Wot, no Dolphins?

Weather watch - 19 degrees, cloudy with sunny intervals.

No more ghostly happenings in the house so far.  The girls did come down yesterday saying "The picture's on the floor again!" but no-one heard anything, no-one seemed bothered and no-one rose to the bait so I suspect on that occasion they were playing around.

Incidentally, has anyone noticed the recent trend, especially during the Olympics, to use nouns as verbs?  Various commentators have referred to so-and-so athlete as "I'm sure he'll medal" or "She should podium in this event". With this in mind, reference has been made to the time I spend writing this blog as "geeking". Has Dawn invented a new word here? In future, will we see PC World adopt "The Geeking store" as a marketing phrase?  Unlikely I feel.  And when she needed to check something on the internet yesterday, she was relieved I'd brought my geeking iPad with me!

Anyway, onto the main story for the blogpost on what was a slow news day.  The opportunity to do anything major was scuppered by the girls inability to get up before lunchtime which severely limits the choice.  Dawn and her Dad, David, decided to take the girls to the Dolphin centre at Inverness, where apparently it is an absolute hotbed for land based dolphin spotting.  Not yesterday it wasn't.  Even with the free binoculars provided, there wasn't a sight of anything remotely dolphin shaped.  Slightly disappointed, they went to the cafe there for some light refreshments and discovered that a portion of chips and a sandwich was £9.75. Unsurprisingly perhaps, they didn't hang around too long but they did take in some beautiful scenery though - check out the pictures below.

I stayed back at the house with Moira and Mark, chilling, reading and taking part in one of the activities I find most therapeutic - cooking - and prepared a Mexican feast for everyone's evening meal.

Tomorrow we will actually be searching for Nessie in a glass bottomed boat with sonar radar.  The captain of the ship is George Edwards, the same chap who claimed to have already found the beast (see earlier blogpost - Normal service has been resumed) and he has spent 26 years looking for him so no doubt will have a tale to tell.

Things that go bump in the night...

Weather watch - 14 degrees, overcast, heavy rain and drizzle.

It's not often that you get to sleep in a haunted house.  If - and it's a big if - we do have a resident ghost it's certainly a friendly one and there is nothing spine chilling about the experience.  But what else could explain a particular door rattling for no apparent reason, a picture lifting up off the picture hook before dropping to the floor and the smashing of 6 glasses?

Ok, the last one was down to extreme carelessness on our part. But certainly not the other two, both which happened in the same area of the house and with no-one around.  Very, very strange, especially the picture incident.  I was in one of the lounges and the girls were playing pool.  There is a landing above the pool table area which leads to a small TV room, 2 of the bedrooms and a bathroom.  All of a sudden, there was a loud crash and my initial reaction was that the children had broken something.  I looked up, rather annoyed and ready to castigate someone, when I saw them all playing pool and gazing upwards.  "It came from upstairs" Izzy said, slightly nervously.

"Who's up there?" I asked.

"Nobody."

We ran upstairs and found the picture on the floor.  It had fallen off the wall next to the same door that for no apparent reason had rattled for about an hour the previous evening.  (That had woken Dawn's brother Mark up and after trying to ignore it and get back to sleep, he got up to investigate but found no cause for the rattling; it just stopped.)

I looked at the wall and saw the picture hook firmly in place.  Picking the glass framed picture up, I expected to see a broken cord or wire but no; the picture cord was intact and, more surprisingly, the frame was also undamaged despite having fallen 5 feet off a wall and onto the same style of unforgiving floor that had seen 6 glasses meet their doom.

I replaced the picture on the wall and to do so had to lift the cord over the hook.  For the picture to have come off the wall, someone (or something!) would have had to have physically lifted it up off the hook.  That section of the house is a dead end so no-one could have been up there without coming back down and in any event it's a galleried landing and staircase so you can be seen at all times.

Spooky.

There have been no other incidents since but I'll report any future events or happenings for budding ghostbusters out there.

In other news, the kids (who have been angels) stayed in their pyjamas all day and made cakes and scones with Moira whilst Dawn, Mark and I went to the Tomatin Distillery.  It was very interesting indeed, even though they were in what they call the 'silent season' and no whisky is currently being produced.  It's not a brand I had heard of but it's award winning and owned by a Japanese company who bought them out a few years back when they ran into financial difficulties.

We sampled the 12 year old single malt and bought a bottle back together with a 12 year old blended whisky "The Antiquary", which was the Distillery's first blend when it was established back in 1857.

In the evening, after a rather delicious home made chicken curry, cauliflower and potato bhaji with parsley and sage rice we all played charades.  To my astonishment, no-one had heard of the song "Little Does She Know That I Know That She Knows That I Know She's Two Timing Me" which made it a rather painful mime.

The Nessie search is booked for Thursday with horse riding on Friday.  As for tomorrow... we'll wait and see what the weather's like.

Big Brother has a point...

Weather watch - 17 degrees, cloudy with sunny intervals.

<Geordie accent on>

Day 3 in the holiday house. Today, Moira and David are staying at home whilst the other residents go to Eilean Donan Castle and the Isle of Skye.  Tonight there is an unexpected eviction and all the girls have received nominations...

<Geordie accent off>

Sorry, sorry, sorry.  I said I was going to focus on the positives so I won't mention the fact that within a minute of getting up one of the girls was moaning about us going out today.  Neither will I mention the fact that all four were so hyperactive at the Castle that they attracted the attention of the entire gift shop and cafe before treating the place like a playground and I definitely won't recount that as a result the horse riding and canoeing has been cancelled until the behaviour improves.  That also scuppers the story about one of them having a major strop after dinner and leaving the house, vowing not to return (until the midges started biting her after approximately 15 minutes when she came back).

However, what I will refer to is that we have had the best day yet - a wonderful trip to the most romantic and photographed castle in Scotland followed by a nice hour or two in the Isle of Skye, skimming stones (we'll ignore Anna accidentally hitting Megan in the shoulder), supping single malt whisky and watching the kids finally get down to enjoying themselves on the beach and taking a rather curious enjoyment in dissecting dead crabs and jellyfish that had been washed up on the shore.

A full blown weekday afternoon on Skye has less activity than Leigh-on-Sea at 4am on a Wednesday morning.  I don't think I have ever visited such a quiet and tranquil place.  There is an eerie, horror movie style silence but the scenery is incredible... I've seen  nothing like it anywhere else in the world and I'm fortunate enough to have visited Kauai, the Hawaiian island once voted the most beautiful place on the planet. And when everything isn't handed to the children on a plate and they have to use their imagination a bit, they find a way to stop being bored, start amusing themselves and then, lo and behold, they behave better.

I can't expect them to enjoy the beauty of Eilean Donan Castle or the incredible Highland scenery - I remember being bored stiff by such things as a child and only finding appreciation for them once I'd got into my 30's - but I think children should show a level of respect for others in public places and it annoys the hell out of me when they don't.  Manners and consideration cost nothing and are often overlooked or ignored by parents who simply claim "But they're just being children!"  That's no excuse in my book.

I don't know what's on the agenda for tomorrow but I am hoping that we continue in the same vein, wherever we end up going.  Weather permitting, we may end up on Loch Ness, searching for Nessie.  We shall see.

In the meantime, enjoy these beautiful photographs from today.