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Health/Eco/Lifestyle

Black Isle

Everyday Life: February 2015

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Another month, another snowy jaunt down the A9…

Snow on the A9

I was also back in London to hang out with some our lovely Up & Running Alumni members to celebrate the book coming out, including a DIY 5K that began in front of Buckingham Palace (Rhi and I had planned the route at Christmas).

Buckingham Palace meetup for Up & Running

Julia left Jennie and I in charge of her son Evan for a couple of hours. First act of child minding: “Climb up on that lion, kid!”

Evan in Trafalgar Square

Now here’s the Neighbour Cat photo of the month.

Alfie does the Thriller dance

I like to think she was dreaming of being a dancer in the Thriller video…

Thriller dance

There were glimmers of sunshine amongst the grim and grey. This was from a walk on the Black Isle, not far from the brewery.

Horse on the Black Isle

I loved the second paragraph of this unsubscribe email. When I’m looking for airport parking I’m looking for the bargain of a lifetime!

Unsubscribe

The lovely in-laws Mary and David came up for a visit. I took them to the Botanic Gardens to contemplate the cactii, which I like to do when it’s maximum miserable outside.

The cactus room at Inverness Botanic Garden

ORRIGHT LADS? HOW’S IT GOIN’?

Friendly flower

I’m sorry this is such an uninspired update! Aside from London, February was a real zombie of a month. I’ll make a better effort to open my eyes in March!

River Ness at sunset

The very hungry shark

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It’s midnight and I’m just back from dinner. It was a lovely night out on the Black Isle. No light pollution out there so there were a gazillion stars. Plus there’s always an assortment of dogs around at the brewery. Tonight I counted three Jack Russells, two spaniels (one of whom was excellently named Daniel) and a pointer.

I so miss having a dog – I spend way too much time sighing over the Australian Working Dog Rescue Facebook page – but for now I get my fix patting the brewery hounds, without all the faff and hairs of owning one myself.

In case you’ve never had reason to stare at a map of Britain, I must tell you that the Black Isle is not actually an island. It is a peninsula. A mere appendage. When my Aussie friend Jason discovered this he said, “Scotland… built on lies!”.

At the start of the year I made a pact with my friend Jennette to write a blog post every week for eight weeks, OR ELSE. If one fails to write a post, the other scores ! We used Stickk.com to make it formal. I’m chuffed to have made writing a habit again, with huge credit to Jennette for spurring me on. I’m not worrying about quality right now; 2014 is the year of Project Consistency (but apologies to you). I made it all the way to the eighth week… before wilting tonight, at the final hurdle! Here I am at 12.30AM feeling delirious and cursing my slackarsery.

I went through a period in primary school when I would constantly whinge to the teacher, “I’ve got nothing to write about”. It’s actually there on my Year 4 (4th Grade) report card, something along the lines of, Shauna needs to stop whinging that she has nothing to write about and get on with her writing.

Then I went through a prolific phase when I could not stop writing. There were such gems as The Very Hungry Shark. It was all about a very hungry shark. It kept following a fishing boat everywhere and the sailors were getting worried. But the captain knew the problem was simply that the shark was very hungry. He came up with the solution of throwing the crew’s breakfast scraps overboard each morning for the shark to eat. Apparently this shark thrived on egg shells and bacon rinds. THE END.

In other news, the exercise portion of Project Consistency has been pretty good. On a recent morning walk the Ness Islands were flooded after mega overnight rain. It was lovely clear water and I saw three herons. THE END.

Flooded islands

flooded2

Scone update: We went back! It was quiet this time, and the scones were still warm from the oven. And delicious. And the size of a toddler.

Almighty scone

Almighty scone

Sheep on neeps

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Over the past few weeks I’ve been enthralled by the sight of sheep feasting on fields of turnips.

Sheep on neeps

Forgive the shitty phone pic

Forget fox in socks and cats in hats, Dr Seuss missed a trick with these fellas.

Who eats whose neeps?
Sheep eats Sue’s neeps.

Who sees who eats whose new neeps, sir?
You see sheep eat Sue’s new neeps, sir.

Well, yes, that utterly stinks doesn’t it.

But anyway, on one particular farm I saw on the Black Isle, they’ve grown a big field of neeps and fenced it into sections. Then they let the sheep run riot in one bit at a time. I dunno why I find it so hilarious and wonderful to watch them plopped down on top of the neeps, munching row by row like big fluffy Pac Men. If Pac Men be the plural of Pac Man.

I like the guys sitting to the left of the patch. Looks like they needed a time-out, and maybe a massage before they head back in. Raw turnips are hard. They must take it out of you.

These sheep are such a stark contrast to the sheep of my childhood, who had to wander dry and dusty paddocks with barely a salt block to entertain them.