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Don't call me Nicky, I don't like it, but 'Nic had a little lamb' doesn't sound as good, and actually I've (we've) got ten lambs. Unfortunately the lambs who are twins have no mother. She achieved every sheep's ambition and died when they were a fortnight old. We scrounged some special lamb milk and taught them how to be bottle fed. For members of the sheep family they caught on quite quickly. We started keeping them in the barn at night, but they didn't like it and were very hard to catch. They are quarter Cheviot and three quarter Hebridean (don't ask why) and black and are growing horns and want to live outside. So Olvin built them a shelter using the curved roof bits off the pig ark that somersaulted away one gale and the metal frame got all bent, and a pen once he had collected the seven hurdles. I bought the hurdles when I wanted to be a proper farmer, and they mean we don't ever have to do proper fencing now, we just stick a hurdle in instead. But Olvin had to replace the hurdles with pallets (we collect pallets the way every body else collects fish boxes). Mr Pig took advantage of his pallet to push his way through a gap and nearly came in the house. Fortunately he isn't very quiet and he was headed off before he ate all the dog's food. So the lambs have a lovely run and a house and it looks a lot like a nativity scene, we just need a proper shepherd or two. Then yesterday the lambs were evicted! A hen appeared with ten chicks and took a liking to the lambs house and their hay and straw and bowl of creep feed so she fluffed herself up and chased them round and round their pen until they were trapped in a corner. The last time their creep feed was threatened Olvin killed the bird and made chicken burgers (very tasty but nothing like chicken) but the chicks are too small and too cute so the lambs will just have to get braver.

Back in the bigger world the Coll Run got mentioned in a weekend section of the Mail or Express or somewhere, alongside basking sharks and dolphins. Mackerel have been caught, scallops have been dived for and there are lots of yachts about, which must mean the forecast is good, and I need to decide what beer to get for the raft race. Any recommendations?

A road update. It is starting to melt! The new tar is much blacker than the old tar was (and the old tar used to melt as well) so it absorbs all this lovely sunny hotness and goes sticky and glues itself to the car tyres and then to the underneath, a sort of automatic undersealing process. Sand is spread on the tar to soak up the wet tar, and stop the sun getting through, so now we have beaches even where there is no sea.
Meanwhile, back at the airport (disused) there are rumours of flights on Mondays and Wednesdays.
Also melting this week was a chocolate cake. My other half had to go to Glasgow (hospital) and left me with very little food. There was hardly any butter, but that wasn't going to matter because there wasn't any bread either. I came back from burger van duty feeling in need of something sweet, secure in the knowledge there was nearly a whole choclate cake. Gone! Much disgruntled mutterings, why take a cake to Glasgow. Couldn't he have left a slice or two behind? I slummed it with a Yorkie bar. I don't think I'm over-fond of Yorkie bar chocolate. I found the cake the next day, in the fridge. I still think he'd hidden it from me. He said the icing was melting. Strangely enough, the cake is now back in its box on its shelf and not in the fridge.

At least, the parcel opening bit does. Tuesday is delivery day. The day the ferry leaves Oban at a sensible time (2-45 pm, not 6 am) so it is a popular day to travel, and MacLennans the carrier likes it too. So just before six on a Tuesday night Coll springs into action and new guests and drinkers and diners and deliveries all head for the hotel. People are easy to keep happy; show them their room, pour them a pint or give them a menu, but the deliveries, we drown in paperwork for the deliveries now!
It is called HACCP (hazards and critical control points) and it stops us poisoning anybody, prevents cross-contamination of food, monitors dates and temperatures and is generally a good thing (especially when there are six-ish people working in the kitchen, and memory gets unreliable) but Oh Boy, the paperwork that goes with it!
So, the fish and the meat and the veg all arrive just as the kitchen starts getting lots of food orders. Luckily vegetables aren't subject to too many rules yet, it is just difficult fitting them in the fridge (five fridges not including the ones in the store) without squashing the spinach, but the fish is a full-time job. Large polystyrene boxes double-wrapped in black bin bags so they don't leak. The first box is always the mussels! Mussels sit quite happily minding their own business, but their box is always the one that I fight my way into first! So, box two. Contains haddock fillets and monkfish and prawns and scallops, all wrapped up separately and before I do anything I have to take their temperature (at least this isn't a James Herriot story) and write it down in the 'all-powerful' clipboard. 3.7 degrees C last time, well within our limits. Then the prawns get sacrificed into boiling water, they aren't too skittish at 3.7 degrees, and boiling water soon sorts them out. I don't feel sorry for them now, not since one stuck his (her?) claws into my finger just as I was telling new chef they don't bite! The haddock and monkfish and scallops go into boxes into the fridge (don't squash the spinach) with use by dates on the box, and the contents labelled so we don't mix the lids up (can't allow any cross contamination). Somewhere in the fish boxes is the bill, carefully wrapped up in its own poly bag. The first time I did the fish I thought the bag was packing and burnt it. Everybody does this once, no-one does it twice! So this week I stuck the bill envelope on the wall to be sorted later. Much later it turned out the envelope was empty, the bill was actually taped to the outside of the box, but I'd already burned it by then. I hate making the same mistake twice! And then the process is repeated for the meat; venison steaks, lamb chops, steak pie meat and sausages. All the time I am getting dirty looks from the dish washer as I'm using their valuable space, and then the bar staff start glaring at me as they have to stack the dirty dishes on the floor around my polystyrene boxes and bin bags so you can understand why I am so eager to get rid of the wrapping! Because I'm still a kid, and I like opening parcels and looking for the unexpected. And like a kid, I don't think of Wednesday when the mussels need checking and de-bearding and the prawns need peeling and we'll probably have a crab delivery too! Tuesday night is my favourite night.