Bar-bugled with a Sore Spring hanger....

The island has been busy with visitors from all over the globe travelling here to sample all of the delights and charms this unique community has to offer, namely malt and magic, spectacular scenery and oodles of wildlife (happy farmer included, as well as a few of the other local worthies).

Even the 'dancing girls', the happy farmer's sister and cousin, sailed over for a repeat painting experience at the chateau down the road, one of the very few, very last remaining tin houses in Scotland.

You would think those ladies after their last experience of toiling away in the blistering sunshine, painting the exterior of the house, while their brother performed his acrobatic balancing acts from the high ladder, would have steered well clear of the island for a little while longer. However such is the island's charms they just could not keep away and having nothing left to paint, bar the interior of the house, they made another pilgrimage to their island home, laden with paint and brushes.

Those girls, in the words of an old farmer from bygone days, 'booted and revved those engines', which roughly translates to working their socks off all day, slapping away with the paint brushes, and then getting heavily refreshed, by way of tucking into a plentiful supply of 'refreshments', into the wee small hours. It made for a good recovery and prepared them for another day of hard slog. As I mentioned in a previous blog, the most entertaining part of this is that the happy farmer's sister will tell you that she has, to quote the old farmer again, 'run up many miles on the clock', as she is, nearly sixty years old, (which is a tad of an exaggeration, but she holds that it does make her look ever more youthful if she piles a 'few extra miles onto the clock', or years onto her youth!!).

We do miss the old farmer from up the road and his lovely use of language. In his eyes all people were motor engines, some had a 'good chassis', others were simply 'bugled', and if you were really bad, well you were 'bar-bugled', if you were limping then you had a sore 'spring hanger', and if you weren't right in the head, the gear box was failing.  Those girls' 'gear boxes were definitely failing' and their 'spring hangers' were mightily challenged by the end of their painting experience, so I was heartily entertained when the new tenant in the 'chateau' commented on the gleaming paint work. Luckily he is a painter and decorator to trade, and has very kindly offered to touch up the stripey walls.

Until next time...