inshriach

A certain gentleman brought an experimental party here some months back when the house was nearly but not quite finished and said that he had a decent fridge we could have in Edinburgh. Today I went to Glasgow and, despite grotty weather and train strikes, planned to cross over to collect on this kind offer. On leaving Glasgow he instead told me to head back north to an industrial estate in Kingussie (12 miles from Inshriach) and introduce myself at Unit 2.

Now, in the scullery, is a fridge that means business. A huge, catering grade machine from the True Manufacturing company of St Louis, Missouri, square jawed and stainless with fat louvres round the base and beautifully utilitarian. Its opening growl has settled to a hum. The old fridge would fit inside with space for cheese.

The producers for a childrens TV show came here a few weeks back looking for locations and came away with me so for the next 10 weeks I’m making shields, boats and spears and not a lot of progress at Inshriach.

Abbie and Hannah came for the weekend so Thursday night we took in another Alvie musical evening, an excellent gig by Session A9, some seriously talented local folk musicians. Continuing with the folk theme we went to the Newtonmore museum for some inspiration for next years projects. They have relocated such endangered oddities as a bothy, a tin school, a railway office and a church then built a little village of mud and thatch blackhouses in the medieval style that persisted probably until the early 19th century. This is a worthy and excellent operation, entry is free and next year they are rebuilding a sleeper house, another rarity, so I might well volunteer.

Today the squash court came in for some attention. The business wall had been dropping chunks of plaster for a while so I’m patching that up, Abbie got down and scrubbed the stairs and the gallery and Hannah had the windows out and got busy gluing, clamping and puttying them up. We thought the court dates from the 1930s but I’m starting to think it might be the same date as the house, ie 1907. The planning officer from the National Park was extremely excited by it as a rare example of a large corrugated building built purely for leisure and if there was any danger of it coming down the Newtonmore museum would be an excellent home.

As Rufus and I continued on the bothy Molly embarked on a mushroom self education mission. There are hundreds of strange species around at this time of year, growing on everything from tree stumps to gravel, and our staple, if indulgent, diet of chanterelles was getting monotonous. Each day she retrieved a basket of bizarre fungi and persuaded their insect occupants out of them, then they were either dried or fried or avoided depending on their scariness. This monster was identified as a birch boletus and therefore fell into the fried category and was actually pretty tasty.

All the photos used on the blog, on the website and lots more from about the place are on the Inshriach Flickr page.

I’m waiting on photos from Jo’s 30th birthday party which devoured the weekend so in the meantime here are some pics from when we were young which have just appeared on my desk.

A kindly neighbour had a hedge trimmer available so he came round this morning with his brother in law, a Swiss German gent, and some safety signs with suitably Germanic syntax and we sorted the long beech hedge along the road. Such unprompted acts of generosity have been an unexpected and amazing feature of the last year.

This afternoon Rufus and I are back to the bothy, which, as of yesterday, has a new window and a door (reconstructed out of last week’s salvage) in what was previously a windowless workshop with only legless chairs, spare slate and a thick stench of creosote.

With the house now finished the bothy is getting an overhaul. In our usual Borrowers style we are spending nothing on it so every time I drive past a building site or a refurb I swing in with some unusual barter. This week a 1950s house was being pulled down and in exchange for 4 slices of cake we lightened their skip to the tune of the floor, the windows, some joists, bits of bathroom and a smashed conservatory. Over this weekend Rufus, Molly and I are cunningly transforming our haul into doors, walls, window frames and a raised bed.

An exceptionally lovely and talented bunch of people came from across the country for a big birthday party this weekend. By Thursday the house was full and by Saturday the roasting pit had benches around it, steps in the dry stone walling and a table fashioned from a slate pig salting slab. We drove a stake through a whole lamb and feasted through Saturday night, partied our way through Sunday night and now, Monday afternoon, some signs of normality are returning.

Bob and Miranda had seen a video on youtube of folk fishing for razor clams. You pour salt into little pits on a beach, the clams pop out, you then grab them by their slippery invertebrate bodies and work them out of their holes. We headed north to Findhorn (about 45 minutes) to see if it would work for us. We arrived just after high tide armed with a spade and salt from lidl and wandered the beach leaving little white mounds as the tide raced out. Not a single clam poked out but that was of little consequence as the most astonishing sunset stretched out across a huge soft sandy beach, then half a dozen inquisitive seals came to see what we were up to and we wound up the evening with haddock and chips in the Kimberley Arms, which, in an oddly broad sounding awards scheme, had been voted one of the ‘Hundred best things in Rural Scotland’.