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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.

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Island Blog – The Eyes Have It

In the best cafe ever, wherein we all watch each other’s back, notice a falter, the need for a break, the wild of a new story in bright eyes all focussed on cutting new sourdough, tomatoes and red onions for a salad or on finding the right knife for this, the best ladle for that, we work with the story. And there is always one. We come in from different places, different lives, different lifetimes, and as a dynamic, we help each other in the Servery. We decide we can lift the customers, be gentle with their dithers, their extra loud voices in a life wherein they probably wonder if anyone will hear them ever again. We work together with the young, who falter and apologise even before they order. Then there are those with entitlement and with children who just might fight the expected roles laid out for them, encouraged as they are to shout for ice cream or half a something and without that bit, or that bit. We oblige. Obviously. But the Servery has options, and even as we don’t ever want to judge another human being, I think it is survival in the world of service. Behind the scenes in a busy cafe, we might eye roll at rudeness, not that it ever shows because we know that everyone everywhere has stuff in their lives and it is often hard to leave it outside when they come in. It seems to me that when folk move into an environmental enclosure, that stuff can bubble up, uninvited. People are people and all very human. It thinks me.

Things don’t matter much, although the bright welcome of a cafe definitely does. If the layout is spacious and obliging when it comes to Can we push four tables together because there are 12 of us, mostly kids? and we say Of course, and help them scrabble-bunch tables for two into a crocodile of wood, shifting flower vases and finding more chairs, then we see smiles and thankyous all around us like butterflies, because people matter and things don’t. Priveleged, entitled, arrogant, humble, apologetic, cautious, all human behaviour. And we know this and know ourselves in each situation because we have all been there in at least one of those. I, for one, remember well the fear of going into a cafe or restaurant with five kids hungry as wolves with a flock of sheep just there. I just knew there would be mayhem even though I was strict on behaviour and respect. But a lot is down to the staff in the cafe or restaurant because they have eyes. They also have choice. Everyone, let’s be honest, is fed to the back teeth with judgement and admonishment, and most kids can read body language from birth.

So we use our eyes. We can see when someone comes in and isn’t confident, and warmth.rises in us. because people matter and things don’t. We read the silent language and slide in, bright eyed, no matter how many orders are waiting, no matter any wee issues with machinery, problems, with deliveries. We just make it work because this cafe is all about people and not just how many come through the door, even as this is important. It’s more about a lovely welcoming place to come to, about the smiles, the way we adapt to a customer’s request, the simplicity of the work of service.

People matter, things don’t. The eyes have it.

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Island Blog – Music if you’re Listening

I look for music as I work my life. In eyes, ears and hearts, even hand and body language. Encounters are music to me, and I can see/hear the discords. Actually, I love discords when they startle and with attitude and confidence. I heard one piece of music in church on Sunday and it was full of all those challenges, should have resolved but didn’t, and kept me on a ledge. Love that, just as I love to see a challenger out there, anywhere, someone so determined to be who they are in choice of clothes, attitude, confidence, opinions. They are music to me. The alternative, it seems, is grey or black, no smiles, bent body. automaton/robot/blind.

I’m. watching the sun head for bed. The sky is a dither, clouds in stasis as we all look for the sinklight. the tide is high, the gulls a load of choirgirls out of tune. Goldfinches fight around the feeders; walkers laugh by under sunshine and a wapsicle sky. Music. If you want to hear it, you will.

I even heard it as the recycling lorry arrived this morning. I was leaving for work. Heard it, the music of wheels turning, the music of the men in the cab and the work they do, week after week.

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Island Blog – Make your own kind of Music

I look for the harmonies in everything. I say ‘everything’ because that is exactly what I mean. In music, I can hear all levels, and way below the melody. I can hear above too, but could never reach those notes without a long ladder. I was never a descanter, unlike my sister whoes vocal chords are wired to the moon. In any music situation I find myself following the supporting chords, finding them, latching on and, eventually, finding my way. Even hymns in church offer me opportunities, even as I feel for my pew fellows as I duck down into the melle of the many lower levels of any good music. I remember, as a child, knowing exactly when any piece of music was about to find resolution. I knew, still do, when a modern song will end, and you might laugh at that because if you are in the know, pretty much everything is 8 to the bar, 8 counts, unless you challenge that, and writers do. I laugh when I meet it, in music, in prose, even on the street or in the bar. With confidence, someone just stops and goes, having said something profound and without a single cap-tap to propriety, leaving the rest of us with vacant faces and puzzlement. Composers and good writers have done this many times and I see it in musical score, in good books and there is something fizzy about them, like the best champagne. Intriguing. I love rebels.

I made myself walk today, along Tapselteerie tracks. I haven’t walked since my daily sunshine ones in Africa. Every morning we set off, about 8 or earlier, to avoid the sun heat. Sometimes we left it too late and it wasn’t only the golden retriever who found it too much. That sun is careless of his power, blazing down, no breaks, relentless. I loved it. As we found rivers, water holes, ditches, anything water-logged for the hotdog to find relief, I stood on the bank, watching him courie down through scrub and boulders to the water flow, the cool base note. It thought me. I stand here, like the top note and in between you and me there are so many levels, tricky to contour. The base note is the river flow. So much opportunity between us. If I could cant the in-between, make it fit, sing it out, give it instruments, the flute perhaps, then violin, maybe two, then viola, then cello, then, if really brave, double bass. Such depth.

When I was there, in Africa, we went to a candlelit concert. Vivaldi, Four Seasons. It was wonderful. The (unusually) quartet sat among 200 candles on stage. It was a beautiful show. However we came away a little questioning. I had seen this performed before but with the Basso Continuo as fifth instrument and it was definitely missing, the base, the low voice, the resolution. Stu felt the same but without my musical training and having never seen such before. It was a feeling of lack. But this is not about music.

In a life, in any life, however ‘small’ or ‘big’ the whole dynamic is essential, and when the melody is lost or the baseline, then there is a void. In my experience, over years of providing harmonies to visiting bands, I knew about the middle bit. Nobody wants it because why? Well, nobody honours the viola, the chorus, the second violin, the timpani, nobody. They are just support, but woe betide them if they fail to perfectly perform. I honour the middle instruments.

The wives who keep onkeeping on, finding food, walking miles, working from below dawn to above sunset.

I honour the men who work hard in jobs they hate just to provide for their families.

I honour the ones who lost their place because nobody showed them how to find it.

I honour those who believe that they will only ever live in the middle of musical score, or in the worlds of prose.

In those who believe they will never make an impact.

Tell you this, all of you. Believe in yourself and take that self forward. You are so much more than you think.

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Island Blog – Breakthrough

I love my days of. rest. I also love my work. The rest days see me different, hear me different, slow me into a wander. I use them well. I was crap at rest days back in Tapselteerie and that thinks me. I watch other youngsters dash against rocks, refusing rest, thinking what…….oh, if I stop will everything else? If I admit to ‘rest’ does that make me weak/pathetic/a failure? Do I hear my mother’s voice, my father’s? I remember all that. My mother was very strong, had gone through shit I have never experienced and taken control and courage and carried others along into a better place. The resulting mother expected the same in her girls, the four of us. Her boy avoided that but got what we never did from our father. Voices from the past have extraordinary continuance. I’m changing paragraph now.

I watch the sun dapples on the flowing tide, higher now and rising to the incoming full moon. The gulls are wheedling, sorry wheeling over the ebb, strickling for sprat, for silly fish that fly too close to the ceiling of the tidal inflow. Pickings. I see everything here, feel it all, hear it, smell it. I know when a tide changes, when the wide sky is grumpy and threatening. I feel the change and that’s the thing of living wild, connected with all that is important. Things mean little out here beyond the need for a ferry, for basic supplies, for help when needed, for music and ceilidhs, for the craic of island life. We can dress up, and we do at times, but we can turn up at a wedding in dungarees with earth under our nails and nobody would bother at all.

Talking about ‘bother’ I had one. Apparently we are Superfast here now, whatever that means, and I was in gracious receipt of a new router and plugs and wires. and instructions, all free. I looked at the box for 3 days as if it might release, when opened, yet another demon. Then, exasperated with myself, I rose from the floor of denial and split the seams. I understood not one word. This is not for me, I said, and closed the box. Another 3 days and I get an email. from Marc at Tech Support telling me I haven’t connected my new router. I could see myself, back of the class and with no ink in her well. I dismissed and went to sleep but my dreams were all about. falling off cliffs. So, today, I shucked off my cardigan and hunkered down beneath my very old desk, a courie-in with the cobwebs so black they must be years old. I swiped and cleared. Thinks and fears. Thinks are pull everything out, everything. Fears are ‘what if I lose wifi? I did it anyway.

In that space and place I found autonomy and courage. I have no clue about technology wires. I don’t understand the WAN from the IP, and there were many more. I just sat under that desk and tried to be powerful. I plugged in this and that, found they didn’t work, but rested there because the new router sprang to life. I did send up a thankyou, but we are not done yet. However I knew my skills were done here and then I caught some young friends walking by with their wee one and dog. They came in and got me online. I must confess, after my cliff falls and my fears of being stupid and old that I never countenanced this happiness.

A breakthrough. I have had many of them. I hope you do too.

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Island Blog – Scales,Compass.Middle Thing a Finger

Scales weigh things, make a balance. On the one side, the weights. On the other the thing being weighed. At least, that is how I remember it, way back when I was young and weighing things. I even recall weighing a baby in the brass cradle when the nurse couldn’t get through the storm. Problem was that the ounce weights kept disappearing. I found one, once, in the bucket of a toy digger. I just guessed the baby weight, zoomed it up a bit and my guess was accepted. It was winter, after all, days thick with noise and storm and floods and falling trees. This was, and is, island life. I should report that said baby is now father of two and strong as an ox, but with a big brain. I also recall, during that and many other winters, the water clogging or freezing, the oil too expensive and the range very much off. Water came from mountain springs, travelling many blue-pipe miles to our home, a home stuck out in the beyond of beyond. I boiled kettles to wash my children, filling Belfast sinks in the old dairy or in the farmhouse kitchen and it worked like a genius because, with a few rubber ducks, some wooden spoons and loads of washing up liquid, they sat together, splashing and shrieking whilst I concocted a wholesome stew and tatties for an evening meal, whence I wheecked them out and into towels to eat. They liked being around me and I get that. Any of the five bathrooms were miles away and freezing. I would navigate around the abandoned calf within her straw bale warmth, bottle feed her from an old lemonade bottle (not with lemonade), check her eyes, ears, mouth, and then feed my family whilst she snuffled herself to sleep and whilst I wondered what the hec we were going to do with her.

In my life the scales unbalanced, and often, but here’s the thing. I like balance within myself. There may be none outside of me but within I will make it so. In the confusion of life, any life, the balance is in our hands. I believe it. At times the big bowl is too heavy, or too light against the weights and this demands a more weighty response. I know, I know, that scales are now the size of iPads and pocket friendly, but they weren’t once, so go with me on this because it represents balance more effectively. If there is a confrontation or a challenge, there is always that middle thing and it takes courage and determination to level. I cannot work out how to connect my new router. An example for you. The instructions presume I know new language. I don’t. So, my middle thing is to ask for help, after a long time spent beneath my old desk and among the cobwebs. I scrambled out, and up off my knees, and thought this. I have many talents but this is not one of them.

Himself always had a compass. It was within him. He knew where True North was, anywhere and any place in the world. He didn’t even have to look out, nor up. Whereas I might have been sailing across yet another sea and wondering where the hec we were, knowing he knew. However, he was not so good at compass bearing within a home space. Perhaps I clocked this, even though I was so young and so clueless about Farmer’s Wifedom, Motherhood and more. Perhaps I understood balance and wanted it for myself, my home, my marriage. I was never just the middle thing. I could land like a truck in the brass cradle, challenging him to find the weights. It didn’t always work. Men are shite at communicating feelings.

But what about now, about the chaos of life, the threats, the unsettling, the imbalance. Here’s what I think. We cannot change what is out there, but we can weigh the this and that of it, find the ounces, find singular balance. I tbelieve that the middle thing is personal choice. It was when I weighed my 4th baby in that storm, when I used my finger to level something that wasn’t quite scale-agreed. I think we are the middle thing.

Make the scales balance, with a finger, with choice, with attitude. And point true north with that finger.

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Island Blog – The Immaculate Lawner and a Splinter

I just got one, a splinter. I went up my mosaic steps to the hilly garden behind my home. I had no mission, no compost to empty into my worm-tastic bin, no purpose beyond this, just to see what wild flowers are drinking in the sunshine. Gazillions. I took them all in, had a wee chat because they might think I was some wandering weirdo. I went barefoot, feeling the soft grass like clouds, watched the green spring up between my toes, felt the sun on my back. We had a wee revel, the grass, the moss couched on rocky bits, the wild flowers and me. Even the black honeybees joined in, although they’re more about their own stuff I find. Then, on descent, and holding the handrail as I choose to do these days, a splinter decided to come with me, sharp and into my palm. I need my palms for work at the Best Cafe Ever, and I swore. I did. It hurt and I can’t see it without binoculars, let alone remove it. My specs are, well, shite, as we say on the island. There’s a ‘could do better’ here, I know it.

The experience thinks me. We make plans and then get a splinter, something we can’t quite see, but definitely know it is there, because it hurts, disrupts and alters our direction. This, I have learned, is Life. I know we are encouraged to make plans, but rigidity is no friend. The words, Always and Never, for example are in my opinion, obsolete. We make a promise and break it. I have done so, an so have we all, even as we may quote the Always and Never nonsense, because we are human, soft, flexible, adaptable, dynamic, fluid. We have to be and particularly now. Things change every day, every hour, every minute. The way it was is not the ‘is’ of things.

I look at my view, one I never take for granted, the tidal ebb and flow, the woods out back, the sound last night of Barn Owls. I see the grass longging, lengthening, cupping wildflowers random in their rise and I see the chaos of that, and the order. Think of a baby. We watch, observe, marvel, encourage, laugh at the random. And, then, we control. We become the splinter. Why? Ah, yes, to conform with the rules handed down. This is how you do this. But not anymore. The innovators are all over us now. We have Autonomy. We have Choice. We know what is happening in our world. If we do nothing else, let us keep the green, the life-flow that feeds us, mind, body and soul.

I know, when I drive somewhere, even here, that I will see immaculata. Gardens synched in, controlled and statuesque like women of the past. The colours will be gorgeous, all in rows and all controlled. Immaculate lawns. Not here. I am already in a dither about cutting grass at all, taking the heads off those lions and cuckoos, the daisies, the others I cannot name. I probably will cut just once and avoid any cut in May because the bees so very much need us to stop tampering with their lifelines. And not just bees, but all the flying insects considered swatting material, pests at best. Do we actually realise how important they all are?

Splinter moment.

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Island Blog – Reasons to Celebrate

There are, approximately 9450 words beginning with ‘C’. Well, damnit, I can never find any of them when playing scrabble, or, maybe, I don’t have the insiders like the flipping vowels, or, maybe, the other player has stuck the damn ‘C’ at the top of an Eiffel Tower from which there is no escape. It’s a pinnacle, and if, if, there is a Z or another impossible consonant affixed way too close to said ‘C’ then, basically, I am f**ked. However, that C challenges me, makes me both furious and determined to like it at all. I don’t mind it in ‘nice’ or spice’ or priced, or all those other words which seem to employ the C as a follow on. I like it in Niece, for example, although the I before E except after C thing in English Language lessons almost grew me wings. The rules of grammar are absolute and infuriating. I know that all that I have learned is not important now, and I accept that, whilst feeling a tingle of sadness for the beauty of what is lost.

I look for the C beginnings. Caring I know that one, the way of it. How about champagne? Ah, now that gives me tingle. Even though chairlift, coercion, confinement and control rise into my head, I know how it is to celebrate. No matter the years of awful, for anyone, if celebration is a sparkler within, then celebration will out. However and however, I wonder if folk darken, lose their hold on the fun of life, deny themselves the grabbing of moments when the sun.suddenly shines after months of darkness and rain? Noteveryone. Not me.

As a family we celebrated everything, every achievement, every brave move, every birthday, everything. Through tough times, through loneliness and exclusion, through self-doubt and sibling rivalry, through all of it, there snuckles a smidge of hope and if grasped, barely breathing, this snuckle can bring the C back three paces.

Celebration. Such a wonderful word and, just to say, I am proud of C getting to the front of a very big word. Celebrate everything, every moment, everyone. I know life is damn tough right now, but bring the damn C to the front.

Celebrate, Celandine, Collective, Creedence, Cherish, Community, Charisma, Co-ordination, Collusion, Co-piloting.

Let’s go with this, plus Champagne of course!

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Island Blog – Mud Heft and Stone Humping

It annoyed me, the scourge of mud below my wee pull-in. It used to be gravel but I am letting it return to itself, to that grassy green naturality. To be honest, I am displeased with those who seal the ground shut. We have little enough of it left, after all, and all that healthy breath is paved and suffocated. I know that gravel isn’t so clever at closing the land, but it dims the light. Folk moan about moss in their lawns and yet moss is essential in so many ways, and, by the way, moss is way more beautiful than sticky-up grass, mown into controlled order, like Dickensian pupils.

The sun was freed up, all of a sudden, and the wind grew warm. I pulled off two big jumpers and felt quite menopausal for a few minutes. The weather is bajonkers, but this smells of warm stories and hope. It inspired me to do something. about my grump. See, when lorries or big vans deliver they just scoop onto my not-gravel, digging nothing less than. a whole ditch. Those wheels sink so down, I feel like I am looking at the topsoil of hell, not that I. believe in that. I selected my least rusty shovel from my fishbox of chaotic garden things with handles and marched forth. It took me ages. I stabbed and jabbed, scooped and dumped and all beneath a warm(ish) sun. It wasn’t a big scoop, just a deep one and I felt a butterfly of excitement once I hit the tarmac.

Now, stones, I thought. I have some big ones, old as Eve in my garden, fallen from drystane walls of old. I grabbed my wheelbarrow and bent to hump three big ones onboard. Heavy. they were and still are, but they are beautiful. Ancient basalt, naturally formed and willing to help. I placed them in situ. Now, if a van or lorry thinks it might cut my corner off, it will regret it.

I wondered if I should paint them white and then dismissed that nonsense as so urban. The moss growing over them is so beautiful. No white paint here. After all, drivers on islands might consider the fact that we are island folk and also that they should be looking for rock trouble, as we all do.

I hope you have sunshine too.

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Island. Blog – The Insprits and the Mostly

Life is mostly ordinary for us, We might think it is different for those with solutions to everything, but, in truth, nobody does. Rich or poor or in between we find solace in the ordinary. In this ‘ordinary’ things work, wifi connection, light bulbs, fridges, washing machines, bus times, clocking in to work, locks on outer doors and systems we trust. Night is night and day is day and daffoldils are early spring and bins are emptied on the right morning. Mostly, it works according to. Mostly. And we like ‘mostly’ because we can ignore any inner doubt, any mind-fiddle that awares us of the fact that this is not as stable as once it was. And this we ignore, mostly. But there are nivits in our world now and I have met a few. Actually they have been here for many years.

I watch the tide rise bejonkers, too soon for the full moon. It slips determinedly over grass and rocks either side of the sea-loch. The Insprits are here. To be honest, it twinkles me because there is no sustainable ordinary in island life and I know this. I have lived with them for many decades. Mostly Folk could not live this way, but this way will be the way one day. The weather decides ferry access to the mainland. And, since Covid, there are many happy homes here, those who love the. shenanigans of the Insprits, who work from home, who dance with the ditzy dynamic of everything ‘island’ and who are patient.

I’m looking out at a full tide, the rise beyond itself. I hear the call of whitetails, watch a canto of buzzards, see the black lambs cajink over new grass. There’s rain coming, again, we all know that, but there are those wonderful moments when it stops and there’s a sunblister in the grey and then we see all the beauty beyond the insprits. They were always here and always will be. The sudden upsets, the unexpecteds, the terriblest awfuls.

If we can hold to loving the ‘mostly’ but prepared for the insprits, and we can teach our children this, well then, we are wise.

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