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The Family Light.
The long awaited half term of the extended Light family brought 3 generations, 14 adults and no less than 11 children, the eldest being just 8. The holiday was organised by an old friend, Dan Light, and you can read his take on it on his blog. The snow held for a final day of sledging then Dan, hot on the heels of the Watchmen marketing campaign, set about producing the first Inshriach swede. A swede is a remake of a popular movie using a camcorder and a limited budget and, in this case, a predictably child heavy cast. Four days of filming took place with Oscar worthy performances (especially Ben as Gollum), we borrowed a working projector (on our third attempt) and the Sweded Lord of the Rings premiered in the Cine Barn on Friday night.
The Cine barn.
Its now common knowledge that Neil Marshall is shortly to be filming his Centurion film around Aviemore, to star Michael Fassbender and Olga Kurylenko, there are adverts in the papers looking for extras. Here the crew are heading into Glen Feshie for another recce.
Hannah has once again come up with the goods by producing this model for our proposed barn conversion. Until work gets underway the building has gained row upon row of sofas for the Light family’s film festival. Unfortunately the projector is now not cooperating, probably as a result of being stored in the cold.
Ord Ban birthday weekend.
The weather forecast for Friday said deep snow in the west country and in the far north of Scotland, apparently leaving a corridor up the west coast wide enough to get back for Ord Ban’s birthday party. They laid on 7 courses in the restaurant on Saturday night, then a spit roasted hogget with mulled cider and live music on Sunday night. Everyone stayed at Inshriach and went out snowboarding or sledging during the day. We made some excellent connections which mean that later this week we will be exploring whisky tasting weekends and looking into using the house as a recording studio.
It has been as low as minus 15 again and there is a foot of snow round the house with the prospect of more this week. By Saturday morning the van and boat were well and truly stuck (thankfully in the farmyard and not by the A9) and even the landrover is now stranded in a hollow. No sailing until the spring.
Winter Sports.
Thanks to Hannah we are the custodians of ‘Spray’, a really pretty sailing boat now destined for the lochs and coasts of Scotland. Trust me to pick the snowiest week in memory to bring it north, all the way from Southampton. So far we have reached London, been stuck in an urban snowdrift for two days, and with inevitable delays to the schedule for the Watchmen films, she is now an unusual sight round East London as we wait for the next leg.
Making the most of the weather was Dan Craig, a good friend of Inshriach. Not being just round the corner from Aviemore we went skiing on Hampstead Heath.
Movie trivia.
This week was another movie recce. We were all over Rothiemurchus then up onto the plateau of Glen Feshie in this amazing articulated hagglund personnel carrier (at the same time as a deer count was happening from a very smart metallic burgundy helicopter) and up to the falls at Foyers.
The cinema in the barn is taking shape, I have repaired the floor using heraldic panels left over from the last series of Raven and we are reconstructing a sofa or two that didnt make it through New Year.
The source of the NBS Nightly News screen can finally be revealed with the launch of this piece we made for the movie ‘Watchmen’. Its got some people baffled, created an amazing amount of hype and is in the process of setting a personal youtube record with over 110,000 people having watched it within 24 hours of its release.
Bath time.
Buoyed with confidence from a recent spate of bookings we have bitten the bullet and had two of the baths resurfaced by John from The Bath Business. What once was coarse now is smooth. And easy to clean. And a very nice fella to boot.
Thanks to last weeks group for the comments left under my last entry.
The start of the New Year.
The first rental of the New Year is in occupation and this is giving us a chance to test drive our latest collaboration. Ross and Polly run the highly respected Ord Ban restaurant in Aviemore and they have worked up a local, seasonal menu in advance. A huge table has taken residence in the hall and trout, venison, pheasant and beef are simmering away in the kitchen while Steve, whose 40th birthday is being celebrated, is out on a walk unawares. We can now also arrange a chef to do lunches and dinner in house, or arrange excellent pack lunches if you are planning a day out, or Allan, one of the chefs here today, has offered to arrange boxes of local produce for when guests arrive.
Go gourmet leftovers.
As a postscript to this entry I would like to thank Kit for organising this party, even though she couldn’t be in attendance. It was a lovely, responsible and likeminded group of people who would be welcome any time. Among the group was Tracey Todhunter whose blog, Low Carbon Communities can be found here. Keep in touch.
Hogmanay.
Rather than renting the house out over Hogmanay we had a little fundraiser involving lots of friends and a party in the barn. It was well below minus 5 even during the day and as low as minus 15 by night so Inshriach became a winter wonderland, layer upon layer of frost grew on every branch and we got some curling in on the loch. On Hogmanay itself nearly 60 people danced reels in their coats to a backdrop of 1970s zombie movies. Thank you so much to everyone who made it north, you made it amazing fun and much better photos of all of the above, mostly courtesy of Helen, are on this flickr page.
Dan Light is an old friend and esteemed blogger, he was indirectly responsible for the cinema now installed in the barn and has written this lovely piece in anticipation of his family holiday here in February, I had better tidy up the barn before the Pixar marathon.
In the run up to Christmas we also had this little piece in the Evening Standard.
Christmas News.
Its been a busy few weeks so there are a few updates to convey. Congratulations to Pippa and Angus on having a baby boy, Culbin, and to Henry (who designed this website) and Adeola who also have a little boy, Louis, and made me a very proud godfather.
Courtesy of a recent film based in a 1970s newsroom, we now have a projector and a 6 foot screen set in an unpleasantly beige wall which will go into the barn where there are lots of sofas and a woodburner. There is a cinema opening in Aviemore but for some bizarre reason word is going round it will only show 12 rated films. With the advice and support of a few discerning film aficionados the Inshriach film club will have much better showings, then be full of children and probably show 12 rated films the rest of the time, provided the projector survived the journey north.
Thanks to Hannah and Zoe from the National Park our grant applications are finally in for the barn conversion and the woodland Earthship camping scheme and our planning applications will be ready in the New Year. The cinema may move to the squash court when the barn gets underway.
With a big New Year party only a few weeks away its time to get on with the bothy.
Storytelling.
This week we hosted a party for the BBC at which there were 20 plus children running all over the house. Every few minutes we would get a snippet of wisdom on how many mirrors there were, or on the steps into Mrs Blacks bed, then a servants bell would ring and they would run off. The names given to the rooms are loosely based on the first owners of the house, the Black family, and taken from the servants bells, which all work. A nod is due here to Dennis Severs house in Spitalfields.
Hannah is back and between working on the drawings for the barn we have redistributing some of our weirder acquisitions, this monolith will be part of a treasure hunt and many other things are collecting in a huge pile for a possible treehouse, we also have a number of boats and will shortly have a movie projector for the squash court.
With the snow starting here are the latest photos
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