There’s no B&Q down the road if you live on a Scottish island - so what do you do?
They say nesting is one of the universal stages of pregnancy. An uncontrollable, immediate urge to sort your life out in its entirety; whether it be the garden, kitchen cupboards, or the slightly squint curtain rod in the front room, it has to be fixed in that very moment - or else.
When you live somewhere as remote as the Isle of Rum, that nesting looks a little different. The desires are still there, and my to-do list can be summed up with an effective ‘everything’. The ability to complete a task, however, is much trickier. For starters, there’s no B&Q just down the road. There’s no nipping out for a stroll around IKEA for inspiration, or second hand furniture shops to keep costs down.
There’s not much point in ordering paint samples either - delivery fees are high, or just non-existent - I realised after filling my basket for a particular DIY store that they don’t even entertain the idea of delivering here. There’s no way of seeing how a shade looks in your actual house before committing to five litres of it. Out here, you pick a colour on a screen and hope for the best. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it gets packed away as quickly as it was unboxed.
It’s not that you........





















Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Tarik Cyril Amar
Sabine Sterk
Stefano Lusa
Mort Laitner
Mark Travers Ph.d
Ellen Ginsberg Simon
Gilles Touboul
John Nosta
Gina Simmons Schneider Ph.d