Been as usual a while since I posted but time is always precious. But here we are to-day with snow, first thing.

It was promising sun first thing but we woke up to white and at 11am it came again, but it did not last long. The sun is higher of course now and the snow at this stage wont lie.

Here is Tufty, an orphan or cast out calf, she appeared at the end of the hind season looking pretty poor, we suspected her mother had died (not shot). But we saw her a week after trying to suckle a big hind but the hind cast her off and we think the old hind had dried up. Since then there has been no interaction between her and any hind around the house. There is a pack of 6 that mooch around here. But lately after finding tufty feeding in the compost heap up at the garage, Lorraine has been leaving apples and peelings out, they disappear and to-day we caught her eating them. Hopefully she will survive but she will be stunted forever. A pet!!!!!!

Ewen on Seaflowewr our regular ferry is away just now and with the weather I did not know if I would be able to take Stacey off to Portree. When I found out Tommy and Dave were delivering Dan’s new boat I asked for a lift and they dropped in very timely at 3.30pm and picked Stscey up, perfect.

She is the monohulled version of Dan’s and Ewen’s boat, nice lines and a powerful engine, she looked and sounded very good.

And so to swimming. It is healthy February, no drink January is not going to work here but February is achievable. So a wee bit of a cold start to the swim, in fact it was bloody freezing. But after about 5 minutes especially since my glove ripped open, I was getting used to it.

I managed 8 minutes but only about 50 metres, enough for a first attempt, although if the boat had not started after getting a lift out with Tommy I would have had to swim the distance. The dinghy got smashed up in the storm. It will be interesting getting the boat back out or at least me getting back in. Looking forward to it.

It was a very fine end to the day and hopefully I will get to the dentist in Portree tomorrow.