Big Tent, Little Tent

Hello!

Insert gratuitous photograph of pretty tents.

Blue sky, soft light, bunting. Not half bad, eh?

Another week, another few hundred miles on our little car, another few late nights followed far to quickly by early mornings and here we are again. This week's escapades included late-night bunting making, pitching 2 tents, pitching another tent, collecting 2 tents, and a whole punnet of tasty fruits, picked by our own fair hands.

That's my sleepy face, right there. 

This whole tent thing is pretty fun. Stressful to boot, but I'm enjoying it. Doing other people's camping for them, essentially. And we're getting better at it. Faster and slicker. Between the 2 of us 1 tent, airbed, bedding, chandelier, bunting, fairy lights, table and chairs went up in about 50 minutes on Saturday. 2 tents, 8 airbeds and all their associated crap came down, dried off, and back in to the car in 2 hours on Sunday, again with both of us. Keeping tabs on this stuff will help us work out a more accurate pricing structure for next season. Keeping tabs on what we've promised people and making sure we actually have it would be even better. Living and learning, right here.

All of this playing with tents but not actually waking up in them (which is totally the best bit) is, however, giving me an itch to squeeze in a night under canvas myself. And I might get to scratch that itch sooner rather than later.

This coming weekend we will have:

• Tent #1 already out
• Tent #2 getting collected on Friday
• Tent #3 wants to be delivered to Arran on Saturday

I find this all very exciting, be warned. 

Yes, there are 3 of them now. Yes, that was a brave move. Yes, our house is tiny. No, I'm not really sure where we'll put them all.

The website even gives you the option of enquiring about all 3 of them!

Arran. That's exciting, right. There will be ferries. I've never been before, and I'm told it's a nice place, so I bravely booked us on to a sailing out on one day and a return sailing the next day. We'll find a bed in a hostel or a bunkhouse or something, it'll be easy, said I. Right? No. Turns out Arran is quite busy in August, Dufusbrain.

This leaves us with the distinct possibility that we'll wind up wild camping in our teeny old-school 2-man, whilst all the nice tents that we own have other people in! These people seem to think that there are some good spots up at the north of the island. I might just be about to find out.

This is the only picture I have of the tent in question. That little green thing just behind me. This photo is 5 years old! It probably hasn't been out since then either. I must apologise for the frizzy hair and concentration face. Best camping trip ever. 

I would like to be able to write a blog post one day about all of my favourite places for wild camping. As yet, I'd be a complete fraud if I did, on account of having never done any wild camping. This is Scotland, and one of the few places in the world where it's legal to wild camp, and sometimes I feel like that's a privilege that's passing me by every night I sleep in a bed, under a roof, like the boring person I might actually be.

So our plan for the coming weekend is this. Load up the car with all of the nice camping kit that we're going to put up for someone else. Squeeze in our little tent and 2 sleeping bags and roll mats. Very little else on account of how almost all of our other kit will be elsewhere. I'll buy a map, because maps are awesome, and we'll do some scouting around for good places. Then we'll take shedload of photographs and report back in a week's time.

My much longer term plan is to be able to write that post!



Kitchen? What Kitchen. That thing you're bored of hearing about. I'll save the big reveal for another week. When it's, y'know, finished.

In with the new

It is a glorious day today. When I rule the world (one day, it'll happen, you just watch) Annual Leave will be well, the same old Annual Leave, but you'll also get a handful of Sunshine Days. I'm trademarking that. Maybe about 3 of them? Who knows, I haven't really thought this through. But here's the idea. You get three days that you don't get to allocate ahead of time. They're on top of your normal holiday allocation, because I am a nice, happy, benevolent Dictator. These are days when you get up, walk to work (or cycle to work, because I'm in charge here and I have made the world a happy place where traffic jams don't happen), but then it's so nice you want to put on your hiking boots and some uphill clothes* and just keep walking.

This was my work, today. Not bad, eh?

So you just phone in.

You: "Hi Boss, it's me. Y'know it's so nice out here, I think I'm gonna have today as a Sunshine Day."
Boss: "Ok."

Just think of the mushy intangible wooshy-wooshy societal benefits. If I climbed 3 more hills a year I'd be ever so fractionally fitter and happier. Extrapolate that to the whole population and there's a monetary value in it. We'd all wear through our walking boots franctionally faster and outdoorsy shops might sell an extra pair of boots or two a year. Win win, right?

Hello, welcome to this weeks musings. That was tangent #1, before we even got started.

This week I have half a kitchen. Going to give you a run-down of the last-know state of play w.r.t the kitchen.

• The contents of the kitchen-that-was are mostly in the spare room. Behind a substantial barrier of worktops and miscellaneous kitchen components. Just chillin' out with most of the camping crap. 
• The soon-to-be fixtures and fittings of the new kitchen are mostly in the front room, forming yet another substantial barrier, this time between me and my fridge. 
• The contents of the hallway (yes, our hallway has contents - it's a 2(ish) bedroomed flat and we have at least a 3-bed house's amount of stuff) are on my bed, with a giant purple beanbag that I once thought was a good idea. 
• A few other soon-to-be-kitchen bits are also on my bed. 
• L and I spent our weekend scraping off the old paper, sticking up new lining paper and painting the whole caboodle green. 
• There are 14 individual sockets in that room and I've papered and painted around all of them. 
• None of the right angles actually are, and all of the walls are bigger at the top than the bottom. 
• The kitchen itself is a now green empty-ish shell currently inhabited by some lovely and highly competent joiners, who are very rapidly filling it back up again.
• The radio is tuned to Radio 1 for the first and possibly last time ever. 
• We've moved out! While carnage ensues at home we've taken over a holidaying friend's house. This has proven to be an inspired move. 

Ok, there are pictures. 

These are L's decorating dungarees. Aren't they cute!

L went off to the theatre and I went home and cracked out the green. It's so green!

The rest of these are the current state of play now that the Professionals have moved in.

See that? That is possibly the best bit. That little white box - it's for putting dirty dishes in! Yippee!

Ok, so this turned out fuzzy, but I'm going to leave it in so you can see where our funky new cooker is going.

We're particularly excited about the bendy corners. 

This is the sink that I won't have to do all of the washing up in!

This time next week we'll have a finished kitchen, more or less. Then we'll fill it up again and do a bunch of before and after pictures. With a real camera, not the crappy one on my phone.

This time next week we'll also have had many tent-pitching adventures for me to tell you about. No rest for, well, me.

Till then!


*Uphill clothes are clothes you wear to walk up hills in, according to L. God knows what you wear to get back down them.

Teeth. Kitchens. Board Games. Brain Overload.

2 minutes to ten. This is going to be one of those weeks where I just tell you Stuff. Unconnected, illogical stuff. 

This is not going to be a week where I have a reasoned argument or an actual point to make. You have been warned.

This evening I skived a Committee Meeting to go babysit two usually angelic children. Drink the tea, eat the biscuits, watch the telly, write the blog. Was Plan A. Parents, I salute you. I am fairly sure the Devil himself invented teeth. Or at least the method of acquiring them. You've only been on this planet a matter of months, you've just about mastered sitting up, spoons, gurgling and pulling the cat's tail. You get to nap in the daytime and don't know the meaning of the word "office". Life is good. Then all of a sudden there are these horrible spiky hard things that want to cut their way up through your gums! Surely there was meant to be a better way of getting them than that?! Teeth are useful in the end and all that, but try explaining that to a screaming baby. Teething, did you really not have any better ideas, eh God?

I am just home. The house is fairly chaotic. There's a half-finished game of Qwirkle in the living room. The kitchen has very little food left in it and splodges of various paint testers on the walls. There are two 3 metre lengths of worktop in the hallway because they don't fit anywhere else. The spare room is storage central as we decant the contents of the kitchen in to it. The hallway cupboard is actually quite tidy, on account of me having to empty it yesterday to pull out the Thing at the absolute back.

This thing is awesome. I am bringing it camping and none of you can leave until you've had a shot.

I came home with a craving for that sort of cheat cake that you can make in the microwave, but we're all out of eggs. First World Problems.

We have the next days (during which we'll be at work) to decant the remainder of the kitchen before it gets ripped out on Friday.

We are this pretentious. We have packed the teapots (there are quite a few at that) in to wine boxes. What have I become?

And people want to hire our tents. Quite a lot of them. My bedroom wall now looks like this. I am probably going to have to say no to some people because we don't have a tent left available for them. That's exciting, right?

July gets it's own bit of paper. It's special.

And that's without the stuff I arranged at lunchtime today. I can feel it starting to pick up the pace a bit now. Most evenings we've had something to arrange and a few emails to send. Our online contact form is working really well and people are using it. Awesomesauce. Even the Facebook page is getting a tiny bit of traffic. Very soon we'll start the busy job of driving around this gorgeous country every weekend sharing out the tents. I'm very much looking forward to that side of things. I will get to go on a ferry and someone else is paying for it! Win!

I'm going to get to drive a car in to this thing. I know that's pretty mundane and boring if you've done it before, but I haven't so WOOOO!!!

It will come as no surprise then that I have a cold. Yack. The drippy sort that makes you want to cut your own nose off because it's just getting in the way. I shall go to bed very soon, that might help.

The remainder of this week contains a party, a funeral and a lot of decorating. Going to be a bit of a schizophrenic few days. I shall report back, probably mostly on the decorating front.

What with all that I've been engaged for 3 weeks now! That Champagne and Chocolate Cake post has been read 322 times, and not all of those were me. That's pretty awesome, right? I think it is anyway.

Everyone has been amazingly lovely to us. I am blown away with all the niceness. Thank you.

There are still no more plans, no dates, a couple more ideas but not many.  That'll be another post for quite some time in the future. Some time.

Now I will sleep.

The Real Life Come-Down

*Clunk*

This is the sound of me, coming back down to earth.

Many things are happening right now. Not all of them are for internet-level sharing. Sorry 'bout that. I'm quite fond of you, but some of you are strangers off t'internet.

I've spent my 2 lunch breaks so far this week outside, and in an against-the-odds bid to re-live some of last week's French sunshine. Trying to remind myself that Aberdeen is not the arse end of the universe after all. I'm struggling with that. It's a very rare, if unknown, thing for me to not enjoy returning to Aberdeen after an adventure of some sort. I've always felt a sort of comforting, coming-home, this-is-my-city feeling after any length of time elsewhere. This time it just felt like a let down.

Here's the contrast:

11 days ago.

 versus...

Today.

Boo Hoo, I'll live. No sympathy required.

We went to France. It was amazing. I'd go back tomorrow and start over again. Well, maybe give me a few days to finish the laundry first.

They'll take a bit of re-whitening after the punishment we've just put them through.

We had a great time. We went to a lovely place, with some of my closest friends, and we were very well looked after by other people who I'm also very fond of. And we spent our time eating, drinking, sightseeing and dancing, although not necessarily in that order. Every meal that wasn't breakfast was accompanied by wine.

Add caption

Toulouse is very very nice. You should go if you ever get the chance. Do Carcassonne. Yes it's full of tourists and tourist tat, but they're only there because it's worth seeing. If you go in for bucket lists (I can't handle them, they stress me out) stick one more item on yours.

The only place for miles around where there's actually a breeze. Lovely.

Toulouse is a gem. And being there to do a thing you like doing, with people you like being with, just makes it all the more fun. Thank you all, you Nutters.

Totally unsustainable unbelievably great fun. Hot, stressful, exhausting great fun. Man cannot live on alcohol, adrenaline and 4 hours sleep alone, and neither can I.

Not to say that I didn't give it a darn good shot.

That would be cider, in a teacup.

So it comes as no surprise that what follows is a coming back down to earth with a rather large bump. We lugged our cases home from the bus stop to find that a friendly and interfering neighbour had taken it upon himself to take a strimmer to 2 nice healthy plants in the name of neighbourly grass-cutting. Cutting the grass, yes, helpful. Killing the lavender and the fennel, grr. We went round to the corner shops in search of takeaway food, and changed our minds when faced with a line of dodgy-looking middle aged men stretching out of the door of the chipper.

Then on Friday I rolled down the car window for a few minutes and a seagull crapped right on me. That didn't help either. Stop laughing.

So I've spend that last few days intentionally doing the things that remind me why I chose to live here, and why I keep choosing to keep living here. Here's that story.

We got straight in the car and went to a nicer chipshop, and got nice chips. 

Aberdeen does a good line in fish and chips. Then we went dancing. That helped too. People gave us cards and hugs and congratulations and wanted to know all about our French adventures. I walked through half a dozen dances in a sleep-deprived daze but went home feeling much more loved and appreciated.

We went out to Newton Dee...

...which is a Camphill community not too far from us where we once danced at a charity do. They do good cake. We also came away with a tiny elephant and a tiny boat which we will entrust our shiny new rings to while we sleep/shower. 

We went to Church. 

The hymns weren't terrible and the Minister wasn't on holiday. The Session Clerk was the first to congratulate us and the Minister's Wife was the second. After that I lost track. People who's names I don't yet know came over and hugged us and ooh'd and ahh'd at the rings.
At Church.
We had to stay for tea because they wouldn't let us leave! Well done you lovely people.
Came home with these to boot.

Those two little espresso cups, there's a story in there. Maybe next week.

We visited Friends

And reminded ourselves that this part of the world is populated by people we like, and their amazingly cute children.


I took and deep breath and...

I turned on a computer. 

To be greeted by a few rounds of glorious Toulousian photographs, and, possibly more excitingly, a number of queries from people who might like to hire our tents! There does seem to be a (small and fragile) niche for us. That's got to be a good thing, right.

So What's Next?

I ain't got any leave booked for a while (actually none booked at all but that doesn't bear thinking about). Here on in I will be retreating somewhat in to a work-based Stressbubble. I will try not to be a grumpy grumposaur, but I'm making no promises. All adventures will have to be squeezed in around the edges, which is a terrible plan if ever there was one. I'm going to do it anyway.

It's going to be a potentially demoralising couple of working weeks up here in my corner. Please send wine. And keep reading!

I love my friends, and hope they forgive me for pinching their pictures.