Sally-part 140. IN A TINY FREEZING FLAT IN MAY ON COLONSAY 2014 !

IT DIDN'T LOOK TOO PROMISING AS WE SAILED TO COLONSAY ! SHIRLEY SAID THAT MAY WAS VIRTUALLY GUARANTEED TO HAVE WALL TO WALL SUNSHINE AND BE ROASTING !

I was 'allowed' half an hour's electric this morning to warm the water just sufficently long enough for me to have an undignifying crouch shower in a bathroom in the attic with a sloping roof that even someone as short as my wife couldn't possibly stand up in !

We've come to a Scottish Island for the twenty fifth time in as many years to share an enormous five bathroomed house for a week with as many family members who can get here but first Shirley decided that a week was too short a time to make the harrowing 240 mile drive to Oban worth the effort so she booked four nights in the Laird's loft to get us here early .

OUR ATTIC WAS AT THE FAR END.

It's minute and sweet and not for a man who's virus wrecked lungs had to heave our goods up four goes at thirty two steps a time !

Yes that bloody virus that I got five months ago, described by each of the dozen or so consultants I've insisted on being examined by as a head cold has left me fighting for breath if I even slightly exert myself !

EVEN CARVING STONE COULDN'T CURE MY CIRCULATION PROBLEMS !

SURPRISINGLY NONE OF MY FELLOW CARVERS ASKED ME A SINGLE QUESTION ABOUT MYSELF.......BUT I TOLD THEM ALL ABOUT ME DURING THE THREE HOURS WE SPENT TOGETHER ! THIS IS ACTUALLY A VIDEO AND SHOWS HOW TIME SEEMED TO STAND STILL FOR THEM !

SO, electricity is on a meter fed by £5 cards and is set to use it all before you've turned the tap on !

Using a stopwatch and counting down from ten Shirley has worked out what it takes to have a tepid wash and shave and that's what I got !

After failing to dry myself decently on the damp towel Shirley had already used the previous night (she insisted it was bone dry and it was therefore unnecessary to make them launder a second) and supplied as part of the fifty pound a night deal I rushed out with dripping hair to let the gale blowing through the yard dry it off at a bone chilling ten degrees C which was twice the temperature in the roof before setting out with my mobile phone to walk up to our next stay to check on the strength of the signal in case my son-in-law needed to make alternative arrangements to be able to run his business whilst he reluctantly spends a week with his least favourite people in the entire world !

IT REALLY WAS THAT COLD AND RATHER DIFFICULT TO EAT AND READ AT THE SAME TIME!

I had a break after writing that opening to warm up by walking with Shirley for an hour to get her cooled down in the rain because whilst I shiver with white-tipped frostbitten fingers she collapses from heat exhaustion !

EVENTUALLY ON THE THIRD DAY I WAS BRAVE ENOUGH TO ASK MY WIFE IF I MIGHT LIGHT A FIRE TO HELP STOP MY NOSE FROM DRIPPING OR DROPPING OFF ! SHE DIDN'T ACTUALLY REPLY BUT SAT DISAPPROVINGLY AS THE ROOM TEMPERATURE ROSE TO 3*C !

We went through the grounds out onto the fog blown moorland and around the lake stepping off the rutted single track road each time one of a dozen vehicles crawled past, our rain-soaked glasses in our pockets leaving us blindly making for the next landmark building which generally eventually focused into a cow or a stick, depending on how much rain was striking our eyeballs at the time !

Many of the cars belonged to depressed day-trippers from the neighbouring Island wondering why they had ever thought that a day-trip in bad weather from one Godforsaken place to another would brighten their day !

Islands are funny places inhabited in the most part by thoroughly grouchy, unfriendly people !

Of course the holidaymakers don't realise this as each one expects to be greeted warmly and invited into every house for a 'wee dram' !

The reality is quite different, be warned !

And quite rightly too !

Damned visitors think that they can ask the shopkeeper any question they like and pry into the Islander's private lives or sit at the bar without offering to buy the entire community a drink and get their noseyness answered especially when their wives had given them such a long list of questions to get answers to !

OH ! So it's ME I'm talking about ?

Yes ! I have been rejected wherever I've visited and now don't bother even asking anyone those questions, knowing that at best I'll get a grunt and a back turned to my face and at worst a mouthful of phlegm containing the term Sassenach several times !

My wife did visit the bar once . She was looking for me, probably because I'd done something wrong or hadn't done anything at all and failing to spot me, summoned the courage to ask the four reticent men there whether they had seen a six foot man with a beard.

They stared silently at her and she left flustered and indignant to find me, six foot and BEARDLESS returning from the shop where she'd sent me to buy just one  medium sized potato. I loved those trips to the shop where people would gather round me watching a clueless nutter carefully comparing potatoes, muttering to himself about size and cost !

I've seen really wealthy people in there nudging each other and pointing at price labels three or four times the price of their home groceries or the long-expired 'sell by' dates, so I wasn't alone in wondering how we were going to feed our family for a week !

I am now eating the most delicious Chicken Korma, prepared for me by Tescos and frankly as good if not better than anything served in a restaurant and the two of us are sharing one very adequate meal which cost three quid !

On the way here Shirley said, " As this is probably the last time we'll ever come back and your business is doing so well shall we treat everyone to a meal in the Hotel ? Mind at twenty five pounds a main course plus drinks, puddings and starters for the greedy it'll cost the best part of two hundred but of course I leave the decision entirely in your hands !"

Well a couple of points here.

Firstly, I don't make decisions in my house and if I try to be firm and put my foot down it is rapidly pointed out to me what my place in life is and and told not to forget it and secondly, six adults and three children couldn't possibly cost that much in a pretentious 'Only Hotel On An Island' restaurant could it ? Well actually yes it easily could and I don't care how much money I might have, I would deeply resent paying that even if my face didn't disclose that fact to my ungrateful lot and thirdly, I ate and watched my wife struggle through the worst meals I have ever been served in my life when we called in for 'The Pre-Ferry Meal' several years ago !

I didn't complain !

Oh and I nearly forgot about the steak I was treated to by the two friends honoured with an invitation to join us for a week !

Just after I swallowed the first mouthful, my diaphragm went into spasm and I had to rush to the toilet where three poor strangers had to listen to me wretching my guts up which is what my body demanded whenever this occured ! Not nice but true I'm afraid and long in the past since it got sorted .
I returned to my seat to find the others not in the least aware that I had even been away as they stuffed their faces !

If things were bad to begin with they immediately got a lot worse as the agony returned and I ran out into the storm-lashed night to suffer another twenty or thirty bouts hanging onto an umbrella I had found in the porch and which caused Shirley the only concern of the night.....my using someone else's umbrella, not my condition !

The attack actually continued through until eight o'clock the next morning and what made the entire thing worse was that my friend was a Doctor who was unable to help at all AND he and my wife shared my uneaten steak !

Shirley's general reaction to anything traumatic I've suffered has never been to show compassion, like when I sliced my hand in two and she ran away leaving me not only to get myself to hospital and the surgeon's needle and thread but to clear up the blood when I got home the next day too !

Anyway, that's enough for now as I've just been brought a large slab of carrot cake with orange coulis frosting on top ! It's thick and I desperately need a mug of boiling hot coffee to get it down but reacting in a way I thought was best to Shirley's slightly sarcastically and impatiently drawn out, "I sah pozzze you'll need a coffee with that !", I replied that I was fine with the remains of my glass of water, left over after my curry !

Now I'm about to subtlely admit to needing one as I push my chair back !

I think I'll leave it for two more minutes !

AFTER TWO FULL DAYS SLOGGING AWAY AND FIVE OF MY TUTORS CHISELS BROKEN HE PACKED AWAY IN SILENCE AND LOOKING AT MY 'S' FOR SHIRLEY SAID, "THAT'S SHIT !"