The first thing I saw looking out of my office window around 6:30 this morning was a little roe deer eating my primulas. One of the things about wildlife (certainly in UK) is that although it is very prolific in some areas (like here), you rarely see it except if you have a special area […]

Click on the photo for a video of one of our badgers in colour.  This was at 5:45am – unfortunately by the time I was in the kitchen about 20 minutes later it had departed.  

I seem destined not to get to Iona on the Waverley.  Last year the trip was cancelled before we set off due to bad weather.  This time we actually got to Oban and were on the boat before the Captain announced that because of high winds the tender operator (tender as in ship, not a […]

R bought me a little bear on the Waverley because he is the twin of the ScotSTS bears I bought to go in the goodie bags for our conference.  Now I have triplet bears on my bookshelf. I decided to call him Jerome.  I had thought of Columba because of Iona, but decided against it […]

N and J stayed over at the weekend.  Schrodi made sure to get both of their beds ready for them. Unlike when my Mum came to stay around this time last year though, he didn’t favour them with any rodents during the night.

After a damp and midgie week the weather suddenly picked up late this afternoon and most of the insects vanished.  I made the most of it by going for a quick hike up Cnoc Coinnich. The views were sensational as ever. I didn’t see a soul the whole way apart from a few sheep, until […]

R and I went for our normal walk this morning although it is not pleasant at the moment as the midgies are fierce (they love warm wet weather as we currently have).  On the way out we narrowly evaded Schrodi by running down the driveway. But we had to walk through the village to post […]

I made lunch for some friends from London today.  I’d prepared a (relatively) healthy crème fraiche based crowdie for desert – then right at the last minute I thought it looked a bit underwhelming and decided to make a cake I’d been wanting to have a go at for a while – a Sachertorte. I’d […]

My brother N is not fond of sweet things (well – he isn’t now although until he was in his 20s his idea of a good breakfast was half a packet of chocolate digestives or 2 twirls) so when I went down to Mum and Dad’s for his birthday, I made him a rather unusual […]

Hard to believe what a change there has been in the weather since yesterday.  Last night about 8pm I took this picture at the top of the Tam A’Cheulig walk.   The cloud was thick and solid around 250m and I couldn’t even see the top of the Steeple, let alone Cnoc Coinnich. And then […]