about just about (strange word when you think about (there it is again!) it?)...
every ruddything!?!
Friends who live on Skye came to visit us the day after we arrived home from our holiday. They were down to visit family and to pick up the last of their possessions, their caravan which when they arrive home with it will mean they have finally upsticks and moved to their new self sufficient life.
A chance meeting with Ian in my local Waitrose where he worked, we got into conversation, no, no not about the price of cheese, but about their plans for a major move. Chance meetings have been a major staddle stone of my capers through life. Never one to waste time talking about the mundane, get to the nub of the problem, plan, dream or scheme has been my motto.
We were booked to go and see them in late September enroute to the top left hand corner of the UK for this ruddy pressure cooker demo with the ‘boys’. What they had to tell us about the exploits of the staycationers stopped us dead in our tracks. Did we want to impose ourselves on areas of natural beauty along with the hoi polloi of the rest of the country?
One morning a well known beauty spot beach on Skye was left littered with 40 discarded tents and the flotsam and jetsam of rubbish and not to put too fine a point on it shit of a carefree camping life! Hold tight! Was it a good idea for us to go and add to the volume of traffic of folk more used to baring their bums in Magaluf? The answer was definitely NO! Added to which the possible transference of the quietly biding its time wee beastie bug! Be sensible LL and stay home every once of the old bod was crying out. And of course, the worry of a up close and personal cooking demo planned to show these old dogs how to cook 21st century style tricks!?!
Their letter goes in the post today. I am sad as I so wanted to
get them cracking on a new tasty way of cooking all the wonderful meat they have. My plan was that Iain would no longer come in from working the sheep, to get the dinner started, fall asleep in the armchair and wake to a house full of smoke as the pot had burnt dry.
This gadget would pressure cook for the allotted time, then let the pressure slowly off and keep the meal warm until required.
I plan to maybe next year when things hopefully are more settled to go up to Inverness on the overnight sleeper, hire a car and drive the rest of the way.
Who knows what next year will bring?
Ian and Claire our friends from Skye totally understood our deciding against going and maybe breathed a sigh of relief?
Aim to go outwith the school holidays! Remembering of course that school terms here are different.
ReplyDeleteIt is awful what some have been doing-and not all have been incomers from over the border. Its just selfish people who think not of others, or even of their own welfare.
Looking forward to hearing of your visit up here in the future
It is truly awful what lots of folk have been up to, it is an eye opener just how selfish some folk are. I certainly will return, now I don’t feel is the right time, sadly. I feel oddly in limbo, along with the rest of the world I hasten to add.
DeleteLX
I think you're right L. Stay home and let the dust settle. I'm appalled at how many masks I see now lying on the streets near us. It's totally thoughtless, who do these people think will come and clear up after them?
ReplyDeleteI think you'll feel better now a decision has been made. Not only that, if the 'boys' happened to go down with 'the bug' anytime after you were there you'd always wonder if it was you. Lets hope by this time next year we'll all be free to go where ever we please again. xx
I do feel sad, but oddly relieved at our decision. I sort of knew how the husband felt because let’s face it he was just humouring me. All my life I have taken it upon myself to ‘help’ people, regardless of whether they needed help!?! If I decide they do then that’s it... they ruddy well do! I have got to the stage now where even I think I’m a pain. So my way forward is to chill, how long it will last is anyone’s guess?
DeleteLX
Wise, wise choice, LL.
ReplyDeleteCheers Joanne. Me, sensible? A blooming worry I don’t mind admitting!
DeleteLX
Similar picture here on In-ger-lund's canals - folk on boats who quite obviously wouldn't know a battleship if their valet put one in their bathtub instead of ducks. What worries me about the phenomenon - aside from everything else and much more - is that it demonstrates just what a very large population we have in so very small a country. When the great unwashed herd leaves its cubicles and migrates about with common leisure intent there really isn't a lot of lebensraum left about the place. Just rubbish.
ReplyDeleteWhat really gets my goat (and there’s an eat anything waste disposal machine if there ever was one) is the flaming hoards of folk trogging nose to tail up Everest leaving behind pink loo roll enough to abseil down on, bodies, tents, take away cartons and of course the ubiquitous crap that animals excrete... a design fault if there ever was one? And of course the Extinction Rebellion crowd that leave in its wake piles of rubbish... what is that all about? I just don’t get it?
DeleteI must confess the desire to get away from it all has surfaced in me of late. Trouble with that idea is the great and the ‘good’ have the same idea in mind. Where I lived in Assynt some pen-pushing nerd in the Ministry of Bright Ideas came up with the wizard plan of making a route to encourage people to the area... The Northern 500. Now that beautiful unspoilt region is clogged up with camper vans and Harleys all trying to do it in the fastest time. No worries they are making a race track of a wonderful part of the Highlands, not bringing much trade for the local businesses just leaving their business by way of a calling card.
How was the solar curry?
LX
The nukular curry was fantasmatastebudicalicious. I shall be making another quite soon. :-) Of course, it does help that I have only three taste buds - hot, cold, and curry.
DeleteYou hit upon one my (many, many, many) visceral dislikes with the "Northern 500" and all such designs of the Devil Herself - the use and "running" of the countryside as though it is some sort of business with one of those uber-dated "mission statement" things - ...to serve the towns and cities. No! No no no! Countryside is not "unused" or "spare" or "waste" and nor is it a "resource" in the way that these metropolitan eighth-wits think it to be. Grrrrrr! There ought to be border controls with passport and health certificate required for anyone leaving a town or city!