Jonathan: All those little finishing tasks are so time-consuming!  Today we’ve fiddled around with notices, driven in a few nails into the cladding where they’d been overlooked, fitted all the guttering and downpipes on the front, dismantled all the temporary shop fittings from the house conservatory.  Denise cleaned Carrick and did all the washing; I creosoted all the garden gates (ideal conditions: it’s been dry weather for a fortnight or so and timber just soaks up the oil!) ; we moved chicks up from the nursery pens to the kindergarten and cleaned out the nursery ready for the chicks currently under the lamp; I issued pre-qualification questionnaires to contractors for an engineering project in Barra, and in between found time to just sit with Molly who is getting so old and frail and increasingly enjoys having company; gone down to the beach together with Tilly just for the pleasure of it; and with the weather so warm and dry we’ve started watering the greenhouses on a daily basis – in fact I had to water on the croft this morning.  Phew – exhausting!