What a waste

One of the peculiarities of writing this blog is that I receive comments and emails from people who accuse me of wanting humanity to return to living in a cave, as if looking to the past for inspiration or reminders is somehow perverse, cranky or irrevocably detrimental to the future.

Well, I’m about to do it again so the naysayers can dust off their keyboards and chastise me for being a Luddite without having to read any further.

With that out of the way, I’m going to turn my attention to household rubbish, what we do to reduce our contribiton, how we re-use and recycle as much as we can, and how our off-croft disposal is limited by the options open to us.

Almost time to leave

Seven of our 11 Berkshire weaners will be collected this weekend, with two more following in a few weeks and two remaining with us to be finished as porkers. They’re growing fast now and are moving to dry feed, ready for their new owners. Much as I enjoy watching them, I’ll be pleased to see them gone as they’re getting through 13.5kg of feed a day.

Making progress with the bend

Having had two visits in quick succession from Aberdeenshire Council’s Transportation Department about the bend following the most recent crash, I thought I was getting somewhere in having our bad bend better signposted but I didn’t expect work to progress this quickly. A SLOW warning was painted on the road this week, while the posts for two new signs have just gone in.

Once more unto the storm…

Face looking down to the ground, snot driven back over my shoulders, nose and cheeks abraded by gale driven drift and sleet, I placed one foot in front of the other, then the next, then the next and on into the teeth of the storm.

Branches, rubbish and clods of dirts kept smacking into me with percussive force, driven by winds gusting to 62 knots.

Every now and again I staggered under the weight of the 25kg load I carried, a load that kept snuggling into my neck and arms as it tried to escape the stinging sleet.