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Island Blog – The Wild

I remember the shout. Reef in the mainsail, now! I didn’t hesitate because with him at the helm, there was only me and that me was down below hooking a Moses basket onto a gimballed hook with a baby nestled within. I was fast, no hesitation. As I scooted up the steps onto the deck, I could see why this reefing mainsail thing was not something to be considered, nor questioned. There was a black cloud threat and building. Grabbing and affixing my safety harness and with rain already slicing the wind in two, I got to work. He risked a tilt into the quiet space between the was-wind and the now-wind, two very different creatures for sure and the huge mainsail flapped and crackled, bucked and heaved. I had never felt so alive, so valued, so very the It of the situation. Skidding, sliding, grabbing, holding, I used all my strength to crank the crank thing, bringing the huge mainsail down to the boom. I remember watching the sky appear above each reef. I remember my arms aching, my fingers flexing, turning, holding and that moment when all was safe, that massive sail contained and that sky glowering at me like she just lost at checkmate. I slid on my butt back to him, grin wide, eyes full of rain, and unclipped.

I remember the wild. The buzz of being so essential, so needed, so valued. He smiled me in. Well done, lass, he said and those words meant everything. The hanging baby slept on. The storm was nothing of the sort, just a teenage tantrum. The sky cleared, the night began and stars came out. Ha. I said, as I looked up at the wide expanse of a gazillion constellations. I got there before you all, and I did. It remembers me and I don’t say that lightly because even when we forget the feeling of such wild times, our body remembers. Water has a memory and we might do well to accept this as we, those of us whose wild times might seem beige and back then and of no import and no longer possible in the shape of what is. I have to challenge this, in myself for starters. If there is wild, was there once, it does not die. We will eventually die but the wild is like a fire within, a sparkle, a crackle, an opportunity, a magic. I don’t like to see it allowed to fade in someone’s eyes once health limits barrage in. However I also get it and it is so easy to believe that the wild was then and now I am compromised and afraid and kind of stuck with a stick and all I have are the memories of me doing crazy things I couldn’t do now.

Where’s that wild? Where’s that dancer, the one who was spontaneous when others dithered and who danced me till I was dizzy and on fire? Where’s the one who said yes we can do this, who made the fire on the beach, the one who said ‘ just lie here and see the stars’, the one who sang, who told stories, who always made something happen, no matter where nor what, nor when, nor who(m)? The wilders who always caught the magic, grabbed it, reefed it in at times and then let it fly. They still do and you don’t have to be young to grab the ties of that kite. T’is only fear that makes us pedants.

The wild is in you. Keep her fired up.

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Island Blog – Old Fingers, Sleight Hands

My son held my hand in his, tipped it, looked hard. This hand has done so much work over so much time, he said, and handed me back. I had reached out to light a candle, to lift one thing from here to there, to do something ordinary, an ordinary that turned into an extraordinary. How often do any of us feel recognised and acknowledged in such a way? Since then I look at and see my old gnarled fingers in a different light. They are right there in front of me all day, opening things, turning things, writing things, answering things, holding things, lifting, turning, upturning,moudling,arranging wildflowers, forming dough, spreading, pointing, arresting, catching, holding , performing, retracting, beckoning and pushing away. And more.

I think of all the times I took control and all those times i didn’t. I remember both. In the life I lead now, the power of it not in my hands but in the lives of my children and their young’uns, I don’t feel compromised at all. I don’t know if it’s magic, but my kids are right there for me. What I want to teach them is that olding is fine, that old fingers can still lead you to the dance floor, can still hold, still point, still hold a hug.

I still have the mischief, dance floor, anywhere.

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Island Blog – Rebel, Conformist, Fear

When you have the rebel pusling through your veins, following rules feels like being really good at dodging bullets, those fired from the gun of ‘authority’. Whenever I am required to conform, I get this itch, everywhere. As a youth I didn’t always employ sense. I am altogether great with sensibility but going only with that has led me up some very dark alleys, and so I have grown up, sort of, although the call to irrationality is strong. For decades I thought there was something wrong with my wiring, that I was, and I was, a rebel without a cause. I like the word Rebel and for sure there are many times in life when a rebel is a very good thing to have within a pack of conformist ditherers, all drunk on fear. They say this so we should comply, even if we don’t agree nor understand and even if it feels horribly wrong. We will settle. I remember, once, visiting a very proper house with everything in place, dust free, with everything either beige or polished and being taken into the ‘front room’ which had obviously only been used at wakes or on Sundays. Take a seat on the settle, she said, pointing to one, an arthritic looking straight-backed L-shaped thing, and as rigid as a born again, and deciding I wouldn’t. I walked to a chair instead and parked my butt. I could tell from the snort that I would not be invited again, but I just couldn’t do what she asked. The very word riled the rebel in my red-blood heart and that rebel took over.

So, when I come back from eye surgery with a loooong list of ‘don’ts’ I manage my own snort. I know it is important to comply in this instance because I want clarity, but there is so much about fear in just about every ruling and I won’t play with fear. I know that I make choices others avoid, but here’s the thing. I have common sense now, although there is nothing common about it, and I thank my parents and my granny for gifting it to me. For all they complied, they were rebels, not overtly, but subtley. It was in the twinkle, the suggestion of mischief, the stepping out of line as the line dozed off in boredom and compliance. They had a voice and they used it. It’s nothing to do with birth, nor wealth, nor privilege, nor the desire to be better/louder/cleverer than the next person. It’s a blood rush, a have-to and it is all about bringing mischief back, bringing fun back.

In the Premier Inn, Braehead, I met many ordinary folks over two days of consultation and surgery and I noticed, as I always do, that everyone feels alone, that everyone welcomes a smile, a chat, a craic, everyone. Conforming is doing a grand job of turning us into robots, lonely, silent robots. I watch someone heading for work, worried about something or someone, light up and twinkle me back. A fireworker, a builder, a nurse, a medical supply driver. We have nothing in common and yet we do. We have a few moments of conversation. I could have said nothing but I said something and from that we connected. Each time we both left thinking of each other. They probably left with a chuckle, this old woman outside a hotel watching the diggers dig the life out of a spread of green to make room for yet another building, but that’s ok with me because I saw the twinkle, the fun behind their eyes, and I heard them, I saw them.

We need more rebels.

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Island Blog – I Want Clarity

Yesterday I saw through a misty haze. Today I am seeing detail and clarity. Although there is a falsehood across my eye, it’s like a new windscreen on a car, startling at first and then that glorious rise in the gut, the heart, the belief of it, of seeing everything clear, right there, a sharing, because I am involved.. I am the looking and the seeing. We are complete, a perfection, circling, the tree, the bird and me. It is more than enough. And all thanks to the brilliance of surgery.

I confess to anxiety pre this. Not for the surgery, I know I know zip about surgery and the surgeon has trained for eons to absolutely know, so there is no anxiety there. No, it was the journey, the possibility of a ferry and on time, the hotel I had booked into. Where is it? Let me check. Oh, yes, just a mile away from the hospital. A taxi ride. I had booked at the Premier Inn, Braehead, a bland flat-faced building with no character at all, but. I had spend ages in a taxi from Queen Street just getting here and many quids down and yes, I could have sourced a bus but was compromised, bleary-eyed, anxious and tired, so blow that for a feathering. Tell you one day about ‘the feathering’ – t’is an island thing for husbands to be. Moving on.

The minute I arrived I was welcomed and smiled upon. My room was comfortable and I did manage to get over the fact that the window was/is sealed shut after watching a pitch full of young footballers training. So many, so many teens working like pros to be, really lifted my spirits. I met nothing but kindness in that hotel. The outside belies the inner mother.

Now with family in the North Berwickshire wild, I walk out with sunglasses on, and a gazillion eyedrops sloshing about my eyeball as I watch the swallows swoop among the flies. I can see them clear. I watch the lift and wave of the beech branches beyond the farm gate, the way they definitely do not agree on choreography, the detail of the leaves, the definition clear to me, incisive cuts to make the perfect leaf over and over again, the blood veins. For the first time in more than months. A glorious gift and in a few days even more clarity, and then I won’t doubt myself again because nobody does when they can see ahead. If you know nothing about the road ahead, at least you can see it and thus make an informed choice.

At times I was fine with the mist. It almost laughed me, until it began to compromise my freedom, my independence. I grew up then. I want clarity.

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Island Blog – Borderlines

The tide is high. It’s a May thing. Two full moons and she is sassy with it, building already, shifting tides, lifting beyond established expectations already, anticipating something new and inventive, a space to wide out. I remember that feeling, the opportunity to break through a line drawn in the grit and spit of childhood when I wanted to fly above the whole map and redraw it. There are many lines and I probably don’t need to draw them because anyone living within those confines feel them like chasms or buffers. Either way, you fall. Until you don’t, until you have the courage to ask for help, or to jump, or to just run. Nature does it all the time.

We meet borderlines everywhere. At work, in a community, within a relationship. Some we have to allow and accept, many we don’t. Within our lives, so very much is different. Some of us do have the choice to argue, to demand our own space, our own thinking, our own beliefs and to hear that they are considered despite generational beliefs and accepted confines. Not many, I’m guessing. But in my feral world, in my so called recalcitrant childhood, in my difference and my confusion, there is always the chance for a voice. If it would just find the courage to speak out. I didn’t, but I did find someone who would and did. It happened to be my life partner, and I was lucky in that. Borders did not bother him. He broke borderlines all of the years. But even now in widowhood I remain cautious until I stop and think. And that’s important. In simplicity, this is it and there is me. We don’t match. Obviously it begs the question. And?

In my long life I watch many borderlines shift and pull away in a curve, a gentle thing, a giving, a sharing of space. In communication, within relationships, in moments. Someone chooses not to follow the line. Someone decides to curve and bend, to allow and then to move on beyond the border with a smile.

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Island Blog – A New Matrix

I’m squinting at the screen with my dodgy eye. I have two, by the way, but one is dodgy and on Monday I am offski for minor surgery. All will be well, of course it will, it always is because there is a matrix for this as there is for everything. It thinks me. Matrix, from the latin ‘Mater, meaning mother/womb with the secure landing of ‘ix’ gives me confidence. Needless to say I am not concerned on behalf of the surgeon. He, and he is a ‘he’ has trained for ever and comes highly recommended. It’s the cricks in the matrix which unnerve me, the ferry not running, or running late; the potential miss of the train to Glasgow, the stranding of me. I remember, once, that all we had to do was to check the maritime weather report to know for sure that we would make the crossing. Not now #cricks.

Perfection is a rubric, a guide, a set of rules and moves and decisions that would always result in a tidy cube. Over generations this rubric slices into lives, fed wordy, initiating acceptable behaviours, cementing vows of loyalty, stultifying relationships and informing choices and, in places of power, decisions. Such a complexity and so rigid, a scoring guide with awards proffered to those who comply. And, bizarrely, I get it, even though I have lived within a rubric matrix at times in my life and fought through the cricks to escape. We do need order because disorder is unsettling, even though the ancient greeks and well before them considered Chaos as being the most powerful auger of change. I also think they were right because only from chaos does anyone, eventually, choose a new rubric, to then form a new matrix.

Think on it. In a war zone, when bombs take your everything and the street is a heavy landing of rubble and dust, there will be a voice, a someone who rises and who gathers in the broken. In a family when disaster hits there will be one who rises, takes control. In a troubled mind, full of ferrets and snipers, a voice. These voices don’t dismiss the situation as so many humans do. There are no platitudes, no empty words, no sugar coating. They are simply there and vocal. Just saying I am here. I can keep you safe. Here’s a new matrix.

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Island Blog – The Thread of Kindness

A new Monday at the Best Cafe Ever with a difference. In just a few days I discover I need help along my way. However asking for help when you are fiercely independent is tricky. I know this place and within the confines of it, I have learned much. People want to help. I want to help. It feels us needed and valued when we can proffer a something the other one doesn’t have, or has no access to. I have mellowed in my fierce independence because the only thing I was left with was empty space once my Go-Away hands were believed. I would watch the offer, gentled and meaningful from the mouth of a real friend, dissipate like breath in the air. Okay, I decided, this isn’t working because I do need help with various varieties of vagiaries and something else beginning with ‘v’.

Until I can drive again, once my eyeballs are relocated successfully, all-seeing again and quite marvelling me. I need help. Actually, I will remember this time, when someone with controlled eyeballs can see and watch one bird in the sky, I see two and both are blurry. They could be gulls, small geese, floaters. I enjoy the whole thing but can’t tell you what I’m looking at. Yet. At work I have to ask for help. Is there a table that needs clearing? I make much laughter about the whole thing because I know it is fixable and soon. Meantime I need a lift to work and back and my asking for help has brought me both. This kindness, this extra journey in the time of rising fuel prices, astounds me.

I was tired towards the ending of a day serving and washing and joking with lovely customers and my friend just turned up to bring me home. My boss also offered me a lift. Neither of these men were going my way. This kindness. I never expect it. I know I can get the bus both there and back, but that day is long and my work, (I love my work) is full on. Actually, no. I am full on. I need to work intuitively with the dishwasher, with the plates which need to go through quick, the teapots, the cups and mugs and I love the artistry of my role in the dynamic of cafe life, always, always, unexpectedly unexpected. We can welcome half a ton of human wonderfulness for coffee and cake, 25 ditto for lunch, more for tea, or we can welcome a third of that or a third more. No day is a given.

What thrills me to work each day is the knowing that we work as a team, that our motivation is service and kindness. The owners of this beach cafe lead us and need us. We who have the privelege to work in this place learn the ways quick and it is all about serving. Service in my ancient history was proffered to those of us who had failed all exams and had no idea what the heck to do with their lives. I see service so differently now. It is an honour to serve, to help, to reach beyond the menu, to step beyond the servery. To love a dog, to make another feel welcome, to settle, to allow, to warm another human being. Such an honour.

And that is how I will think and thank my beautiful friends who, in this pre-eyeball relocation, offer to drive out of their way to help me to work and back. I am so full of thankyous and yet I get it. We humans are a team, inside work, beyond it, in a community, everywhere. Kindness is the thread of life.

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Island Blog – The Perfect

See today? It was as if I had moved into another life. Yesterday I could drive my feisty Mini Cooper and today I cannot. I look at her, out there, well not that much ‘out there’ but just the other side of my window. She has a sassy attitude and I love to drive her. Today I have to get the bus, or a lift which I did get. Now hear this. I am no woman who will confound when confoundment steps in as if it owned the whole thing. However I also know that brushing away feelings about the about-ness of something that bursts open a heretofore locked door is foolish. The slam has reckoning and I can feel it.

I knew it was coming. In Africa my one good eye started showing me fantasy. You see one bird, I see two. You see one lorry coming at us, I see two and one of them is in our path. It isn’t a big thing, a cataract op, not now with the skills of surgeons, but the op is not the point. Even though I may no longer need specs (oh happy days) ever again, and will be back to work in the best cafe ever and able to drive again, this all thinks me on the Perfect.

I remember a perfect night when I was so fallen in love that I’m amazed I remained standing. I remember a sudden dance in a wild place, picnics random and crazy, hidden. I remember a friend sharing sweets with me in primary school. I remember that moment when I was lost around Queen St Station, unsure of next train times and the smile and welcome of someone. Hey, you ok? There is something so perfect about that.

When I caught a lift home after a very busy day at the Cafe, I felt so warm, so loved. We talked and laughed and I was delivered to my happy place. The perfect was, yes it was, but the Perfect doesn’t die. It still appears and at surprising moments, at random times. However we need to be open, curious, looking out. At my age it could be so easy to pull on the blanket and just sit. Don’t do it, don’t allow it. The Perfect dies if not fed with sass, determination and curiosity.

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Island Blog – New Light and a Fizzywiggle

Life is not a straight line I have discovered and keep on discovering even as I forget my initial discovery. I wake thinking that I have learned it all only to discover I have not. That’s a load of discovery for two short sentences. When I realise these things, I am usually in a situation wherein there is no proffer of conversation, even if it were ever possible. I could be the mouse, scurrying, or the reader translating or the shopper buying something to stop my eyeballs falling beyond their seams and thus causing immense and innapropriate dilemmas all around me. Or, I could be buying a cabbage. I even have conversation around that. I have so many words in my head, so much desire for conversation beyond the ordinary. I want to learn about constellations and the majesty of the sky, about the way flowers grow and why they die; about the way trees work to support each other, about the way they grieve and they surely must grieve.

Last night I was in bed by 7pm. I did think a bit about those just heading out to the pub, for dinner somewhere, for dancing, for fun. I did. In fact I heard the cars drive past. As I climbed the stairs, as I noticed my climb, my tiredness, I did smile. I do remember nights out, dressing up, quite the fizzywiggle, the music, voices, nonsense and unpromises of a summer’s evening. And I smile at the memory. I loved them all.

I remember what it was like to be young and fluid. I loathed myself, hated my awful body and felt like a lump of concrete and in the way of everyone. I throw light on this. I see her, oh she was pretty, young, freckled, lumpy, badly behaved, with too much imagination, and an imagineer, a liar, a girl we just don’t want here. She meant nothing to me. I remember my yellow rose wallpapered bedroom, well lit, mine-ish, and all the hours spent there. Half a teenagedom. Not because my parents didn’t love me. There’s no because.

As I move dynamically through my olding years, missing most of the cut of conversations in the Cafe, I see new light. The dance and the flimflam of chat in the kitchen and the servery are so uplifting and inspiring that I find conversations about stars and wild things and new understandings, about AI and subterranean influences and about all that is hidden from us above ground. And I feel a sense of landing.

However I am still a Fizzywiggle. Just saying.

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Island Blog – The Influence of the Pause

Not my brilliant words but those of my wordsmith son in Africa, who can just say these things. The brilliance just falls out of his mouth, it seems, without thinking at all and with no sign of a ‘like’ nor an ‘erm’ nor a clearing of his throat as if in a bid to buy time. I had to write it down, and have looked at that phrase on my to-do pad for a few days, letting it influence deeper thought. In fact, I have employed it in my daily round, halting myself in my usual hurtle to nowhere as if somebody just might snip. out an hour or two, thus leaving me believing it is 4pm when, in fact, it’s bedtime. Pausing is indeed influential. For example I am washing my few dishes as quickly as I can, not noticing the plates or the old silver, or the ancient wooden spoon, my favourite and granny’s favourite before me because it has been so favouritised as to have warped and twisted into the perfect of all wooden spoons. I don’t notice the pattern on the plates, bought from the island charity shop when I decided to move on all the stuff I had washed and sparkled for 40 years, and was utterly sick of looking at. I don’t see the old cutlery, solid silver and generations old as I swish it through the suds, not wondering at all of the many hands which did just this in many kitchens when suds did not come in easy-squirt plastic bottles.

The air is warm today even as the sky is shut. Sometimes the sun gets pissed off at being in the wings and blares through the smoke and mirrors, a spread of white light, a dazzle, a blinding. But, mostly, the sky is shut. I did a lot of pausing today, stopping mid whatever and noticing myself within that pause. I could feel myself inhabiting the space this pause created as if I had only just caught up with myself. It was almost a surprise. I don’t know why we hurtle, except, perhaps, it is old training. If I hadn’t hurtled in the days of Tapselteerie, nothing would have come to fruition. What bizarres me is when we are advised to leave the past in the past when our body memory just isn’t listening. Don’t these wise ones know that?

I scattered some poppy seeds, all random and sent hope from own mouth. Are you talking to yourself? laughed a passing walker. No, I said, I’m talking to the poppy seeds. Oh, he said. I love poppies, he said. We have plenty in our garden. Do you talk to them? I asked. Erm, no. Pity, I smiled. They would probably benefit from a well-wish or two. He walked on.

I walked this afternoon, wearing walking sandals for the first time, the warm air encircling me. On the final leg I paused beneath the sycamores and listened to the Bombus, the bumble bees, filling the still air with their wing beats as they bumbled from flower to flower. As I was doing this pausing thing, I heard voices and saw a young couple coming towards me down the hill, full of chatter and love. Do you hear the bees? I asked and they paused. Oh YES! they said and we paused together and they asked me things as I did them. Then I saw her, the young hind walking softly up the track we sort of filled with ourselves. She stopped, looking at us. We are in her path, I told them. She wants to come this way, so let’s move into the trees. Immediately we had stepped aside, the beautiful creature walked confidently on and we watched her, saw her soft body, her straight back, her beautiful dark eyes, her long legs for the running.

And we marvelled at the influence of the pause.