Angst
No 1 son’s pearl of wisdom: “Just look on the positive side Dad, if you didn’t have bad luck you’d have no luck at all.”
We’ve been back at Camusblathan for just over a month. We were looking forward to it. Time to settle in properly and relax. But…
Fate can sometimes be a nasty piece of work.
Problem number one. The central heating. I did draft a whole blog on the subject but decided not to bore you with it.
In a nutshell, when the hot water tried to come on it tripped the main fuse. Fate decided that was not aggravation enough. It grew in strength and by the end of its reign of terror was tripping the main fuse, the central heating fuse and the generator fuse.
Enough was enough. Being fed up with having to boil a kettle to wash we called in the cavalry. Number one son, Ben. He managed to isolate the problem as a zone valve and that gave us our hot water. It also gave us a hot water system that refused to stop pumping and a boiler that was happy to switch itself on at any unexpected time.
We coped with that by manually switching the boiler on and off until reinforcements arrived in the form of a plumber. Knoydart doesn’t have one, but a friend of our neighbour visits twice a year and luckily such a visit occurred a week or so back.
Bliss. So now we can relax and enjoy life.
Er, not just yet said Fate. The washing machine died a tragic death. Not that it was unexpected but it was inconvenient as, I suppose, most deaths are.
We sighed. We hit Google. We tracked down a suitable replacement at a suitable price. Filled in the order. Put in our address. “You must be f***king joking! Deliver up there? No way.” Someone’s AI needs refining.
Suit yourself. We tried someone else. John Lewis. Entered our address. No problem. Except. Normally on these online orders, you have a billing address and a delivery address, don’t you? This is particularly important for us as no delivery firm comes to the peninsula, they deliver to Spanish John in Mallaig who brings the goods over and we collect at the pier. The problem was John Lewis only asked for the billing address. Never fear I told my other half, they say they will contact us in two days to arrange a delivery time, we can tell them then.
Except they didn’t. Call in two days. Or three. We gave them a few extra days because of the Easter weekend and then began the long arduous task of trying to get the delivery address noted.
Again, I won’t bore you with every telephone conversation I had but eventually, I managed to speak to someone who had a brain they were prepared to use rather than just read a script. After some investigation, I was told the washing machine was due to be shipped from Birmingham the next day to Inverness from whence it would be collected and taken to Fort William and then onward to be delivered to us. I explained that wasn’t possible but was assured the carriers knew what they were doing. Mm.
A day later. A call from John Lewis. Your machine has arrived in Inverness and is being unloaded. A day later. A call from John Lewis. They can’t find your washing machine we will give you an update in three days. “They’ve lost our washing machine?” I exclaim. “No, no Sir, they haven’t lost it. They just can’t find it.” Comments like that tend to reduce my level of confidence in the speaker. A day later. A call from John Lewis. “We’re very sorry they appear to have lost your washing machine.” (Easy done, slipped down the back of a cushion I expect ) “What would you like to do? Money back or reorder.” Having got this far and by now having managed to get the delivery address registered as Mallaig, we reordered. A day later. An email from John Lewis. Your machine has been despatched. That was a few days ago. As of today the online order is still saying ‘Tracking coming soon.’
I’ll keep you informed.
Was that the end of our woes? Nah. Fate still wasn’t finished.
All our heating fuels come over on Spanish John. If it’s diesel they pump it out to our bowser from an on board storage tank and we tow said bowser back to the house and pump it out. Earlier tweets have explored that particular area of fun. This time we needed kerosene for the boiler. That is brought over on same said boat but in an IBC. For the uninitiated, like me, that is a large plastic cube with a metal frame around it. They lift that onto the quayside, we then pump that into our bowser and away we go.
We share the bowser with our neighbour and he was collecting a delivery of diesel the same day (last Friday). The plan was we’d pump that out and return for our kerosene either that day or the following.
No plan, as they say, survives contact with the enemy. Fate was proving a worthy adversary. Our neighbour arrived back at about 4 pm with the news our IBC was leaking. “Nothing serious,” he said cheerfully, “but we best go back this evening. “
We were halfway through pumping his diesel when his phone rang. A neighbour of ours David S, a gentleman of 85 had, the previous week, moved from Airor into a house in Inverie as out here life was getting difficult. We knew that to be true. A few weeks earlier he had returned from the mainland after an opticians appointment when they had told him he shouldn’t be driving. Driving himself back from the pier he went off the road over a cliff. Amazingly, although he was airlifted to hospital, he had no serious injuries and came home the following day. (As an aside I’m beginning to think the road from Inverie to Airor is the most dangerous road in Great Britain if you calculate it by accidents per car mile. We have had three cars written off in the last six months on a seven-mile stretch with perhaps 20 journeys a day.)
Anyway, this telephone call was from the village. David S had to urgently go back into hospital. Tests he had had were exceedingly worrying. David M, our neighbour, felt he needed to ensure he went, so left Sarah and me to finish decanting his diesel.
By 8.30 we had heard nothing further so I assumed we’d be doing the kerosene the following day, leak or no leak. I decided to have a shower.
I’d just stepped out of it when Sarah called out. “Just had Ben on the phone. He’s been phoned by Ian R who’s told him the IBC is leaking and likely to be empty by tomorrow.”
David M had just got back from getting David S (I know confusing all these Davids) onto the last ferry. I got dressed and off we went to spend Friday evening pumping kerosene in the dark.
The only trick Fate had missed was that it was a beautiful evening. Not too chilly, virtually no wind and a moon to help. Next time (god help us there’s a next time) I’m sure Fate will conjure up a tempest.
We were rigging up the pump and hose when David announced, “There’s no cap on the browser.” Shit. Difficult to blame that on fate. I’d forgotten to screw it back on after emptying the diesel. It would have fallen off somewhere between the house and the pier. The chances of finding it were minuscule.
I won’t bother with a description of the pump out and subsequent clean-up of the spilt kerosene. Too depressing. Ben arrived at some stage and provided valuable help and we set off back home just before midnight.
We parked up on a neighbour’s field, the thought of backing up our narrow access to our tank too daunting.
Then the first glimmer that Fate had got fed up with throwing bricks at us. David M spotted the missing cap!
Hey Ho. We eventually got to bed at 1 am. That’s Sarah and me, not David and… oh never mind.
I must end on a more positive note. On Sunday the day dawned bright and for the first time, we had breakfast outside. Somehow our trials and tribulations faded into the background.
