First few days

Well, where do I start!
I spent ages doing an entry on our first night, but lost the Internet connection and all the blog I'd done, so I left it until the next day.
The next day turned out to be very eventful & involved visiting hospitals in Castle Douglas (CD) & Dumfries, so I didn't get a chance then either.

So, I'll backtrack to our first night...

Wednesday 3rd.

We arrived late due to Steve's car not starting, a bit of exhaust dropping off my car, a road closure and real bad weather. But we had a warm welcome and made to feel at home.


Thursday 4th
Up at 7am to watch and help Sue milk the two cows.

(click on picture to enlarge it) We helped out where we could, and Steve had his first experience of mucking out.

Then we chose our rooms & started to move in. Also it was the day of the 'collation', the day when all the residents (ressies) get together to assemble the annual Laurieston Hall (LH) newsletter, ready for posting out. It was a great way of meeting people again, plus some we haven't met before.
After spending more time preparing the rooms, chatting with our LH 'guardian angels' - 2 ressies who volunteered to be our 'guides' during our stay - cleaning out and preparing the wood burning stove, we then had an early night ready for some hard work next morning.

Friday 5th
Today started off OK, we got up and helped Sue milk again. Then after breakfast it was down to the woodshed for 'woodtrip' work, which is where LH ressies get together to do various work involving the processing of wood for use in the house stoves.
I went got to work splitting logs and was doing really well until I stopped paying full attention and to cut a long story short trapped my finger end between a heavy log and a metal plate.
It was worse than I thought, and Steve & I ended up first going to CD hospital, only to wait an hour to be told to go to a health center somewhere else in CD. Another hours wait, again only to be told they couldn't deal with it, so we were then sent on to Dumfries A&E where I had to get the finger Xrayed.
The bone was fractured and the nail & finger end were hanging off, so then dosed me up with hefty pain killers, injected my finger several times with local anaesthetic and then the took the nail off & stitched the finger end back on. Finally, having stitched the nail bed which was also split, they replaced the old finger nail pushing it back into place as protection for the nail bed as it is healing.

If I were to say this whole process was incredibly painful, you might quite correctly imagine I would be understating things somewhat!
All I can say is I now understand why finger nail pulling has been used as an effective form of torture!

Just so it is clear, this was a completely random accident, it could have happened to anyone, and if there were anything at all which could have even slightly altered the odds against it happening, that would have been me concentrating more carefully on what I was doing!
I'm lucky to still have my finger and learnt a lesson.

Saturday 6th

Managed to get a good nights sleep, even if it was lying on one side all night with my arm our of the bed.

It's been a good day, and I think I'll be able to do a lot more than I thought I would as long as I'm careful not to knock my bandaged finger.

Steve & Gail went to Carlisle dancing for the day and met 8 of us in CD for a curry in the evening.

Well I'm tired now & the finger is throbbing a bit, so I'm gonna sign off now.

Hugs to all...

Dave.