There’s a lot of thumb twiddling going on here at the moment.

I was correct in my assumptions in the last post that all that remained to do was get the crofts registered and transfer the ownership, and the forms were duly sent off to the Crofting Commission and the landlord on 21st January.  Knowing that my neighbour’s first registration took 14 weeks to go through, I rang the Crofting Commission on Friday and asked what their backlog currently was.

“Oh, it’s about three months at the moment.”

I guess my roofer is not going to be starting work in March, then!  That said, the lady I spoke to was incredibly helpful and explained that as long as the maps were deemed to be of an acceptable standard, it might be a bit quicker – once it goes from them to the Registers of Scotland, it’s only about a week to get turned round.  She found the application while I was on the phone to see where they were with it and said she’d get it sent to the map-checking people and try to give it ‘a wee bump’ through the system for me.

Thank you, whoever you are, it’s very much appreciated.

We had a bit of weather up here this week as Gertrude blew through, so I went down the road to check the byre roof was still on.  It was, but a white box near the front gate, which we suspected was something electrical, has been blown off its post.  There are a couple of wires sticking out, but nothing sparking – I assume the power is off at the moment.