered as disabled.
Our position changed from wanting to live where we love to wanting to keep any kind of roof over our heads. We looked at moving but nothing that was available was going to make us better off. We were going to end up with less space and a larger mortgage.
I couldn’t afford to keep my beloved Muscle Man on the road, and I had to give up breeding our gorgeous cobs because I could no longer handle the youngstock.
My lowest point was when my eldest daughter had to leave school to care for me. We went into a freefall of bewildered panic, and I couldn’t understand what was happening far less how to fix it.

In all honesty I had lost my enthusiasm for everything – I didn’t know if I would do any of my hobbies (rock climbing, riding and mushing) ever again and with 10 dogs and 10 horses to care for that was going to be a problem. I had bred the dogs, or owned them for 14yrs, I had bred the horses and some I had rescued from abuse or neglect and I had a one off bond with them. Being so specialist in terms of their needs there was nowhere for them to go except a large hole in the ground and I couldn’t consider that as an option. I couldn’t see the answer, I couldn’t see where the money for their feed was coming from, where the help with their care was coming from. I knew every penny would count in 2017 and if the pod could make enough to pay the bill for the feed they’d eaten over winter I would have one less stress.

We started to get ready for the opening, and hauled the mattress out of the hallway. We’d stored it there in its bag to stop it going damp and mouldy over winter in the empty pod. However it was up against the glass pane by the unused front door and condensation had run down and pooled on the top of the bag, eventually making its way inside. As my daughter went to take it from the bag I saw it was soaking wet and very mouldy. In a panic I started looking for a replacement – we had only a couple of weeks until opening and I knew deliveries to the North can take that long on large items. One company sold a cheap replacement but it wouldn’t deliver for less than £70, another guaranteed to be in your home in 5 days for £15 but it was twice the price. To have peace of mind I had it in time I went for the expensive one, which actually arrived 17 days later, just 2hrs before our first guest checked in. Our first guest was staying 5 days, and the weather was rough – I anticipated a poor review…..

Thankfully she loved it, and I felt like I could exhale a deep sigh of relief. From then on the bookings came thick and fast and The Great Dane and I began to worry less and smile more.
We realised that this daft wee idea I had last year, and the last bit of cash and mobility I had, had been very well used. This pod was going to get us out of some very tough times, and if we could make another we’d be able to actually make this croft work and stop worrying about losing our home – a place we love. Thanks to this pod, and the fact I am not able to reliably work elsewhere any longer, I finally have the time to enjoy it.

We have started work on the next pod, which is a horse lorry this time. It’s going to accommodate up to 5 people and will be on grid so if some of those people are kids you can look after them easily with electric showers and gas hobs, running water and an electric stove you don’t have to cut wood for. Now we have to start branding, websites, paper based advertising and so on. After all those years running all those businesses and working all those crazy jobs with crazy hours it looks like we might finally have got it right.

Thanks to all our guests so far for their lovely reviews – If we keep getting guests like this we’re going to be blessed.
Big thanks to friends, family, children and partner who sponsored this event with their enormous hearts.

……go East?

NC500 East v’s West Part 1
(There really are too many advantages to put in a single post).

I recently started a group on Facebook for the NC500 to allow those of us living up here to give tourers tips on accommodation and events as well as promote our own little independent businesses. Once you’ve done the NC500 it’s pretty obvious how difficult it is to make a living up here, and how dependent on agriculture and tourism we are. There are no big companies to work for with the exception of supermarket chains, and there aren’t even many of those on the West. Traveling to work can involve hundreds of miles a week if you don’t work from home. Of course this scarcity of people (Sutherland is the largest county in Scotland and has the smallest population of any county in Britain at just 12,000 people) is why you want to come visit, it’s part of the attraction, but it was important that those of us living here had a platform to inform visitors that we exist without looking like we’re just trying to ‘milk it’. The group is really popular, with around 4000 people joining in the first six months, and it was through moderating this group I saw that the general advice handed out to people planning their first trip was do it anticlockwise and save the best to last because ‘West is Best’.

Undeniable – the West has got some amazing scenery. There’s no two ways about it, no one can deny it, or challenge it; it’s breath taking.
BUT to say ‘West is Best’ is only true if you are doing the NC500 purely for mountainous scenery. If you get a day of thick set, low cloud or mist then oftentimes those mountains aren’t viewable, or safe. All coasts can boast the same opportunities to eat great food,  stay in wonderful accommodation, go to gala’s, music festivals, Highland Games and rub shoulders with interesting locals, and wildlife. Yet each has it’s own very distinctive culture, accent, and quirks – you can only “go up E road” if “E road” heads to or along the North Coast for instance, and even I have only just found out what a “Tina Bowlie” is!
The diversity of microculture is one of the things that makes the NC500 such an interesting route. If your plan is to just go get miles under your belt by doing it like a race, you’re actually missing the point of it. It would be like going to the Tower of London and saving time by cutting out the room with the crown jewels. People always come back for another go, no matter how much time they take on the NC500, and one of the parts that they NEVER planned well for was exploration.

I love all of the Highlands. I was the first “Stacie” born in Dingwall, raised in Lochaber  and Inverness Shire. I did what most Northern Highlanders do and tried out a couple of places south and some city dwelling, but it wasn’t for me so I decided to settle in the Kyle of Sutherland. I chose my croft here because I have all the very many benefits of easier East Coast living with more amenities and faster roads for ferrying my kids about, but I am only 45 minutes from Assynt  (North West ).  My favourite hill, Suilven, is over in Assynt which I can see from the top of the hill above my house – in fact I can see seven counties, two coasts and the Cairngorms from the hill above my house.
When I came here I worked as a self catering property inspector for Scotland’s largest independent agency and covered an area including the NC500. There were always far less properties for rent on the North East as it was less popular, but as I have explored it further over the past 13 years I have come to realise that it caters for a different type of tourist – one that’s getting more and more interested in the NC500. If you are into agriculture, adventure activities, gin, beer, whisky, golf, archaeology, or are taking a young family with you then the North  and East is where you will spend most of your time. If you have hired a motorhome then going Anti Clockwise and taking it up the A9 before trying out the twistier single track West might be a better way to acclimatise to your new abode. It’s not a characterless drive though as Berriedale Braes have steep drops and hairpins to rival Bealach na Ba.
So before you go away believing that the route is really all about the West, and the rest are just miles making up the numbers,  lets have a look at some of the delights the East and North Coasts have to offer.

“Go oan, take a drink…..”
If you are a fan of the alcoholic beverage then these are the coasts for you. Starting with the Black Isle Brewery just North of Inverness, and then Cromarty Brewery also on the Black Isle (try their coffee infused stout making good use of the grounds from a local artisan coffee shop – best kind of recycling you can get in my book!), you can progress onto whisky at Teanninich and Dalmore at Alness, then onto the very famous Glenmorangie at Tain complete with its seafood restaurant, if you take a detour over the Struie you can come out at Edderton and Balblair distillery which was made famous by the film “The Angels Share”. Continue on to Clynelish at beautiful Brora, and make sure you go to Old Pultney and Wolfburn ( a new distillery offering a 3yr old Malt) as the most northerly distilleries. Then finish the whole thing off with a botanical Gin at Rock Rose in Dunnet Bay. All the while you drive between these distilleries you’ll be watching the barley that makes the Whisky ripen in the fields that line the A9. There is no better ground, and no better sight, than the patchwork of crops planted on the Black Isle viewed from the other side of the Cromarty Firth.

A good walk spoiled
The East Coast has long had an affiliation with Golf. Last year Royal Dornoch celebrated 400years of world class golfing – it is ranked Number 1 in Scotland and Number 6 in the world. Dinner from the conservatory restaurant of the Royal Golf Hotel looks over the First Tee, Dornoch Beach and the Firth right out to the Light House at Tarbat Ness. At night the towns of Portmahomack, Inver and Tain’s lights blinking over the waters at you are beautiful.
Across the Dornoch Firth at Tain, is another wonderful links course. Across two Firths is Castle Stuart near Inverness where the Scottish Open was held last year.  In Bonar Bridge is a wonderful little 9 hole course looking down over the ancient woodland of Loch Migdale, that would have been saplings at the time it’s sister course was being created. Further North are Golspie and Brora with well regarded courses and incredible views from every Tee.

Piles of old rubbish.
If you get your rocks off looking at heaps of rocks you’re going to love the Viking long houses, forts, cairn, brochs and crannog found on the East and North East coasts. About 5000 years ago the area surrounding the Dornoch Firth was the most populated part of Britain making it the equivalent of London today. Hut circles and chambered cairns litter the common grazing above Loch Migdale. At the closest end of the Loch is a Crannog ( a man made island that would have had a round house on it accessed by a hidden trail of stepping stones) and in a field nearby is an Amphitheatre. It was also here that ancient jewellery was discovered in a crack in one of the rock faces, known as “The Migdale Hoard” and can now be viewed in the National Museum Scotland. They include an axe head, bangles and anklets, carved buttons, hair ornaments and fragments of an elaborate head dress. On the top of the hill above where this was found was the very recent discovery of a Viking long house when a survey was done before building the second largest sub station in Europe next to Loch Buie.
There are many Brochs, some of the best are at Hope, but the ruins of one sits right next to the A9 between Dunrobin and Brora.
The ancient people of the North East were the Picts, meaning “painted” because they were thought to be fairly fond of getting inked. The Pictish Trail takes you from monument to monument up the coasts to see the incredible intricate designs they carved honouring life, wildlife, and Vikings who eventually conquered them, who were then conquered by the Gaels, who were then conquered by sheep and all of this has left its mark on the land.

Macabre Monuments
There are five that immediately spring to mind, the first is not really associated with death, but it certainly is an example of a long gone era. There are many examples of Victorian “Over the Top” in Scotland, but none are as in your face as the Folly on top of Fyrish above the Cromarty Firth. If you want to go see it, its a couple of hours of steep walking, and surprisingly bad midgies at the top. However it is SO impressive. You can not find a better way to frame the view out to Nigg and the Oil Rigs parked up waiting for refurbishment in the Cromarty Firth, than through those arches. Until you have stood next to them you can never realise how mammoth they are. I always thought they were about the height of a tall man until I walked up there. Nope. MUCH bigger. They are almost as big as the issue of getting parked up there, so week days are best. And if there’s no space don’t be tempted to park in the passing places and on the verge like the other numpties who keep blocking the locals every weekend.

If you come down from Fyrish and take the B9176 over the Struie Hill you can start to see the next monument on top of Ben Bhraggie above Golspie much further up the coast. The Duke of Sutherland Monument on the top of the hill is a shorter walk than Fyrish. Many believe that monument should be removed because it is a giant statue of the man responsible for clearing the surrounding areas during the Highland Clearances. The great forest covering Caledonia – the Rainforest of the UK – was cut down almost completely, save a few acres, to make way for sheep. The crofters were as much a hindrance as the trees were to the progress sought by the upper classes so they were ruthlessly turfed out.  Their homes burnt, taken down, and made uninhabitable there were tens of thousands of homeless men, women and children suffering throughout winter without proper accommodation before walking west to the boats that took them to Canada.
Which brings me to the next monument – Croik Church. Take the B9176 until it intersects with the road between Tain and Ardgay. Turn left for Ardgay and then head up Strath Carron towards Alladale Estate, famous in recent times for trying to reintroduce Elk, Boar, Wolves, Lynx, and Bear. The Elk and the Boar are now gone, none of the rest ever made an appearance, but they are involved in reintroducing Scottish Wild Cat instead (and last year, for some reason, a Racoon was photographed loose on the Estate!). Take the road to Croik, you can’t miss the church. Here you can walk by trail straight across Scotland to the West Coast and Ullapool which is only 24 miles away. When the Duke kicked families out, many of them took refuge in the grave yard around the church. Believing it was blasphemous to stay inside the church itself they camped for NINE SOLID MONTHS in the graveyard. Some of them carved their names into the window panes of the church and they can still be read today.

Heading back out onto the NC500 and a short trip North you can find the next monument in the garden of a house on Carnaig street in Dornoch. It commemorates the last time in Scotland that a witch was burnt at the stake. As if getting kicked off your croft and sent on a ship to Canada wasn’t bad enough, women had to endure this awful way to die up until 1727 (the date on the stone is apparently incorrect) when Janet Home was the last to be dealt with this way. If you go for tea in the Court House Tea Room in the town, see if you can spot her in the mural on the wall.

Further North again, and just before Helmsdale is a wee place called Loth. There’s a long layby there and in the middle, and easy to miss, is a stone commemorating the last Wolf shot in Sutherland “by the hunter Polson” about 200yds from the layby around 1700. It certainly seems like losing the wolf was the start of dreadful things to come that century….

Silly names
It is claimed that Berriedale and Helmsdale were the inspiration for Helms Deep in Lord of the Rings where Aragorn wakes the dead army. With so many Viking place names up the East Coast it’s easy to see where Tolkien got the idea for that army from. As soon as you come over the Dornoch Firth and see the sign for the River Evelix you start to feel like you might be in a different country. With towns like Dingwall (meaning Parliament) and Thurso (Thors town), you can tell that this area was popular among the Scandinavians sailing over the North Sea and looking for farmable land. Some of my favourite ones are “Portmahomack” which is a gorgeous fishing village with harbour, beach and excellent restaurant,  all looking over towards the hills of Sutherland, “The Mound” an area near Loch Fleet, an RSPB and seal spotting haven, where you can climb approximately 32 sports climbing routes from grade 4-7 on the conglomerate crags that stick out of the rounded humps obvious on the skyline from as far away as the coast of Aberdeenshire. Pretty much anything with “ster” in it, especially “Lybster” where you can eat in a restaurant at the Portland Arms that has an aga in it giving a real homely feel.
Castles that you can stay in.
If you want to Lord it up on your trip then the only Castles you can stay in are on the East Coast and start at just £54 per night. Starting in Dingwall you can stay in Tulloch Castle, well known for it’s great food. Then after that is Kincraig Castle which has a great collection of Wendy Reeves Pastel artwork of the Highlands and does excellent food at very reasonable prices. Mansfield Castle in Tain is next, and then technically it’s Skibo Castle – but that’s out of the budget of the majority of tourers I would guess. It’s a Private Membership club, and includes amongst it’s members many of the richest and most famous people in the world (Madonna and Guy Ritchie got married here which is why Madonna is in the mural in the Court House too). Tom Jones was recently spotted driving around Ross Shire and Sutherland in a Bentley; he was staying at Skibo.

Whilst you can’t stay in it, you’d be mad not to go and see Dunrobin Castle just North of Golspie on the A9. It’s the largest castle in the Northern Highlands, with 189 rooms, and remodelled in the late 1800’s to Scottish Baronial Style it’s very impressive with 135 ft towers, beautiful French formal style gardens and even a 92ft draw well in the courtyard. It’s got a real Fairytale feel to it and can be seen from quite some distance as you drive up the A9 nestled into the hillside right on the shore. I feel it’s best approached from the sea, and then a picnic on the beach below it gives you time to take in the well crafted architecture untypical of the rugged North, but if you aren’t seaworthy then going in by the road to the rear is still quite a sight. Inside is full of quirks, ideal for something to do on a rainy day.

Family friendly Small hill climbs
 Struie Hill, Fyrish and Ben Bragghie are easily accessible in short amounts of time and have stunning views. They all have that feel of a big hill without the time or effort so if you are travelling with kids and need a leg stretch and a hill walking experience that doesn’t turn to tears and carrying them home, these are the choices for you. Struie Hill especially is good for this as it has good parking and a road to within very close range of the summit. Then the view right across Scotland from North sea to the West Coast hills will knock your socks off.  There’s even a little trad climbing on the crag.

“….pod like that?”

Day 1 on Trailer Transformation – quick inspection.

I emptied out the trailer of the various rubbish and equipment that had ended up dumped inside it – traffic cones, old tyres, electric fence poles, popping paper, old horse rugs and a giant gym ball 44inches in diameter – the usual horse toys.
I had thought the floor would be unquestionably rotten and need replacing, but was pleasantly surprised to see that a good power hose is probably all it needs. The ceiling was peeling paint off the fibreglass hull at the front leaving huge bubbles and hollows. I started to peel it off; it barely needed me to poke at it and the paint fell off in huge flakes. I was astonished to find that a large hole in the paintwork just above the front window where a flake had come off partially leaving a big bubble had been made the home of a small bird. It’s droppings were in the bubble and feathers were stuck to the fibreglass – amazing that it weighed so little it didn’t break the flake!
The front end is in remarkably good condition. The top door of the front ramp is made of ply that’s beginning to split apart, and the OSB lining it is completely rotten.
The side walls have ironmongery for attaching the breast bars to that have to come off first, then the rubber matting which goes to within a couple of feet of the floor, then the aluminium that goes from the rubber to the floor, and behind that is the OSB.
The back ramp is going to go up and stay up, and at any rate is never going to take the weight of horses again so I am pretty certain it won’t need much attention to the hinges. The front unloading ramp however can’t stay on so it will have a door fitted in the whole space – I contemplated stable door style but I think that’s actually quite impractical with wind/midgies and the fact the rear doors are a bit like stable doors anyway. I will remove the ramp and use it as access to the decking that will surround the trailer once it’s parked in position, and fit the stable door to open outwards.

Looking at the available space inside the futon bed is going to have to go along the end wall. This also means that it might be easier to fit storage shelves to the wall without encroaching on the living space. I am acutely aware that pretty much all of my plans for how to furnish this are unrealistic. It’s going to be completely different to what I had envisaged and I’m still not sure how that’s going to look…..

Day 2
Looking at mattress options nothing foldaway, inflatable or thin is going to cut the mustard. A plinth is going to be obtrusive space wise. A pallet futon is probably not going to be sturdy enough for 150 days use a year or easy to put up and down in the available space. Going to go for a metal futon which means that the bed is not going to be made from anything recycled, but I think comfort is very important, as is ease of use if you don’t want things broken.

Enquiries about replacing the back axle have been made, but right now I don’t think it’s worth it. It’s not going to carry weight like horses again and as the only real issue is that it’s been pulled off (and may be slightly bent) I think we’ll try a friends recommendation of ratchet strapping it onto the body using the tie ups for the horses on the outside, and pray. What’s the worst that could happen….?!?!?

Stove selected – found the perfect one with great angle for the chimney, good weight, etc
Tomorrow Poul and I are going to plod away at stripping. Looking forward to that 😉

Day 30 or something – Wow so much has been going on!

Just before I started this project I went for a tarot reading. It was ridiculously positive, and everything in it so far appears to have come true, including the prediction that the pod was going to be a community project.  A community of my friends have been involved full force and work sped along. The Great Dane has been much more involved than I think he wanted, and I suspect enjoyed it more than I think he thought he would. We’ve worked pretty well together. The ENORMOUS list of jobs from stripping and refitting, rubbing down, repainting, fitting stoves, dealing with the axle, finding furniture to fit, researching the industry and what people will expect, exploring toilet and shower options, and trying to get hot water and lighting solutions has been time consuming but SO MUCH FUN!

So far we have an interior on the trailer that is very close to being ready to furnish, with the OSB on the walls replaced and repainted and a ceiling mural started. We’ve made a front door with a combination bolt for security (saves people going home with keys) and replaced the back doors that we have glazed to let more light in. We’ve decided to definitely try strapping the axle up and hoping for the best to move it, and we have very rough plans (and no real idea how to do it) for the toilet and shower block. The stove is in place but not fitted and we plan to make use of chimney heat to warm the toilet and shower cubicle as well as heat water on a gravity fed rainwater capture system. The furniture is bought or ready to be upcycled.

We’ve had lots of obstacles – the unconventional  hinging of the door leaving large gaps midgies will come in, what to put on the floor for easy cleaning that’s within budget, how to glaze windows of unconventional shape and size, where to position the stove, how to heat water for the shower when we don’t get enough solar energy in a Highland wood, and many more small, specific to our particular trailer, type problems.

We’ve made lots of mistakes – not checking all the door hinges were identical before drilling holes. Not checking the rear doors were the right way round before painting the inside a different colour to the outside, not being more accurate with cutting the window perspex, not remembering a curved bead will need to be scribed when mitred, and more we won’t have realised yet.

We need to get the pod moved onto the site before we can progress. The only problem is that Muscle Man is unwell once again and it looks like major surgery so he’ll be unavailable to tow. Towing is going to be awkward until we see if we can get away with either strapping up the axle or removing the rear wheels. We have about 10 days until our deadline and it’s looking unlikely. In the meantime there’s interior painting to be done finishing the mural, seals around all exits to stop rain and draughts getting in, and a boot rack and shelves to be made from pallets as well as an old toy chest from my childhood to paint and use as a coffee table and blanket storage. The gaps are really oversized due to the hinging angles or the way the box was made so that urine would drain out so normal self adhesive door seals are not going to do it. Thankfully the rubber matting that we took off the sides is easy to cut and glue onto the metal frames with a strong glue. The rest of it I hope to reuse in the shower.

I have The Great Dane here to help me for about 3 days in the next 10, and I will need him to help me build all of the toilet and shower cubicle, the kitchen unit, and the decking, and bike parking. I don’t want to be a wimp and move the date back any further. Not only because it means losing income – much needed income – but because I feel like it’s admitting defeat and the project is too big for us. It has been a MUCH bigger project than I expected.
Are we on budget I hear you ask? Well I haven’t added it all up yet – but I am willing to go on a limb and say no. The only reason we have not gone over further than we have is because of the kindness of friends giving up their time and skills for nothing more than a BBQ at the end of the day.

At this point my biggest pointer for anyone wanting to try this is to make sure you have plenty of help. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have skills – many of us learnt to use a jigsaw, grinder and sander for the first time on this project! Most of this I only knew the theory on (thank the gods for YouTube!), but having friends to help hold, climb, paint, grind, sand, saw, drill, and even babysit has made it all possible for me to have a try, and stay close to target – weather and waiting for items to arrive in the post have held us up by about a week.

Ok it’s now 12th July, and I have lost count of how long we’ve been at this, and how many obstacles – injury, illness, mechanical break down, other engagements etc

Don’t misunderstand – it will still definitely be cheaper to do it this way than buy a generic, characterless, prefabbed pod in, BUT if it isn’t finished in the next 10-14 days I’m going to tow it to Dornoch and throw it in the sea because I’m getting sick of it hanging over me as an unfinished project. We’ve not postponed anything, we’ve just worked it round all the other projects and events because I couldn’t face seeing the “to do list” get longer and miss out on fun like the family holiday and birthday parties etc (although mine was scaled down somewhat as I was just plain exhausted). It’s cost maybe twice what I thought it would now.

So where exactly are we at? Still need to get the outhouse done, but the plans for it are in place at least. All the bits except some more hammerite, some silver VHT paint and a sky light for the roof of the outhouse are paid for and bought – I should probably have my fire extinguisher from the horse lorry serviced as well. Muscle Man did manage to get day release from the garage to move the pod to the woods. The plans for the hot water fell through because the parts will take a month to order in and I can’t wait that long.

I still need to paint the mural, and ceiling and some wood work and furniture – in fact I still need to build some furniture….Oh and the ENTIRE out house.

August 8th
I thought we would have been finished roughly two months ago and right now I can still see at least two weeks of work left. I may as well have ordered those bloody bits for the hot water system. Reading back over the last entry – I was in absolute denial about what still needed to be bought. I’ve probably spent at least another £700 on the outhouse and I’m not done yet.
I still haven’t done the flipping murals or finished the ceiling – sigh.

The weather has not been kind to us. The recent 60mph winds really got in the way of roofing the outhouse – or “The Stall” as I have now decided to call it. Until the roof is on I can’t install the shower, or toilet, or the kitchen sink my daughter clevely made. We’ve had all kinds to deal with including the rear diff going on Muscle Man. He needed new shock, bushes and springs, a steering damper, whole rear axle and was garage bound for six weeks. When we went to the Scottish Land Rover show we had to take the Subaru. It didn’t feel right – it felt like cheating on Muscle Man and like being a total fraud/wannabe amongst the Landy owning crew in the campsite. The reason this was a pod problem though, was because it meant I couldn’t collect things we needed, and paying Highland delivery charges on each individual thing (generally £30 a pop starting price for delivery, needed about 100 things – no joke) bought online was not within budget at all. I needed the car to do the 100 mile round trip to Inverness and go get EVERYTHING I needed in one day – that just never happened. Little by little, as we were near places that were closer to home for various reasons, we managed to collect a lot of what we needed, and some is still to get. Also I had nothing to tow it to Dornoch and toss it in the sea with – which is probably the only reason we kept working on it. My back played up badly for a while too, and Poul did masses of overtime to pay for the extra expenses so momentum slowed to a couple of half days work on it a week.
Did I mention that the weather was S H I T…..?

Today I took on the corner of The Stall that I have been blithely ignoring thus far. It’s such a complicated place, and I think I was hoping fairies would come out and make it all perfect for me it at night if I kept pretending it wasn’t there. Strangely it was nowhere near as complicated to deal with as some of the things I thought would be easy. The Great Dane warned me again about that word I use so often “just”. The whole thing has been built with a an attitude of “just” rather than a just attiutde; “Just do it like this” , “just put it there”, “just bang it in – it’s too late to worry about things being level” are now my stock podding phrases. It was while I was being warned about the danger of a “just” containing sentence that I realised that this project has been completed with absolute attention to ignoring the details.

To be fair to us we’ve been up against it. Both the hammers we own are bent, REALLY badly, and one has no rubber handle on the end anymore so you have to hold it too high up or it will cut your palm. We have a rubbish saw and a 75% more rubbish saw – hand saws. The generator won’t work so no power tools, and the tape measure can’t be put fully away inside it’s housing or it gets stuck and can’t be got out without serious frustration and all of your coffee break. Also, the button for holding it out in place doesn’t work so after a meter or so it really needs two of you to work it. The screw gun is my hero – 12 well used years old and not got the best of bits because the screws easily eat them, so we take it really easy – it basically just saves me turning my wrist and there’s no other benefits. Sometimes I think doing it by hand would be easier as a screwdriver wouldn’t strain my arms so much when I’m working at funny angles.

That’s the whole problem really – the funny angles. That’s what I have been ignoring. I just bartered one of our foals for 7 bundles of prefab panels for sheds. I hope they’ll make 5 pods, an office, a reception/shop, and potentially a field shelter too. The greatest joy of these projects will be working with squares and rectangles (excepting roofs), because the pod is anything but, and even those that are, aren’t level. The trailer is a bizarre pointy arch along the top of the main part and then tapers into a nose. It’s also a mix of metal, and fibre glass. The Stall is wood and metal and PVC sheeting and joins on at the awkward nose where the teeny jockey door will give people a chance to get to the toilet without getting rained on or midged. The corner here where metal corrugated sheeting meets fibre glass at a strange angle, and wood has to be attached to aluminium that has the chimney for the stove coming through it, as well as managing to floor over the tow bar and scribe around the brake and jockey wheel, whilst keeping the angle for run off of rain, and incorporate a second valley to join the gutter, made me realise that this project had given us a really hellish learning curve. Surely the following pods will not be this hard to build?!

Last week I had the help of my friend who came up to stay for a week or so to give us a hand, for about the third time I think. She’s a good egg. She’s got a list of back and joint problems that mirrors and surpasses mine. We tend to find the weather effects us both badly and while she was up we had a couple of electric storms and an arctic blast. Bad enough in winter but aggravating at this time of year to our spirits as much as out joints. She helped me with many parts of it, and nearly put herself in hospital filling in the soak away with rocks three times the size of her own head. We even managed to figure out the trusses together. That felt good – it felt like we’d gained more adult points that day. On the very many times we sat back and admired our handiwork and it’s rough edges, I kept saying that I might put a reminder to guests before they review us, that this was built by a bunch of disabled women, kids, and a foreigner. None of us  with previous experience or qualification to do so. Just a mad idea on how to solve the eternal problem of making a living in a place you love with enough time left over to love it.

We’ve slogged at this, there’s been weather, sickness, injury, 6 weeks of car break down, many unmissable family events, small children, unworkable ideas, unbuyable materials, unaffordable delivery charges all in our way. Yet we have kept plodding at it – every day moving something forward a bit. As I type the partially painted top for the toilet takes up the middle of the living room floor, the room is to the rafters in pots, pans, towels, and furniture for this damn pod ( I really didn’t realise how much the interior was going to cost – we’re probably close to 2.5 times the budget now), so whether I have shopped, or researched, or just written the plan for the week repeatedly around the weather – I have always been chipping away at it. This week I am going to sacrifice the 3 days we had booked off to go away as a couple to celebrate our anniversary (a year since our engagement) but instead we are going to batter in to getting this finished ASAP. Ironically my first night in the pod may have to be my anniversary trip – that’s if I am lucky!

So what have I learnt so far?
Triple the budget
Double the time
If being on time matters, don’t work with funny angles.
Get better tools.

… “be a Scummy Mummy?”

I’ve been a single parent twice. Even worse I am one of those really “Scummy Mummies” who has two children to different Fathers, and worse still, The Great Dane isn’t Father to either of them. Although he is definitely their Far (Danish for Dad).

I first found myself a single parent when my eldest was very small and I was in my early twenties. I was a victim of domestic abuse. Even though I don’t think anyone in the naughties would expect me to stay and put up with that, there was still a LOT of stigma attached to being an unmarried, single Mother. The second time it happened was in 2014 after 10 years off and on trying to make it work and failing. The final straw was when kids were not just living in a war zone, but were the target or the ammunition – funny what you can tolerate personally for a decade but not for a second when it is happening to your kids.

In the decade that had gone in between it was truly incredible how attitudes had changed towards split parenting and single parent families. The CSA had changed to CMS, Fathers for justice had become a thing, access was now contact, and custody was residency. Tax Credits made it easier to get childcare and financial help if you needed to start over  on a low income. Fathers didn’t have to marry the Mothers to gain equal footing in the courts, and it was accepted generally by all that if you don’t pay for your kid you were scum, regardless of the circumstances. Second time round it was a LOT easier and I don’t think that was just because I was ten years older and wiser. Something had changed – a great leap had been taken by society and now we accepted this as a method of moving forward and raising the future generations. It was now no longer a case of “staying together for the kids” but we seemed to have finally realised that staying apart was going to better for them. They’d suffer less abuse this way so we reorganised our processes and procedures to make sure that if we are going to do it like this, we were going to do it better than we had been.
But what was the change that made us change?
Was it the rise in property prices? Or simply that children couldn’t keep single parents out of the workplace in order to underpin the financial fakery that was going on during those years – Jon Ronson has proven how it is exactly the sort of family on tax credits that would be targeted for unaffordable loans.
I think part of it has to be that women were roughly more equal in the workplace – often earning more than men. Back in the day of the housewife, if she had left the husband the children would have suffered a different upbringing financially. With less money, less opportunity, and less good outcomes for the kids turned out by that process it was the source of the social stigma – no one wanted to be that woman. No one wanted that pressure or that future for their kids if they could help it. The society that watched it happen to the unfortunates seemed to feel that scorn would protect it from taking hold. You did NOT leave your husband. You stayed together – for the kids (for money) or be ostracised. Now these ideals of the perfect family, with the housewife and husband who goes to work in a suit, have been shattered by women getting good jobs and hiring nannies even when they are staying with the child’s father, we no longer look down on women who leave their men for the kids sake. Kind of makes you wonder who was doing the looking down in the first place?

In fact in today’s workplace with a pace dictated by the speed of an internet connection rather than the Royal Mail, and where we are expected to cram more into longer days, being a working parent is pretty tough. Combined with the fact that property is not really affordable unless two of you are continually paying into the mortgage, means that there always has to be two of you available to work at high level of efficiency or the family ship will sink – it’s amazing you even managed to keep it afloat during the pregnancy.
Consider also we have recognised raising kids to an “ok” level is no longer acceptable – if you’re going to be a parent you, quite rightly, need to make sure they THRIVE. So we are trawling out to trendy shops, and updating bedrooms, and throwing excessive parties, and doing a million after school activities because by the time you’re 7 you need to have a great CV if you want to get into a semi decent school. A school that will probably not be free and you’re parents, or one of them at least, is going to have to take a second job. And don’t forget childcare to wrap around that. It might be that you just can not get childcare, or can’t make money out of paying for it, so you now have to work opposing shifts to your partner so that someone is always at home with kids.
All of a sudden you are tired, and frustrated, and none of this is how you thought it was going to be, you never see the person you thought you wanted to see every day for the rest of your life, and every time you do all you can think is how ravaged they look. You stop communicating, unless by text, and you lose your connection, until all that connects you are the kids. Those human beings you made together.

Soon you start to argue. Each human is the sum of the five people they spend the most time with and you aren’t one of those people anymore; Rod from the office, and Sandra from the car pool, and Jeff the only other Dad on the benches at swimming lessons, and your Mum, and the guy at the newsagent counter all see more of your partner than you do. Eventually after the very many things we then do to try and pretend we’re spending quality time together – expensive family holidays, new hobbies, and maybe even getting married (you never did that because you couldn’t afford the deposit for the house AND the wedding, and then before you knew it number 1 was on their way) you end up exhausted and clueless about how to fix it in less than 20 years.

I could be accused of making it sound as if kids ruin your life………. “ruin” is a bit strong, but it’s certainly never ever, ever, the same again! The kind of person you are after it is far removed from who you were before it. Even truer is that the kind of person you need or want as a partner after you know what it’s really all about, is not always who you chose to do it with.
It’s not really that kids ruined your life, or that you got together with the wrong person. It’s just very often the pace of life once you have kids ruined YOU. Both of you. It’s difficult to be the best you, you can be, when you’re constantly overtired, overworked, and go unrecognised for your efforts. Lets face it, lots of us are doing this, and it’s very easy to feel like the least capable parent on the planet most days of the week because we don’t feel like it’s as easy for us as it is for some of the people we know. No one is going round handing out prizes for this stuff – you’re just expected to get on with it because everyone else is, like it was easy – but it’s not always easy.
It doesn’t help either, when you are up to your pits in laundry and nappies,  to take a minute to check your messages and find everyone else posting pictures of amazing activities in incredible weather with their super happy partners alongside. It’s hard not to feel like you’re getting it wrong. All I can add to that is that a picture can tell a thousand words, and each word can be a lie. Everyone feels like they suck at it at some point.
E V E R Y O N E.
Anyone who wants to make it look like they never have a bad day is probably having more bad days than good, and constant attention to social media posts, that show the two seconds everyone grinned and told a lie, is all that’s keeping them going.

The very process of child raising unveils all our weaknesses and selfish points as much as our strengths and generosity. When your partner disappoints you it is difficult to forget; but if they disappoint your child it is unforgettable. Maybe that’s why so many of us now separate for the kids sake?

Once you get over the inevitably hurtful splitting of possessions, addresses, and weekends the fairest you can, the teething problems of the routine (a parenting plan is the only way forward btw, just do one as a matter of course, even if you are both being Saintly about the break up) you are then in a wave of relief – for the first time since the babies arrived, you’re actually getting a break!
On those days when the other parent has them you are free again in a way you never could have been inside a relationship. It’s not about dating other people, it’s about being a truly free agent – in this set up no one is wondering when you’re going to be home because they want to get out for a bit, there’s no rushing back to cook a meal so your kids continue to thrive, there’s no child friendly rating required on the day’s activities or eating out. You can wear, eat, do whatever you want – reconnect with people you haven’t spoken to in years, have just a sandwich for tea because that’s all you can really be bothered preparing , not get out of you PJ’s until 2pm and then change into that top you haven’t worn since you were a size 10 (you’ve lost weight because house moves always do that, and you’ve kept it off because you’re eating a sandwich for tea most nights and just cooking for the kids – it really caught on!). It really shows your boobs off perfectly but was too slutty to wear out to kids activities. On top of that the finances have improved because you’re getting regular maintenance and have downsized. Before as the main bread winner, you paid all the bills and insurances; he just covered the Sky package, the internet, put fuel in the car and paid for his hobbies. Now your Land Lord has the responsibility of maintaining the property, you pay part of the bills, all the car fuel, and split the expense of the kids. You can even get help from the government for childcare. It’s not all bad after all.

That honeymoon only lasts a certain while. Then you start to miss the comfort of someone else being there. Of course if you ever have an emergency and you have an ex nearby they are likely to step in on the child front and pick up pieces, but if the kids are sick in the middle of the night, or they come home crying after falling out with their friends, break their bike, or are outrageously cheeky while they work through their own emotions, you just wish you had someone right there, who loved them like you do, to talk to. Your Mum just isn’t quite the same……
Then there’s the times that they make huge achievements, or come away with some priceless observation on life, say a word cutely wrong, or are just enjoying chasing bubbles in the garden laughing and leaping with abandon, and you wish there was someone there who can share in that. Just someone to turn to and smile because both your hearts are warmed by it. Someone to recognise the wonder that is these humans you created from your very own insides.

Really there’s no reason why with good support you need to have someone else in the home raising your kids with you. If you have friends or family, and your ex isn’t a deadbeat and neither is their new partner and family, if your childcare is reliable, schools good etc there’s no reason why kids should not turn out perfectly decent individuals. Well rounded, well loved and loving, well respected and respectful. All the evidence suggests that products of that environment are very open minded and generous of spirit and probably EXACTLY the sort of people we need as our world leaders of the future. I imagine far more ecofriendly industry, less stressful work environments, smarter ideas on living wages, social security, and childcare brought about by the kids from these homes who were still allowed to thrive.
They will have known a lot less upset than the kids of the “stay together” generations, and be far less prone to personality disorders or continuing abusive cycles. Their viewpoints will not be the narrow width of the couple who created them and were left to get on with it, but all the people who raised them – child care, clubs, grandparents, neighbours and friends will all help out more now you are single, and have an influence on your child. It’s likely they will cross over races, ages, and abilities with ease in the future because their upbringing was more diverse. So many single Mums know this, and I think that’s why so many of them decide to put all their eggs into the kids basket, concentrate on doing this and doing it right because if they do the kids will be better than if they’d never done it at all. In that vein a lot of them decide not to get distracted by dating and finding a new partner. Fear of letting in another person who turns out to be no better than those who went before them, and that damage to the kids somehow seems to put more women off moving on than it does men.
There is no NEED to have a second adult in your home for the kids sake, but there are a few really good reasons why you should. Imagine if you can find someone who wants to put their eggs in the kids basket too – imagine what kind of kids you could turn out then. Imagine the life lessons they would learn from seeing their Mother flourish from an attentive partner, seeing how a pair of people can be a team. What would growing up in the positivity of that kind of environment do for them?

And there are just as many reasons why you shouldn’t shut yourself off from finding a partner for YOURSELF, as for your kids.

Imagine the difference when you find someone who wants to be a part of the balance you have now you’re split parenting. Who comes in already knowing who you are as a parent, what you look like as parent, what your energy levels are as a parent. The duties and drudgeries of parenting are held between you and someone outside the house. There’s a whole area you don’t need to wear your partner down with, but they can still help out. You have your routine for the kids, you have childcare with your ex sorted at weekends and you can put all that time into maintaining a relationship. The contribution of maintenance from the other parent means you might even have some spare cash for a date night each month!
You can get inside a bubble during those moments alone and be proud of who you are now,  instead of making excuses for why you are not the same person you were pre-kids. Let someone else enjoy this version of you. Remember you are not just someone’s Mother or the Mother of someone’s child – you are YOU, and you have plans and aspirations that go on around and beyond parenting.

Having a new partner in your life has so many benefits to all of you.
It  is that back up.
It is that sharing.

More than any of this though, for me at least, it is unequivocally the sheer joy I have watching The Great Dane with my kids. Seeing another human who did not make these kids from their very own insides, love, cherish, nurture, educate, care for and ENJOY my kids as much as I do is something so special.  It’s actually something I never had in the relationships with their biological Fathers. Obviously I think my kids are great – but it’s really meaningful to hear someone else you love and trust, agree. If I had chosen to stay for the kids sake I would have denied them this wonderful relationship with him and all the opportunities it has brought them – hobbies, travel, and the fact that more skills and money in the house mean we have a nicer house! I don’t doubt that the oldest has now got a far more balanced, trusting view of men, and both girls have a much better example of how to conduct a happy relationship than if the Great Dane had not been in our lives. Obviously you have to have the right partner – goes without saying – but when you do, that is what you can expect. I love to see their relationships develop and deepen and the love shared between them makes me love them all the more. I know I could, and have, done it on my own. I think I’d have nailed it; but I am so glad I don’t have to. I am enjoying seeing my family happy and balanced for the first time ever and having someone by my side to witness it and share it validates and enriches the entire experience for me.

So if you are a single parent who is contemplating keeping yourself solely for your children, don’t. It’s much more fair to you all if you go and date.

Fall in love for the kids sake!!

Be sensible about introducing the kids, but enjoy your childless days at weekends finding your own Great Dane. You never know –  your kids might turn out to be the future Prime Minister if you do!

… “not even know her own feelings?”

Does it even matter?

I became aware during my teens of the concept that “my red is your blue” thanks to a grey pencil case I had. Everyone else said it was purple.
The class quickly found itself in a #thedress situation. Except I was the only one who saw it as grey – everyone else in the class of 18 pupils found it to be purple (to be honest I was annoyed, as purple is one of my fave colours – I’d have far preferred to see purple). Eventually the physics teacher took me away into a cupboard and gave me a colour blindness test, which left him more puzzled than me and suggesting to my parents I see a specialist. The specialist diagnosed me as colour dyslexic – I see a colour, but my brain calls it something different was what I think he was trying to say; I didn’t really understand it at the time. None of it sounded right, but I swallowed this as just ANOTHER subject in life I felt at odds with. I learnt that my “something” is not always someone elses “something”. It left me with all kinds of existential questions about colour and the human perception of it if it were possible to have such HUGE variations. Who was right? How do we know they are right? Who made the decision on what was right? And actually……what the hell else is subject to this kind of variation?

I started to suspect that emotions were the feeling version of colours.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the two subjects are highly interlinked?
Feeling blue, a red mist, green with envy, and so on.

Like all awkward teens I was feeling horribly nervous about doing things in front of people – especially things I enjoyed because criticism about that hurt more. I got very confused about whether I was feeling excited about my favourite thing, or scared I’d fuck it up and be told I suck at it.
My Mum was reading “Feel the Fear and do it anyway”. She was trying to get me to read it, but I felt it was unnecessary – the title alone was a lesson in itself.
I liked the concept because, as I was already aware of the correlation between fear and excitement, I figured that maybe they were interchangable. My only issue with that, was if they are interchangable, kind of what’s the point in them? They are polar opposites, but can feel the same? How unhelpful.

I think in general the human race makes way too much of feelings and emotions. We are told to explore them, to relive them, to talk about them, and sometimes I feel that if you are not extremely emotional about everything then you are seen as repressed. There’s lots of trains of thought, and advice out there that all seem to end in tears – not because it goes badly, but because that’s the point of it. It’s like people aren’t really sure if they are happy or sad until it’s making them cry. I also can’t help but notice another two polar opposite feelings having the same outcome. How unhelpful.

I mean what are tears? really? What use are they? Apart from eye cleaning fluid what’s the purpose? I know that an infant cries so it’s parents come and pick it up and don’t leave it behind to be eaten by wolves or dinosaurs, or urban foxes etc, but why do adults cry? I know they happen when we are overwhelmingly happy or sad, but I just don’t know if they are helpful?
I’ve seen people brought to tears about small issues, seemingly because they think it’s appropriate or will invoke a reaction from others around them, but they didn’t seem very happy or sad – just needy. I’ve heard people tell tales about how things made them cry as if it is a good thing, as if they should be admired for how sad or happy they felt in that moment. They wear their emotional extremes as a badge of honour.
This is weird for me. I mean I’m not unemotional. I’m not heartless. I do have and talk about my feelings, and I DO cry, but I don’t get any validation from it being seen. I don’t think people who are crying need more praise or consoling, than someone who is being honest and unemotional. If I am arguing with someone I don’t feel bursting into tears is ever going to get me what I want. I feel like it will just escalate things because I will be seen as being manipulative. If tears are the “final word” then first to cry wins. How easy.

The reason I find “identifying” and “exploring” to be unhelpful is like this –  what does yesterdays rain have to do with today’s sun? It’s about the here and now, the moment. The feelings I have NOW, not ten years ago when something sad happened. You can’t look back or you’ll get bogged down on the HWoT and never get a real understanding of how to make the decision to be happy because you’re too engrossed in everything that has made you sad. How will feeling old emotions, with their inter-changeability, and variations bring about a change in tomorrow’s? It is training your brain to remain in that sad state – but if you want to be happy you have to train happy thoughts.

It’s odd that we train humans to let out bottled up feelings- most modern animal trainers are doing the opposite, training horses and dogs to have a level headed sense of balance about their work. You wouldn’t expect to train a horse that’s scared of going into the horse box to get into one if you told it to go back over all it’s memories and feel the fear of every scary trip it’s made, reliving it and “letting that fear out”. It’s about making this time, and every time following it pleasant and positive, and letting the horse explore the box – not the feelings – and see that really there’s nothing to fear.
(FYI that’s exactly where the term “level headed ” comes from – If you were a cowboy back in the day of inventing sayings, you wouldn’t ride a horse that had its head up in the air fearfully scanning the horizon, you waited until it had relaxed and dropped its head and neck to be level with the body because that is an outward sign it’s calm, balanced and thinking clearly). We’re all mammals at the end of the day, and I wonder how all this exercising our emotions is going to keep us balanced? Is bottling it up really bad? What if you don’t let bottled up feelings out, but just chose not to feel them again? If you just replaced the sensation with something more positive?

“Feelings are just energy” Says Morgan Norma Roche of Keystone Healing. “If you give them a name you give them way more power than they should have”.

 

I understood exactly what she meant when she said this – if they are so interchangeable, they are almost already redundant by the time you recognise you are having a feeling meaning identifying them might not be the key either. So what are we meant to do with feelings? ……..
Morgan went on to explain to me that in her healing treatments and workshops that help people to improve themselves, she gets everyone to recognise the feeling, but not give it a name.  “I say “right, let’s not give this a name, it’s not important, feel it for a moment, then thank it and send it love” and the feeling immediately leaves”. In doing this she feels it empowers the individual to take control without overextending the feeling, leaving them in a positive state of mind. There is a lot of research out there to show the heart is directly linked to emotions – not just on Valentines cards – but in the rhythm it beats. The most perfect state for your heart to be in is when you are feeling the emotion of gratitude/thanks. This is probably why Morgan also teaches her students to “Live an Attitude of Gratitude”.

In life we seem to value an awful lot of behaviours labelled as “positive” that are associated with buoyant, or extroverted personalities. As a society we do little to reward a calm and placid nature in a human. It’s the difference between feeling psyched and feeling peaceful I’m talking about. We encourage extroverted behaviour, put over active and reactive humans on pedestals, admire enormous power, and view the peace makers and the thoughtful introverts who are quietly working away in labs making all our technological advances as, weaker, or geekier, than those who might smite us down. That’s ok – that’s just normal pack animal behaviour – we’re either looking for a leader to follow, or looking for a leader to take over from. We can’t help it as we’re predators by nature, especially those who are extroverted, so it’s no wonder they have risen to the top of the pack and are telling us all we need to be just like them to do well in life.
I can’t help feel though that it must be excrutiating for introverts to be forced to be extroverted on that level – it can only lead to feelings of imbalance. I also imagine that calming some of today’s extroverts down could only be a good thing!
I think I see parts of society questioning the legitimacy of extroversion as “the best way to live”. It  is not really helpful today, on an over populated and politically inflamed planet and the confusion about where all this fits in with the enormous leaps forward our species makes daily, are causing a lot of us a lot of tears. It’s not a surprise that we tell people to feel emotional rather than deal effectively with emotion, because really we are having problems recognising TRULY positive emotions in the first place.

Look at pain – another of the body’s communications – it’s nothing more than a message to the brain that something’s not right. It can be disproportionate to the problem, and it can continue long after the problem has healed. How unhelpful.

Emotions are just signals from the emotional body. Feelings like this are part of instincts. Instincts were there to keep us alive, like pain, back when we were cave men – you felt nervous, or fearful, or hurt, and you knew to leg it or hide. If you were happy or felt safe you knew to make more out of that, settle within the environment you found it in, and when it changed, move on again. Most of us don’t need these in daily life – we’re not at risk on the same level as a caveman. However some of us seem to have these feelings turned on, amped up, unable to shut off again, tuned in disproportionately to everything- we feel like we’re dying but all that’s really wrong is that we might miss the bus, for instance. The task of travelling becomes confused with the instinct to flee and we feel danger.

It appears, that in modern times, the purpose of feelings to relay messages to the individual has been misused to relay messages to the masses – to use that part of the parent in all of us to respond to the crying child. Give it what it wants, make it feel safe. Once you’re an adult I’m not sure that’s anyone else’s responsibility though – how unsafe are you? Obviously there are people out there who are, or have known, real danger and I am not including them in this – they absolutely need the help of the society they live in, but I am talking about the over stressed, the over worked, the unmotivated, unhappy masses on antidepressants and group therapy. Is it people not taking responsibility for their own mindset and emotions that is leaving us with an epidemic of depression right now?  Are people believing that pills and groups will fix them, when really they might need to decide that modern life, and achieving success as we define today, is not really for them?

The pressure of having eternal beauty, a sports car, massive salary, and perfect home in the perfect location, the ever smiling family in activity day selfies, with perfectly dressed, immaculate children, is all over social media; but just not available to some of us. For others they are not in possession of the skills to maintain it even if they got it. The worst thing is when  you DO get it and you still don’t feel like you’re “there” yet. It doesn’t fill the holes in your life. It doesn’t get you the validation you thought it would – so now you have a baby you can be in the “mum” group, except you find you are not really classed as a Mum by the Mum’s with two or more kids, and so the cycle of keeping up with the Jones’ continues. Actually it’s bloody hard work keeping it all going, and most of us don’t even know why we’re doing it.

So how about we decide not to think about how our feelings make us feel, but how we’d like them to make us feel?
When I get up in the morning and feel “down” I can ask myself – am I really “down”? Maybe I am just calm? Maybe this is what it feels like to be in perfect balance because there’s not a lot of emotion going on, it’s pretty low energy and monotone. Surely that’s what balance feels like? I am leveled out at one point, and just because I am not jumping around shouting “Hell Yeah!!!!” to every suggestion or idea that comes my way, doesn’t mean I am not happy or feeling positive. Maybe I am just happy, and calm, and maybe everyone else just needs to be satisfied with that? Maybe everyone else just needs to realise that this state of mind is a part of who I am; it’s my introverted, relaxed side – but it’s no less happy. Maybe I can consider that depressed and balanced are interchangeable? And actually – that’s pretty helpful.