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We (he) did a good deed today with a washing machine (perhaps. It might not have been an effective ‘good deed’, but we won’t know until tomorrow, so today we bask in the feel-good factor), and as a reward we escaped work, the garden, the Coll Magazine and the barn and went to investigate a ruin in what used to be waist-high heather.

When we moved to Coll this ruin had planning permission. It has since lapsed and the council refused to renew it because the site was ecologically fragile. Walking on the burnt heather wasn’t quite as easy as I thought it would be because the stalks hadn’t burnt completely away, and still acted as trip-wires. The ground is generally dry, although the mossy bits are still boggy, and there is a thick layer of dead heather, moss and other dead stuff, so the ground is soft and well-mulched and I can’t imagine any seeds will germinate. Some coarse, very bright green grass is showing, and some bluebells were coming up in the burnt bracken patches. I thought we were just having a quick look at the ruin, but the next bracken patch, the top of the hill, a possible wall all beckon and we amble along, zig-zagging along the easiest route. This is fine until I sit down to empty my boots. I am not really dressed for serious exploring. My jeans are mega-cheap from the super-market (very unethical), and shapeless and very tight. My boots are cut-down wellies (ethically good as I am extending their life) and very comfortable for slobbing around the polytunnel, but not suited for walking through dead plant remains and ash unless the main aim is collecting random samples. We have turned back and are heading west. The sun is low and as I can’t see well enough to aim for something interesting my motivation wanes. Finally the breeze blows my hair, desperately needing its spring haircut, into my eyes. If I wait long enough (another month?) it will tuck behind my ears, or I could just grab the scissors now and complete the scarecrow effect!

Even with the lack of ground cover, this part of Coll seems relatively devoid of tumbledown walls, but there is plenty to distract the walker with no particular place to go. And we won’t be the first to recognise what a fantastic place to live the old ruin would be.

Yup. Spring. It keeps disappearing but I reckon it’s here, so it is time to be outside enjoying it!

Actually it is much more enjoyable under glass and polythene, warmer and more comfortable. Not necessarily drier in the tunnel, because on the days that aren’t spring and it rains, the tunnel still fills up with water, but I have taken advantage of the days that are spring and the water goes down, and planted potatoes, sweet pea plants, a few broad beans (very old seed so most didn’t germinate) and mangy tout peas (Neil in the shop has a hate / hate relationship with mangy tout peas).

In the greenhouse, remember the greenhouse? The greenhouse with more plywood panels than glass because the sticky silicon didn’t stick, and the putty was eaten by the hens? That greenhouse? We got some more sticky silicon. Two types, just in case. Then we waited for a dry warmish day. We waited a long time, but eventually spring came and we risked putting some glass back in (and evicting the hens, who had enjoyed dust bathing). And the sticky silicon stuck to the glass! And the frame! And not especially to the fingers and the step-ladder, so the greenhouse was hen proof and I moved some poor spindly tomato seedlings in. Because we were being cautious we hadn’t bought much of either of the sticky silicon tubes (BBC 4 says silica is the commonest mineral on the planet) so there was still a lot of plywood panels and another order to Screwfix (what did islanders do before Screwfix?) before we could finish the job. And today was almost summer, and while I was in the village and up the North End drinking tea he put all the rest of the glass in, so there are hardly any plywood panels (not quite enough glass), and no shady ends, and the tomato seedlings don’t look spindly, and it would have been much better if I had noticed, instead of having it pointed out to me (I’m not very good at being contrite (lack of practice?)).

But all this gardening is having a detrimental effect on the blogging, and I am only managing this because he is outside with the telescope looking at Saturn and Mars and grumbling about the longer evenings because it takes too long to get dark.

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Heather fire, probably starting between Hyne Road end and the Roadside Lochs (horrible Anglicised name, but no-one uses the real gaelic ones). It burnt west at first, and up the Black Hill. The firemen were called out mid-morning and started new fires to prevent it crossing the road (and burning through the electric poles). Later they burnt a break around a house, fortunately it had a pond at the front so they had plenty of water to damp the edge down. How can you build a new house on a hill and have a pond full of water? Only on Coll. The wind was light and kept changing direction and the fire headed east back up and round the Road Lochs. The firemen moved away from their pond and successful fire break to monitor the fire as it worked its way towards the village, again making sure it didn’t cross the road. Further inland ribbons of flame could be seen snaking across the hill, and revealing all sorts of concealed topography. Apparently this area last burnt 24 years ago, the heather was so tall and impossible to walk through I thought it had always been there. By 10-30ish the fire had reached the fields with the Eriskay ponies in and another break had been burnt along the fence line to turn back the flames. The fire engine headed off and we went home. The orange glow in the sky evoked all sorts of other images, someone suggested Turner, which was very apt.

This morning there is a plume of smoke almost due north of Kilbride, and the whole visible hill is black. There will be some great new walks this summer, and the Road Lochs will be fished as never before as it will be easy to walk round them. Westwards the burn goes down to the Mill Lochs, right along to the village, which is two to two and a half miles. This is the widest part of the island, and it must have burnt at least a mile and a half across, I will see shortly as I start my commute (I never thought I could say that on Coll).

Winter is good for bookclubbers. Especially those of us with cold houses as we can go out to hot houses and drink warm red wine. Although I have noticed a slightly disturbing trend towards sobriety and early nights recently.

Bookwise, we read A Short History of Moths (or something sounding similar) which I really enjoyed, I thought it was about growing old, and I had a sudden urge to de-clutter (and throw out lots of books, which fortunately wore off). But we decided it was time to ‘Read Something Serious’. Something Russian. Something like Lermontov’s A Hero of our Time. I didn’t actually manage to finish this before we met to talk about it, but I was enjoying it. Although it failed on one of my criteria (no translations) it passed the other (not very big), and the translation was recent so it wasn’t like reading an old-fashioned book. It is contemporary with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (which I didn’t like as I had to do it for ‘O’ Level) and the background details were what made it interesting for me. Also it is a bit exotic to read a book written by a man who was killed in a duel. I enjoyed the second half much less, which was a shame as we had decided to do ‘Another Russian Novel’! This time it was Tergenev’s Fathers and Sons; which was also (not surprisingly) a translation and not very big. This also had lots of detail but again I found the plot a bit hard to find. I think old books are so obsessed by ‘what the ladies think’ they forget to put anything else in, but there was another duel and some great descriptions of journeys.

We were on a Russian roll by now, and following a discussion that everything could be described by four adjectives we fed Russian, contemporary, fiction and female into Google to see what would happen. Firstly there was a mild revolution from a reader who has only recently embraced computers because we were now using an Ipod, or a Blackberry, or something very small. The first title suggested included the words dead baby which drew another protest, but Time: Night by Ludmilla somethingskaya produced a five star recommendation and we settled on that.

Back at home I discovered another small problem, it isn’t available on Amazon proper, and has to be bought through the marketplace, so I couldn’t use it as an excuse to buy more non-Russian books. My copy is still in the post, but today I heard that it is small (good), and looking like very hard work (not so good). Perhaps we will have to drink Russian vodka instead of wine!

I don’t quite understand why the Europeans think the Brits talk too much about the weather. It does so much, and makes so much difference to everything else. And it certainly isn’t being very ‘normal’ this year. Generally I approve, the still cold dry is much more preferrable to the wet and windy option, even if scraping the car windscreen becomes something I have to re-learn.

Back in the lean-to greenhouse the rocket damped off. The compost was old and using rainwater is always going to encourage disease. I sowed some more in the soil and they are doing okay. I have potted some tomato seedlings on, but it is a very draughty lean-to, the roof sheets are recycled with nail holes that couldn’t be re-used and it is pretty chilly except when the sun is out, so growth is rather slow. I have two heated plates to germinate seedlings so they are fine until they get too tall for the plastic covers. The hot plates worked better in the house, but the cat discovered sitting on them, and pushed all the seed trays onto the floor, so I have had to admit defeat there. I had so many barriers and fences to keep him away it got impossible to water the plants.

The only things cleverer than the cat are the hens. Once upon a time we had a catflap, and a puppy. Puppies are good with catflaps, the problem happens when they become grownup and dogsize and break it when they can’t fit through it. After about seven catflaps we stopped replacing it and accepted a ventilated back door into the porch/conservatory/untidy-place-used-as-a-shed. The hens soon learnt to come in and a couple started laying in the cardboard box of shredded paper. This was fine in the summer, but when winter arrived it got cold, the hens stopped laying, and then one started to roost at night, and left a lot of mess on the floor. So we got another catflap and after a couple of nights the roosting hen realised we weren’t going to open the door, no matter how often it tapped on the door with its beak. But the laying hens came back. At first we thought they were coming in if the door was left open, but one day I put one out five times, and I know the door was shut so it had to have learnt to use the catflap. Unfortunately the dogs have learnt to eat eggs, so we don’t always get them, and sometimes the cat sits in the box of shredded paper and then the hens get very cross.

Thank heavens the pigs haven’t learnt to dig tunnels!

Once upon a time someone told someone about an amazing trick where a bottle is pushed through a table. Someone thought they would like to see it. And they did something about it, which didn’t involve them going to Edinburgh (or where-ever) on an expensive jolly. Instead they let the mouse do the walking, found a magician on t’internet and booked him to come to Coll. So we could all see a bottle pushed through a table. Our poor magician came from Fife and did two sessions at the school, some at-your-table-tricks during a dinner at the cafe, and followed that with an open show. I always feel a bit sorry for mainlanders because they aren’t used to how well we all know each other, and the heckling can rapidly become a barrage of ‘in’ jokes, but he correctly identified the heckling parent of the heckling kid and just about held his own during the main performance. He didn’t do the bottle trick during the main show, but luckily I caught it while he was going round the diners tables, although only once, so I am still clueless as to where the switch was made. The main show was very good, with enough stand-up chat, and slightly dodgy sleight of hand to leave you really impressed when the trick you thought he was going to do turned into something much cleverer. I took the three Project volunteers who were staying with us down and they were impressed, and seventeen-year-olds aren’t fooled that easily. They also appreciated how much a part of the winter island they were for that week, as several of them ‘helped’ during the show, even if identifying the one ball under the one cup proved tricky.

What I like most is the vision of booking the magician and sharing him (for a fee) and it works, we all want something different to brighten up February. If you too want a great evening’s entertainment find Kevin the magician from Fife and tell him you want the bottle trick, but he may not be so keen on visiting islands now he is more educated about island audiences!

I do foresee the careers teacher at Oban High wondering why so many Coll kids want to become magicians now, several of them were beginning to understand the psychology of magic, and most of them are natural performers.

January …….. oh January.  By Pilot, 1970 something. The B side sounded like the Beatles, but I forget what it was now.

January means two things, the end of Christmas, and the start of Spring (I am an eternal optomist).

Last night we enjoyed the end of Christmas by opening a box of Quality Street. We ate half of them, but it wasn’t a very big box so we weren’t being very greedy, just one of those upright ones that are handy to say ‘thank you’ (or, as this box said, Happy Christmas). As usual the rubbishy chocolates came out first, which was why we had to go on eating them. Eventually we had had enough, and folded the lid back, which was when we read the box. I have a long history of box-reading. I don’t remember not being able to read ‘thiamin, niacin and riboflavin’ from the Cornflakes box, although no-one ever told me what they were, they were obviously a ‘good thing’. (My favourite current boxes to read are the Innocent Smoothie cartons, with the line ‘if we don’t, you can tell out Mums’) The Quality Street box had a panel on recycling. The coloured plastic outer layer on the wrapper is not plastic, and it can go in the compost bin. The tin foil bit can’t, it needs to go in with the drinks and dog-food cans. The cardboard box can be recycled with other paper and card, although we will put it in the compost bin. There is a small triangular clear window on the box. This isn’t recyclable, it needs to be torn out and put in the rubbish bin. Now, in ’sales-speak’, trying to attract customers with shiny flashy stand-out products the Quality Street box probably works quite well, but now I know how fussy it is to de-construct for recycling I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather start with something simpler, so it may not be the sales ploy they hope it is.

Moving on to Spring, January is seed catalogue month. I don’t need any more seeds. Did I tell you that last year? It’s still true. Nice Mr Fothergills sent me a £10 voucher I can use if I spend £30. I was very good. I did not buy seeds. But the potatoes were very tempting, and I have a sure-fire way of growing great strawberries in polystyrene fish boxes, except I didn’t have any strawberry plants, and my lemon bush had died so I needed another, and if they were sending all that I might as well get the 3 for 2 offer on blueberries so I spent a tad more than £30, although with the random weather and boats I’m no longer sure when the letter actually went. Last weekend was very good weather. We ripped out bramble bushes and measured the broken polytunnel and made big plans, and I sowed a few seeds. It is absolutely ludicrous to sow tomatoes this early, even in a propagator, but I have lots of tomato seed (did I tell you I don’t need any more seeds?) and I only sowed a pinch. Honest! More sensibly, I also sowed onions, rocket, broad beans, sweet peas, and a few seeds from four different, very old packets of leek seeds, just in case they were okay, because if they aren’t I may have an excuse to buy seeds. So far there isn’t a sign of a leek, but the onions and rocket had germinated after three days, closely followed by the sweet peas. The tomatoes are probably waiting for February because they are more sensible than I am, but the rocket is beautiful. It may only be a quarter of an inch high but it carries so much hope and anticipation on its tiny leaves. Remember, happiness is a pot of just-germinated seedlings.

The weather hit Highland Airways hard over Christmas and that seems to have affected their cash-flow. They aren’t taking any more bookings at the moment, although flights are apparently flying as usual (this morning’s certainly arrived). Hard to see how long that can continue but I’m glad I tried it last year. It has just had a sound-bite on the news, along with a great view over Crossapol beach - that is definitely the way to see Coll (and Tiree). The kids will miss them if they stop, although they would rather have a ferry every Friday afternoon. If it is possible after bad weather on one Thursday why can’t it be done every Friday. It would be great to get a real week-end away now and again.

I hope mjc hasn’t lost all chance of arriving at Coll International (where is mjc?), but I am sure bloggers can suggest some new uses for the runway!

Back in October we had a small accident. At least, Ms Pig did. She produced three piglets. This was not a good idea as she was then living with her brother and (female) cousin/aunt in a small ark, and one piglet got squashed. We moved the other two with the help of a remarkably calm and unflappable Project volunteer into the next field, but it wasn’t easy to persuade Ms Pig to come too, her maternal instincts were a bit slow in appearing because no matter how loud the piglets did their squealing stuff (and I don’t know how so much noise came from two things that small) she paid no attention at all. Pigs are easy to attract with food, but making sure we only attracted the right one was tricky. Copious amounts of food spread about managed to convince the right one through the gate and a bit of barn sweeping found some bedding and she settled into her new home; a roof of a trailer quite happily.

Then it rained. A lot. Another piglet got squashed and we had to move the trailer roof out of a small pond that arrived without warning. The remaining piglet was renamed Spot (he has spots, and also a natty whitish band running over his shoulders, while the rest of him is pinkish ginger). He grew very quickly. Piglets are a cross between lambs and puppies in development and we were sorry he had no-one to play with (apart from the dog) but he quickly passed his eleven yards swimming badge and learnt to bully the lambs. He has started gymnastics and tomb-stoning, or at least, jumping off boulders and is showing promise at sprinting. Just before we went away to the big bad mainland for Christmas and relatives and lots of cheese, four Tamworth piglets arrived on the island. I inspected them when they were unloaded. Very ginger. Long bodies. Nice rounded buttocks. Very long bodies, they vaguely reminded me of dachshunds. They don’t look much like Spot though. Or possibly, since these are pure-bred Tamworths, it is Spot who is less than pig-like. I don’t need any comments about inbred islanders because Spot has a strategy on not becoming bacon. He doesn’t have a long body; it is short, compact, in fact, about six chops short of a length. And he won’t make ham, his hips are 1970’s rock-star slim. Mick Jagger would be jealous. He does have shoulders though. Great broad rounded shoulders, a Russian weightlifter would beg for his diet and training regime, and when he stands he looks like a British Bulldog (with a few double chins). Strong and intimidating. But not silent, he never stops chattering. I can’t imagine how his mum would cope if she had had a dozen piglets!

So my New Year resolution is to learn how put picture thingies on the blog. I know it isn’t difficult, it is just going to take time, and I’d rather read another blog. But soon, I promise, there will be a picture of Spot the failed bacon pig.

The following morning started rather too early as two (very young) central heating engineers arrived at 8-30 to try and fix the heating. I mentally delegated organising them to someone slightly more awake until 10-30 when it seemed silly to spend any more of my weekend away dozing in bed, especially as I still didn’t have a hangover!! I made a very small dent in the yogurt and fruit mountain in the fridge and then the wide-awake of us read the riot act to the not-as-asleep-as-they-would-like-to-be ones and we got in a taxi and went to the Hard Rock Cafe. And had Margueritas!! With lots of salt round the rim of the glass. Which proved not to be a good idea if you happened to be feeling slightly sick. But I wasn’t so I drank mine and felt like a Rock Star.

Then we went shopping. I am a slow and reluctant shopper, I like to ponder, and walk away, and return, and think about it. I have no sense of direction so wandering away wasn’t an option and as I needed to stay in close contact with those that knew where they were, and as they didn’t like to ponder I wasn’t a very effective shopper. However I became an excellent porter. The number one shopper marshalled her two porters (me and my accomplice in M&S breakfast shopping) so one of us queued while the other held her imminent purchases and she glided about selecting more goods from the racks. Suitably adorned with posh bags from posh shops we retired to Harvey Nics for a refresher.

I confess I was expecting something more refined. It looked more like a sixth form common room than a swanky cocktail bar, but then, I had never been in a swanky cocktail bar before. We all grabbed black leatherette pouffes but were rather spread out across the not-so-swanky-but-very-crowded-cocktail-bar. There was a menu to study before we could order a drink. I settled on a lime and quince sour, and tried not to look at the price! Unsuccessfully. The others were too slow so someone took charge and ordered five different drinks in five different shaped glasses. The lime and quince sour was very nice, in a completely un-real-ale-like sort of way. As people left we dragged the black leatherette pouffes across the room until we were huddled near, but not actually round a table. We began to speculate what the interesting gizmo attached to the back of the waiter’s belt was for. We had another round of drinks, but I forget what mine was called, or what it had in it, although it was very nice. I was still struggling to come to terms with a round of five drinks coming to nearly £50 (lime and quince sours are £7, cocktails with champagne are £11, there is a 10% discretionery service charge, and the change from £50 is negligible (well actually it is the price of a pint of Pipers) so it is left as a tip). But two drinks made me brave enough to ask the waiter what his interesting gizmo was, and with a flourish he whipped it off his belt and said it was a speedy bottle opener. I still think it looked like a clip for fastening him to a wall when there aren’t any customers. I stopped feeling like a rock star and more like a member of ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ when he went off-shift, and said ‘Goodnight ladies’.

It was time to move on, and I turned out not to be the only one with no sense of direction as we went looking for somewhere else. It was a particular somewhere else and we did know the name (although I have forgotten it since) but because we had the technology we tried to find it by asking directions by mobile from someone who was there. They knew where they were, but weren’t sure where we were (and nor were we), and someone tried Google because they know everything. After we had crossed the same road three times someone thought of asking a real person, and that helped a lot. Except when we arrived it was full so we went somewhere else. I was beyond lost by now, but cocktails are remarkable stress reducers, and once settled in a new cocktail bar that looked like a cocktail bar we studied another menu. I could look at the prices without blinking now, and as it was a cocktail bar specialising in apples I had something with apples in it (and quite a lot of alcohol). The waiter/barman was very smart (and quite young) and he shook the shaker with a flourish and poured the drinks from a height and all the mixing for seven drinks took some time (and provided a lot of great entertainment) and the drinks probably were worth a bit more than a pint of beer. We had another. I was beginning to realise that if the drink has a lot of ice in it, and it is drunk slowly, it gets quite dilute by the end. I was also aware I was sitting on a fairly high stool and care was going to be needed getting down. The two additions to our party insisted on another drink, which seemed an excellent idea; mine was something with Chivas Regal whisky. Normally I am of the school that if a whisky is good enough to drink it is better on its own, but hey, this was a one-off weekend and there should always be exceptions. Those amongst us with more restraint decided it was now time to leave and go and make chilli and drink the last bottle of fizz. I think some wine was opened but I was now on the breakfast fruit juice and thinking of an early night.

We did more shopping the next day, and on Monday I finished my weekend away in style by flying home. I hope I don’t get so used to being able to fly it stops being exciting.

On Tuesday I filed my tax return. It was a bit more complicated than usual because of all the different jobs I did last year but at the end I discovered I owed HM Revenue & Customs slightly more than the five rounds of cocktails I drank!