It’s not as if I haven’t got enough to do. Because I have. However, if there was ever an outside possibility of boredom setting in, it has now been eliminated.

The roof at the wee bothy we co-own with 4 other families, is leaking. And of course it’s not a simple job. The bothy is a 40 minute walk over bog and moorland from Cuil Bay, has no electricity or other mod cons. In other words it’s a task that needs yet more organisation. 
I discovered the leak during an attempt to convince our city-loving thirteen year old of the joys of country living. I’d invited two of her school friends and their mums up to Sula for a girls’ weekend. We had a ball in the evening and a rather late night and then, to blow the cobwebs away, the plan was to drag everyone across the bog and moor to the bothy to check on it after a winter of fierce storms, and to light a fire and have a brew.

Helen, one of the mums, who it transpired owns over 100 pairs of shoes, and wasn’t a regular visitor to the wilds at weekends, had lent her wellies to her daughter and so walked across burn and bog in a pair of patent leather designer boots. Rain drops splashed in pools of sphagnum and water dribbled down our hoods (those of us that had them) and into our eyes but, despite the weather, spirits were high and the 13-year old delighted in showing her friends the secret spots, the rope swing and the wildlife of the place she has known since she was a baby (which of course was the whole point of the expedition). 

She still managed to put on a scowl, however, when I pointed out how much they were enjoying themselves.

So that was how we found the leak,  and that was how I acquired a new organizational task to add to the existing list of Sula-related organizational tasks.

 
There’s certainly one advantage in building a house. I now know a lot of people with skill-sets I hadn’t encountered before.  I thought of our roofer. He’d done a great job on the roof at Sula but always seemed to be off somewhere exciting if the weather was good (more recently he told me he’s a downhill mountain biker, which might have been what he was off to do). I only met him a couple of times but when he finished I distinctly remember thinking “Ah yes that’s a quality roof.” And then feeling rather downcast that I probably wouldn’t have to call on him again for another 30 years. (He happens to be a rather handsome roofer)
So when it came to finding a roofer who could come out to a remote bothy with no electricity and no loo and a long walk from a road he sprung to mind. Later, he told me that he often stays at the tiny ski hut in the car park at Glencoe, which is apparently even more basic than our bothy (except you can drive to it).

 
Robert responded to my email query almost immediately, yes he’d be delighted. (Hooray)

 
So that’s how I came to be exerting all my energies rowing an aluminum dory on a mirror calm Loch Linnhe under leaden skies. I wasn’t supposed to be rowing. Husband and I were supposed to be motoring along in relaxed fashion to fetch roofer and roofer’s kit but we forgot a vital item for the outboard – the funnel for the oil. I dropped husband on the shore to fetch it and started rowing- we were already late. I ended up rowing the whole way, determined to get there first. I didn’t quite win. But I think I held the moral victory. I certainly looked like I had expended the most effort.

We headed back to the bothy and roughly two hours after pushing off in the boat we were putting up the scaffolding tower we keep in the barn for occasions such as this.

Turns out the roof was generally sound and it was a simple job to put a couple of slates on and some lead flashing. So, far too soon, it was time to pack up the stuff and wave goodbye to Robert once again.

However, it turned out I’d see Robert much sooner than expected. In fact it was later the same weekend. We were skiing up at Glencoe in perfect conditions with my sister on Easter Monday; powder snow and bright sunshine. There were no queues, our cheeks were burning from the speed and and the sun, and the children were in charming mood, belting out 80s power ballads on the lifts. All was joy and wonderfulness.

We came across Robert in the lift queue and chatted about the sheer fabulousness of the skiing. My sister joined us a few minutes later

“This is Robert who did the bothy roof” I said by way of introduction.
“Oo. Is this the sexy roofer?” She said immediately, in her inimitable style. (Don’t you just love siblings? She might be a Professor now, but some things just never change…)

 The route to the top of Spring Run

Fortunately I am not the type to get embarrassed easily (or surely the cuilbay blog wouldn’t have got very far). A couple of years ago our, then, seven-year-old, exasperated after I’d called over to someone I thought I recognized one time too many, asked me “MUM do you NEVER get embarrassed?”.

No, fortunately I wasn’t embarrassed. I just thought, “This will make a good story” and filed it in a box named ‘Blog’.

The view from the top of the lifts

I love a deadline, whether manufactured by me for the purposes of  getting something done, or for real. In fact sometimes I just can’t do things without the urgency of a deadline. And it seems that putting up nest boxes is one of those tasks. 

There have been two nest boxes sitting outside my house since May last year. One was a house sparrow terrace I’d been given as a birthday present at least a year previously, and the other was a nest box I’d made of cladding off-cuts designed to go in the eaves of the house.

I’d had a burst of nest box enthusiasm when a pied wagtail and a housesparrow had nested in the half-built house and we’d had to seal off their nesting cavities at the end of the breeding season (see blog).  However the enthusiasm was followed by an extended period of lassitude. (I should say there has only been lassitude on the nest-box front, I’ve been being pretty busy getting things done in other avenues). 

However things changed this morning. When I got up and wandered down to make coffee a wagtail was sitting right outside the window chit chit-ing at me. As if to say “Where’s my nest hole gone?”.  I went outside and a jay flew over the garden carrying nesting material, a robin sang in a baby alder tree and the world seemed to be bright and new. “Where’s my nest box!!” it was wailing at me, “and you work for RSPB Scotland and you haven’t even followed your own advice you hypocrite”. 

So the urgency was established. Nest boxes must go up. Yes they must. They must. But…. The summits were cloud free, and there was no wind… Glencoe skiing was calling. Nest boxes had to wait. 

 Daughter finds an innovative way to achieve the traverse to the top of ‘Spring Run’

And that is why, as night fell, and I felt the ominous deadline of needing to get these boxes up before the birds started anew prospecting for nestboxes in the morning. I was up a ladder. 

  
I’ve hammered a few bits of scrap wood into the beautiful larch porch too. They might not be pretty but I hope the wagtails will find the sheltered spot and set up home. 

Now I have such a lovely home, I’d like it to be a welcoming place for wildlife too.