The Way of the Wombat

I'm home from my trip to Skye. Had a lovely time, all the travelling arrangements worked perfectly - and I am really tired! I know, I've just had a holiday... I think it was getting up at 7.00 this morning that had that effect.

However - here is just one picture to give you a quick taste of where we were;



That was the view from one end of the living room of our self-catering 'cottage'.

There will be a lot more pictures over the next few days.

I have persuaded my long-time friend, and occasional holiday companion, 'D from Skye' to join Live Journal - she is here as dougalsservant.

She would, I am sure, welcome friends - she lives, as I said, on the beautiful Scottish island of Skye, sharing her house with four handsome and intelligent cats (well - three handsome ones and one very pretty one, apologies to Tabatha...). You can guess from her username which of the cats is the boss in the household!

This is her first post - it is of one of the road signs on Skye - go and have a look and it will tell you a lot about island life...

These are the last of my scenic pictures from my trip to Skye - although I have some cat pics for another day.

I am doing this to keep my mind occupied, because if all is going according to plan, Daughter-dear is currently on a flight between Perth and Dubai - so I am worrying about her. As long as all is going well, she gets into Gatwick mid-morning tomorrow, has to wait there for hours, and gets the evening flight home, so we'll see her tomorrow about 8.45pm. I will be very, very glad to see her back on home soil!

( A black house, a broch, and more skies )

Here are the first of my scenic pictures of Skye.

My friend lives in a village called Broadford in the east of Skye - it is the second largest settlement on the island - it has a not very big supermarket, a tiny general store, a garage/gift shop, a post office/gift shop, at least four art galleries, a jewellers and a number of other small shops. As you can tell from that description, they get a lot of visitors - hence all the gift shops and art galleries! These three photos show three views of Broadford.

( Broadford pictures )

I might post some more of the scenic pictures later tonight, otherwise tomorrow.

I'm home. Well actually I arrived home last night, but have only just found time to get down to my keyboard and write!

Skye is very beautiful - I haven't down-loaded my pictures yet, but I think some of them will be worth putting up later.

My friend is a cordon bleu level cook - I could not have been better fed at a 4 star hotel - just to make you all jealous here is a list of main meals eaten by me on Skye, all cooked by my clever friend D.:

Venison in red wine sauce, rack of lamb with an oatmeal and black pepper crust, monkfish in a saffron cream sauce, pasta with spicy bacon and tomato sauce, morrocan chicken with barley couscous, duck with orange and mustard sauce, and kedgeree. Envious?

The cats were funny - the two British short-hairs, Tabitha and Dougal decided that I might be acceptable by the end of the first day - but it took the two identical British Blues, Mango and Rum until the last night I was there to come and play with me. I have led them into bad habits - all four have developed a taste for gluten-free pasta, couscous, and kedgeree! I have cat pictures also - when I get around to down-loading them!

The Dick Gaughan concert was very good - it reminded me of two of my LJ friends particularly - ezagaaikwe and missmurchison.

Why? Well Dick Gaughan reminds me of E's husband Frank - look: Picture of Dick Gaughan

Miss M - well he was talking about politics, as he does, and was describing a conversation in the bar with other performers at a Canadian Festival. One of the American singers said 'I hear you Europeans are having problems agreeing on a Constitution.' DG agreed this was the case. 'Well take ours.' the guy said 'We're not using it!' For those who don't read Miss Muchison (and why not?!) her daughter in particular is interested in the US constitution.

Both S2C and the cat seemed pleased to see me!

Life today has been back to Earth with a bump - I noticed when I got home from work that the freezer wasn't properly shut - and the contents were all somewhat defrosted and had to be thrown out.

And I have just discovered that although I thought my NHS pension had been transfered from the UK when I came home 17 years ago, there is no record of the transfer - so my first 9 years of payments do not go towards my final salary pension - they are frozen somewhere in the UK at the grade I was then. I think this is going to make me about £1,000 a year worse off when I retire in about 9 or 10 years time. If I can even work out how to access that frozen pension, as the Health Authority I worked for no longer exists.

I am hoping the Royal College of Nursing can help me, but the attitude of the civil servant I spoke to was 'You saying that you completed the forms means nothing - the forms are not in your file - therefore they did not exist', so I'm not holding my breath.