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That being the serious business of gardening. The vegetable gardens were a little neglected in the run up to the Insider and by July the dock was head high, the nettles and ground elder fully rampant and the mint and currants and last years new fruit trees almost invisible behind deep grasses. Nothing that a couple of weeks attached to the strimmer and garden fork can’t sort out. Out of the 40 odd beds in the gardens we did at least manage to turn and till and rake the first 5 early in the year and get plug lettuces, purple broccoli and some peas in and now we are planning to turn and plant the rest as we go, with any luck leaving us with a bumper crop of hot leaves, rocket and other goodies late into the season.

Before life returns completely to normal here is a lovely memory from the Insider courtesy of the Paul Simon Treatment.

That was a pretty special weekend of sporting shenanigans. Huge thanks to all of those who made it happen, the streams of volunteers, the lycra clad musicians and the many professionals beavering away behind the scenes to make it the best Insider yet. Gold medal for remembering that it’s a good idea to have lovely photos of such an event goes to Louise Bichan and just to proves that we weren’t making it all up here is a review from the Scotsman and Northings courtesy of Sue Wilson. Everyone’s a winner.

Insider 2012 is nearly upon us, day tickets have pretty much sold out and weekend tickets are selling fast so if you want one get on the website and snap one up. At this rate there will be no tickets available on the gate but we are planning on keeping back an allocation of day tickets for anyone who can prove that they have a PH22 postcode (ie utility bill and ID). In the meantime here is the full line up to whet your appetite for next weekends sporting shenanigans.

Slightly belated Congratulations from all of us to Harry and Sophie who got married a few weeks back, many of you will know them for spending 18 months living in the dogshed here, helping us out and being generally lovely.

My intention, much to peoples surprise, is to keep the ‘moth roadworthy, improving it, replacing bits and generally making her generate the money for her repairs by renting her out. After our marathon journey north last year there were a few issues, the lack of brakes being the main one, the fact that she was running like a dog being another. It took a day (in October last year) to figure out how to jack it up, then 5 minutes to find out I didn’t have any spanners big enough to get the wheel nuts off. To the rescue came Mechty and Graham and she was jacked up and stripped down, revealing leaking cylinders and ruined shoes.

First mission was brake linings and this is not a case of popping down to Halfords, they are absolutely enormous. Some super sleuthing on the part of CV components in Inverness tracked some down the right size and they rebuilt the shoes. Stage 2 was the cylinders. New seals were no problem but life is never so simple and the cylinders ended up being machined out and treated to stainless steel liners and pistons so the back brakes, at least, should now outlast the truck. I also tracked down spark plugs, made up new HT leads, rebuilt the distributor and fiddled about with the timing until she was running a bit better. All this ran a bit over time so she was three weeks late into rental, thanks go to the boys for swinging back in and helping stick her back together and to everyone who has been so understanding about either being postponed or put up in the new bothy.

On the cosmetic side Aaron Sterritt made up a new chopping board and a little oak cupboard for inside, the bed got new rails, the floor had a coat of nice osmo wax oil and after a dozen attempts at matching the colour the back wall had a coat of paint. The only sacrifice I am going to have to make in the name of practicality is that the Rayburn is going to have to go. It’s so beautiful and spot on date wise but even for the moth it is just too heavy hanging out the back like that so in the workshop at the moment sits a lovely (and still not insubstantial) Quebb stove awaiting a scrape and a lick of paint.

Rest assured the Rayburn wont go to waste.

While uploading some new videos for the Insider I found this video I made back in 2008, not long after we first came here and when were mid way through the big redecoration. Its set to a Session A9 tune and was made up of stills taken from the kitchen window, 900 of them in all, with a view a lot of you will find familiar. Now, 4 years later, Session A9 are headlining for us on the Sunday night at the Insider. Who would have thought it?

Apart from the sport (a subject we know little about and are not taking at all seriously) the Insider is getting organised this year. Rather than leaving everything to the last minute, and knowing that May plus June equals weddings, we decided to get on with extending and cladding the whisky bar. It’s another skip dive spectacular. The larch shingles are offcuts from the bin at Russwood, the structure of the bar is old pallets clad with ends from Alvie sawmill (those are now into their third incarnation), Balvenie distillery donated a van load of barrels a couple of years back, the gate (not shown yet here) was from the tip and even the speed rails and shelves are made up from pallets, the only parts that money changed hands for are the battens at the back, a few posts and a lot of screws.

If anyone has a pile of old scaffolding boards or joists or floor boards or pretty much any useful old timber I would gladly take it off their hands, ideally in exchange for cider come festival time.