May 7 continued:

Penne and spaghetti sauce were a hit with the kids. I had a good Irish ale. How is it that two people as bright as Val and I took *seven* years to figure out that it makes more sense to buy noodles that are precut rather than cutting up 3 bowls of spaghetti?! The nanny state has better labelling on all their foods than one might expect (or perhaps rather, as good as one might expect). The jar of spaghetti sauce had detailed instructions along the lines of "get pan, turn burner on, place pan on burner, take ground beef out of package, place ground beef in heated pan, go to bathroom, run burnt fingers under cold water..." etc. The mini pies with double cream were wonderfully excessive--pop tarty with lots of cream. We got everyone into bed with relatively little todo, and aside from me snoring poor Val out of her bed, the rain stormed and the wind howled and we slept away the night.

Day 5: May 8

Got up at 9amish (though JJ and Val were up a couple of hours earlier.) I made a mostly-full Scottish breakfast for the fam. The grocery store is just 200 meters down the road, which is mighty convenient. We had smoked bacon (apparently you can get just salted), black pudding that we got from Kenny Oban, eggs, toast. We missed out on the beans this time around--luckily later in the day Sam would get us a 4-pack of baked beans and Ev got us 6 tomatoes for grilling. The pounding rain and wind started to clear a bit, but we got to such a pleasantly slow start after an 11:00 brunch on Sunday that we didn't really get to do much before 2-3pm. The kids were all recovering from interrupted sleep, and so a lazy morning turned into a nap for Val (at least until the neighbor kid who we could not miss dropped in asking "where's the girl?"). Sam and Ev made another grocery trip where single cream, double cream, Jaffa cakes, and just about everything else that might be tasty and bad for you was purchased.

Around 3pm we went to Donald and Margaret's, who live just down the lane. Actually, everything here is just down the lane. Donald is to all appearances a great guy. We got wireless access there, which is where I posted the previous blog entry. Will and Jonathan independently found the nettles. Will fell in the nettles and began screaming in pain; his knees welted up like he had 15 beestings#. Donald was as cool as Gretzky would have been--he rummaged through their cupboard until he found some spray "guaranteed to make things feel better." SkinSoSoft spray apparently works wonders. After the tears had subsided, I took William outside to see the cottage where Sam had grown up. Val was getting some pictures and getting some time to speak with Sam about his and her roots. Will and I were just going up the hill to the place when we see Jonathan trip, fall off the porch... and land in more nettles. My poor kids are super susceptible to these things--Jonathan welted up and screamed as loud as William. Some SkinSoSoft and IrnBru later, Jonathan conked out. Sam and Donald had a few belts of whisky and we tried to leave to make supper between the hours of 5:00 and 6:30 (continuously). Had some TV dinner-style steak&carrot&mash which actually was pretty reasonable, given the price and prep time. Had a John Smith Extra Smooth before dinner. These 3.8% ales are brilliant, in that you can have a pint and not have it affect you. Finished off our evening in front of the TV watching sheep herding in Gaelic.

Day 6: May 9

Another 9am start, and this time EVERYONE got to sleep in. I figured out how to make the coffee maker work properly (yesterday involved taking the first, strong portion, and the second, medium strength portion, and the third, weak portion of the brew, and spilling it all over the floor, leaving the fourth, brown water portion in the pot) and had some Shreddies with demerara (tail hook N) sugar.

-- more from May 9 and 10 and 11 coming next post!