Snowy Sunrise

The front of our house faces roughly west.
I was looking out of the window about 9 o'clock this morning just as the sun was rising behind the house.
This is what I saw.

This was the view slightly to my right.

This was a short time later, taken between the two buildings on the far right of the previous photo. The hill is the island of Arranmore, and the houses are catching the glow of the newly risen sun.

I wouldn't mind if we had no more snow this winter, but it can certainly make things look very beautiful.

Two Fer Tuesday

Today I'm wandering down Memory Lane. Several things have led up to this, so I'm sort of "going with the flow." Bear with me. I will eventually explain!

I posted this first picture early on in my blogging life. As many of you know, I spent 12 years on an off-shore island with my family. This island had no facilities other than space and fresh air. There were no roads, no shops. We had to travel to the mainland in our small open boat to buy whatever we needed. There was no electricity. All our water came from the sky, collected from the roof into storage tanks.
At the time we moved in our five children were aged 12 down to 5. We came from an all-electric house. Now we had to return to the ways of our grandparents. We used candles for light. We carried water in buckets to heat on an open fire. Oh, we managed to improve things and make life comfortable, but the first months were hard.

Worst for me was wash-day. I had a total of seven sets of clothes to keep wearable. The island had a superabundance of mud mixed with the leavings of free-range cows. Wash-day was just that - all day!

Aileni took the above picture. My wash-tub was half a plastic barrel. The glass wash-board was invaluable. I used a scrubbing-brush (which others would use on the floor) to remove the worst of the stains from knees and seats of the various sizes of trousers. I've been known to burst into tears when I finally finished and the children came in - covered in muck after a great day out and about!

Things became much easier when our neighbour (we only had one at that time!) left to return to England. They had a hand operated washing machine - a gas-heated copper boiler with a paddle in the lid. They left it for me.
Now all I had to do was fill the tub with water and light the gas. After a while, when the water was warm enough, I added soap and the laundry. Close the lid, lower the paddle, and turn away!
The clean clothes went carefully through the old Acme wringer and into a tub of clean water for rinsing. I'm afraid I've no picture of this labour-saving device in use.
When we left the island, the washing machine came too. I had no expectation of needing it again, but it had been too useful to leave to rot.

The above photo was taken to accompany various ads I put in local papers. No-one wanted it, not even as a collector's item.
Finally my Freecycle offer came to the attention of a young man with leanings to the alternative lifestyle. On Sunday evening my trusty old washing machine left for its new home.
The last major item left from our island adventures.
The end of an era.

Well folks, that's my offering for this week's Two Fer Tuesday.
For more takes, go visit Jonna - she had this fun idea.
Have a good day.

ABC Wednesday - B

For the Wednesday ABC today's letter is B. I had a hard job deciding what to post (I have so many B's in my life) but I finally decided to go with the local option.

When we lived on our island we took our small Boat to the local harbour for the weekly shop.
We used this harbour - a fishing village called Burtonport - for all our necessities. All our belongings were loaded aboard our Boat (locally known as a punt) and ferried over to the island. Here's a photo of hubby on the pier with my tricycle, and number of fishing Boats in the background.

And here he is fitting my tricycle into our punt.

The largest island was and is served by a ferryboat. Here's her stern, or back, carrying a baby boat (lifeboat)

And a close-up of the lifeboat.

Well, that's my B for today. I hope you enjoy the pictures. If you'd like to join the fun, visit mrsnesbit who came up with the idea. Happy Wednesday!

PhotoHunt - Delicious

This weeks theme is "Delicious". To me, that always means FOOD! As I'm currently trying to get rid of the results of my seasonal excesses, I thought it wiser to avoid anything too tempting, so I've returned to the past.

When we lived on our island, it was necessary for me to make my own bread. We were a family of seven - and the youngsters all had good appetites. I made three large loaves every day or two - more often if we had visitors!

I used to leave the loaves to cool in our one main room. In warm weather the doors and windows were open, and the smell of fresh hot bread spread far. There were donkeys who could be seen hurrying up the track as the breeze took the scent to them. When they arrived at the door it meant more bread-making soon!

The picture below is NOT of a donkey. This was Declan, our male goat. He was young, and rather pushy, and he liked bread. One day he walked into the kitchen, with his eyes on the fresh bread, which smelled delicious to him!

We were lucky this time. Although he brought two of his children with him (to distract us, I think!) he did not eat our tea.

We were less lucky on another occasion. Somehow we were all briefly out of the house, and the door had been left open by accident. We returned to find him in the kitchen. He'd eaten half of one loaf, and taken chunks out of the two others. He was NOT popular!

Saturday PhotoHunt - Messy

It's been just over a week since I last posted - I can only blame this hectic time of year! Things are settling down a bit now, so I'm hoping to get back to normal. I hope you all had a good Christmas, full of peace and friendship.


For this week's theme I've raided our archives. I must apologise for the poor quality of these photographs - they were taken on a very small Kodak disc camera in October 1990, and they're very grainy. They show our first day in our island cottage. I'm standing at one end of the main room wondering where to start in all that mess. The doorway behind me leads into the small room that briefly became our kitchen and dining room (6 feet across and 13.5 feet long!). Later it became a storage room, and later still a bedroom.



These lower two pictures are taken from the doorway shown above. The horrible wall above the hearth is stained by years of rain down the chimney reacting with the smoke and ash from the peat to form a creosote coating that soaks through the mortar and into the wall. It took us many years to control that problem.



So those are my offerings for this week. I'll be round to visit as soon as I can - shopping calls at the moment.

Saturday PhotoHunt - Long

The theme for today's PhotoHunt is LONG. I've looked everywhere for something suitable, without success. I've followed my cats around, waiting for them to stretch, particularly Rinli - he likes to sleep fully extended. I measured him once, and he was just half an inch short of 3 feet in length. Has he co-operated? Has he pandered to my photographic pleas? Come off it - this is a CAT I'm talking about!

So instead I'm submitting this picture from our family collection. This sail-training ship, the Asgard ll, visited our local port while we were still living on our island, so we naturally went to see.
She looks fairly long, and the Irish word for ship is - wait for it - long.



Will that do?

By the way, if you follow the link to Asgard ll, it's well worth checking the photos.

History

Way back in June 1990 I informed my family that we would be moving to an island in Ireland. Fortunately my husband agreed, and we moved at the beginning of September. Before leaving I bought loads of underwear and socks for everyone, as there was no electricity on this island and therefore no washing machines or tumble driers.
I bought white socks for all five children (aged 12 years down to 5 years at that time)

Now, apart from no electricity, this island had no plumbing and no roads. Plenty of mud, though! Welly-boots were standard outdoor footwear, and they frequently filled with samples of boggy liquids. Once worn, the white socks rapidly changed colour. Wash-day was a nightmare until I got used to it.





Water was carried from an outside storage tank, heated over an open fire, then poured into a tub made from a cut-down plastic barrel. Soap and wash-board cleaned some of the items, but the jeans needed the addition of the kind of scrubbing-brush usually utilised on floors. I used to be in such a bad mood that the kids vanished from the house - only to return with grass and mud stains (and worse, there were free-range cows on the island!) all over their clean clothes.

In good summer weather I could dry the clothes well - but we quickly ran out of water (the storage tanks filled from the roof when it rained.) In the winter we had plenty of water - but short wet days meant it was hard to dry the washing. Great fun!

Now we live back in "civilisation" I really enjoy my automatic washing machine and my tumble drier - but I must say that I don't enjoy the electricity bills!